No one else seems to have noticed, distracted by Bastet, by the impossibility of what has happened. But her senses sharpen, her magic rising to help her. She hears the shallow breath first. A frantic heartbeat. Then she sees him.
A man is up there. A man holding a spear—and aiming it at Astrid. A metal spear, one that has already ripped a hole in Jessa.
Skylar is moving before she fully understands. She sees him throw, feels the pulse of power as he does. A Metallurgist. The spear will strike true, guided by magic.
Darkness wells inside her. Bastet turns sharply to look at her, blue eyes ferocious. She hears herself snarl, knows it doesn’t sound human. She tugs at her power, lets it rip from her. It is wild and uncontrollable, but she pushes it toward the spear.
It shatters into harmless pieces that fall to the ground before they reach Astrid.
She feels Astrid look at her as silence descends around them. Butshe doesn’t return the gaze. This isn’t like on the island. She does not feel drained, exhausted. Instead, her magic is throbbing, reaching out to every part of her.
She stares up at the assassin. Knows he sees her before he bolts.
He killed Jessa. Quincy. He tried to kill Astrid. Her lips pull back from her teeth.
No. He cannot be allowed to get away with that.
She can see where he’s heading, her eyesight sharper than it’s ever been. For half a beat, she closes her eyes. Then, for the first time in her entire life, Skylar gives herself over to her power.
38Astrid
Astrid’s ribs feel like they’ve cracked and splintered where her heart has been wrenched from her chest cavity. Hot tears scorch her cheeks, her throat is raw, but she’s stopped screaming at least. A buzzing fills her ears, her eddying emotions shrink and tuck themselves away deep inside her, and she draws her eyes from Jessa’s lifeless body. Wrath surges up through her, blistering and ravenous, and she looks for somewhere to direct it.
Time slows as Skylar obliterates a spear in midair, metal reduced to shards, and Astrid watches as she begins to glow, the milky-white tendrils of her power wreathing and swirling around her. There’s a yank, something urging Astrid toward the dragon heir, and her own Gift rises in answer. How hadn’t she felt it before? This connection she has to others’ magic. It’s so obvious now that she’s aware of it. She’s an Amplifier. Can make others more powerful—Blooded and witch alike.
Then Skylar is running, faster than any human should be able to, like the very wind urges her on, chasing the man in the distance. The man who murdered Jessa. Astrid grips one of Bastet’s huge shoulder blades, vaulting onto his back like she’s done it a thousand times before. Her little familiar, her Bastet, is the fabled winged panther of her house. And he is magnificent. Taller than a stallion. Larger even than Bjorn. But she doesn’t have the headspace for that right now. The only thing on her mind is death.
“Fly,” she seethes, and Bastet roars in response. People around them scream, pushing and falling as they try to flee. Bastet bounds forward, building speed to launch himself into the air. He leaps and for amoment she is weightless, stomach in her mouth, and she’s gripping Bastet’s gleaming black fur, fighting to stay on as he rises higher and higher, soaring beyond the confines of the ball and toward the pulsing power of Skylar and the ruin she leaves in her wake: the ground bleached white, the trees shriveled, their leaves disintegrating like ash.
“Faster, Bastet,” Astrid demands. His wings pump harder, the powerful muscles of his back strain. “There,” she shouts. The assassin is outside the castle walls. How he’s made it past the guards she doesn’t know, but it might explain how he got in. How he was able to kill her Jessa. The image of her friend, still and bloody on the ground, invades her thoughts, the ragged wound graphic and immovable in her mind’s eye.
Useless.
Useless.
Useless.
SHE WILL NOT MAKE IT OUT OF THE CASTLE. Bastet pants, watching Skylar.
“Yes, she will.” Astrid focuses on the dragon heir, on the thread that connects them; and the taste of smoke fills her mouth, shadows and ash engulfing her senses, and she wills her Gift to flow into Skylar. Bastet stutters in the air, then rights himself, grunting. Astrid pares back, not wanting to take too much magic too quickly. But in this form his power feels infinite to her, as though she could pour her magic into the entire damn Vatran population and neither of them would tire.
Skylar is at the walls. They tower above her, as tall as Mjolnir, but she’s not slowing. With a final burst of speed, Skylar leaps and a yowl bursts from Bastet.
Because the dragon heir is flying.
She’s above the walls, Dreki shouting, then she’s over them, falling back to the earth. She lands—and the cobbles crack and splinter—but she’s already running again; and though there’s no way Skylar can see the assassin, she tracks him, as if she can scent him. Astrid marvels at what she’s seeing, at the sheer power emanating from Skylar—she’s never seen anything like it from any magic-wielder.
The assassin is sprinting down steps carved into the side of the cliff face, making for a cove below and—Astrid sees—a boat. She feelsan insidious pleasure bubble within her. Even if he’s able to outrun Skylar, he can’t outrun Astrid: the sea won’t save him. The assassin jumps into his boat and is already on the move, his magic driving it atop the water.
Bastet crests the edge of the cliff. There’s a crackle behind her and she whips her head around just as Zryan Teleports in, his eyes wide and on her. He darts to the cliff’s edge and looks down. To where Skylar is on the beach, waiting. Waiting, because the boat is coming back to the shore; the tide is working against all laws of nature, carrying the boat back to where Skylar stands, arms outstretched. The assassin’s face is reddening; he’s trying with all his might to overpower Skylar’s force, but it is futile. Skylar is too strong. Every element at her mercy.
HOW?Bastet marvels. Astrid only grins, pouring as much power down the link as she can.
“Get down there, Bastet,” she says, and he plummets to the sand, to Skylar.
They land just as the boat tips the man onto the beach. He gasps, claws at his throat. Skylar has him caught in the grip of her power. Astrid remains on Bastet’s back, watching with a grim satisfaction as the man chokes. She senses Zryan’s presence but doesn’t seek him out. Instead she gazes at Skylar, and slowly the dragon heir turns to look at her.
Skylar’s eyes are wholly black, her brown skin drained and wan, spidery blue-black veins marking it like a map. But unlike when Kaida hatched, Astrid can still see the woman behind the petrifying facade. She’s unmoving, and Astrid knows Skylar’s waiting for her, to see what Astrid wants to do. Because it was Astrid’s friend, her sister in every way but blood, who died. Who was murdered by the coward now trembling before them. And he is Astrid’s kill if she wants it.
