But first…
I crouch beside Thyra.
She’s blood-splattered. Gore streaks her hair, but she tips her head back, her pale blue eyes telling me she’s determined to act.
She doesn’t need to say a word.
I utter a sharp whistle.
Up on the wall, Azul answers my call, swooping so fast toward us that I’m certain he worked hard not to join the fight.
My arms wrap around Thyra, and I haul her upward, the holder of my hope, flinging her into the air.
High into the air.
As her right arm slips through my hold, my palm glides across the ruby circlet, releasing her from its hold, allowing her to soar freely upward.
No more chains.
She twists a little, her silver armor glittering, as she carves a graceful arc toward Azul.
He dips and deftly catches her before soaring higher, carrying her into the sky.
The loose end of the circlet drops to the floor. Drawing it up out of the blood, I unlock it from my other wrist and wrap it in my bare palm before pulling my armored glove back over it.
It doesn’t matter what cruelty Mother has planned for Victor and me now.
It doesn’t matter the memories I’m battlingor the monstrous impulses I’m fighting.
Thyra soars into the air, carrying my hope with her.
Chapter Sixty-One
Thyra
Ifight the overwhelming need to look back.
Fight the weight of faith in Antony’s eyes. Those savage green eyes that weren’t cold when he launched me into the air, but filled with life.
As if the blood and death around him centered him.
As if, within the acts of killing, he knew who he was.
Azul takes me along the mountain ridge and down its western side, where a much smaller stone structure sits. A simpler building than the family temple near Antony’s cabin. Only a single carving is etched in the white stone above the entrance. That same Vividari symbol I must seek once I enter the building.
Azul crouches as low to the ground as he can so I can dismount safely.
“Thank you, Blue.” Reverting to the first name I gave him, I reach for his neck, pressing my cheek to his feathers. “Wait for me here.”
He tosses his head, an action I take as agreement, hiscrimson eyes gleaming, and I sense his unyielding gaze on me as I hurry toward the temple.
Before I reach the front opening, my brow furrows at the worn-down grass all around the entrance. It’s been trodden many times. And recently, too.
Antony hasn’t been coming here… I gleaned that much from his painful history, but someone has.
Possibly Galla…
If it weren’t for the vision I had, where I saw myself walking within these walls, I would worry that there could be protections around the temple that might stop me from entering it. As it is, I step inside without hindrance, inhaling the slight tang of iron in the air as I hurry onward. Another oddity. But the scent is probably all over my clothing from the burned blood that was spilled back at the fight, and this closed-in environment is heightening it.
