“Try again,”Itell her.
She pulls again—harder this time.Isee the muscles in her arms strain and her teeth sink into her lower lip with effort.Then, with a sudden jerk, the feather comes free, and she almost falls backward into the soft lining of the nest.
A laugh bursts out of me beforeIcan help it at the surprised expression on her face.
Elowen looks up, triumphant and flushed, clutching that enormous feather to her chest.
“I got it!”
“Yes, you did, little one.”Ican’t seem to stop smiling at her.“Nowlet’s get the fuck out of here before the owner comes back.”
The words have barely left my mouth when the air splits with an angry shriek.
This isn’t the cry of any ordinary bird.Thesound is sharp and savage and so loud it seems to shake the mountain itself.
Elowen goes still inside the nest, her face draining of color as both of us look up.
Out of the bright northern sky, a vast shadow drops toward us.
TheEmperorHawkis coming home.
28
ELOWEN
The shriek seems to split the sky in two.
I have barely enough time to clutch the enormous feather to my chest and look up beforeIsee it—theEmperorHawk, diving straight at us out of the blinding northern sun.Fora moment, allIcan make out is the vast spread of its wings and the terrible speed at which it’s dropping.Thenit comes lower andIsee the rest.
Oh,Goddess—it’shuge.
I had imagined a large bird, of course—a creature worthy of a nest bigger than a large bed.Butthis is no ordinary hawk.Thisis a monster of the air—a king of the peaks—all curved beak and gleaming eyes and feathers striped in silver-gray and white.Itswingspan is enormous—nearly as broad asTheron’sDrakein his smaller form—and the hooked talons hanging beneath it are as long as knives.Theyflash in the mountain light, sharp and deadly.
It’s coming right for us.
My blood runs cold.
For one terrible momentIcan’t seem to move.I’mstill half inside the nest, one knee sunk into the coarse lining of cloud-pine fluff, withTheronbraced near the edge and the narrow ledge just beyond him.Thereis no time to climb out and no room to run even if there were.Thepath back to the broader shelf of rock whereTheronlanded us seems impossibly far away now—a sliver of stone clinging to the mountain’s side.
We’re trapped.
The wind whips my hair across my face, andIshove it back with a shaking hand, still clutching the long hawk feather.Thebird gives another savage cry, andIfeel the sound in my bones.It’sangry—furiousthat we’re in its nest—that we dared to trespass on its territory.
“Fuck!”Therongrowls.
He’s already moving, turning so he’s between me and the open air, his body tense, his broad shoulders braced as though he thinks he can somehow shield me from a creature nearly as big as a dragon.Thesight of him there should terrify me—there is a wildness in himIdon’t thinkIhave ever fully seen before—but instead it steadies me a little.
IfTheronis afraid, he doesn’t show it.Helooks back at me over one shoulder, his tarnished silver eyes bright and hard.
“Do you trust me, little one?”
The question catches me off guard.
“What?”Igasp.
The hawk is still bearing down on us, close enough now thatIcan see every beat of its wings, every flick of its huge, deadly claws.There’sno time for questions, no time for anything, and yetTheron’sgaze doesn’t waver.
“Do you trust me?”he asks again.
