This masked Iron Fae is coming to kill me.
Reflexes firing and muscles bunching, I cry, “Nara, get me up there. Don’t kill the eagle!”
She launches into a run, speeding straight forward as the eagle spears toward us.
I count heartbeats, barely any time at all before Nara leaps, carrying us high into the air and up into the eagle’s flight path.
I launch myself from her back.
In the instant before I collide with the eagle’s rider, I make out more of the protective shield strapped over his head. It’s fine grating that must enable him to breathe safely.
I can’t clearly identify the man behind the mask, but in that heartbeat, my focus catches on two parallel burns on his arm. Some sort of mark.
The eagle veers to the side. The man shouts.
He clearly didn’t anticipate me going on the attack and he doesn’t move out of my path fast enough.
I knock him off the bird, my left fist colliding with his shoulder, my right hand closing around his blade arm and, inthat moment, I convince myself we’re standing on solid ground and not flying through the air.
I yank his blade arm toward me, the opposite direction of my punch, the two opposing forces dislocating his shoulder. His hand opens.
Snatching the dropping blade safely by its hilt before it can plummet away from me, I don’t second-guess my choices.
Fast as lightning, I ram the dagger into his heart, straight through his leather armor.
If he gives another shout beneath his mask, I don’t hear it.
At the same time, I’m aware that Nara has swiped her powerful paws across the eagle’s shoulders—without extending her claws—and has knocked the bird toward the ground, where she will no doubt pounce on it and keep it down.
I let go of the man’s body.
But now I’m falling too.
I convince myself I can tumble through the landing without breaking both of my legs.
At the corner of my eye, Nara touches the ground and turns, abandoning the eagle to launch herself into the air again, leaping for my location.
In that heartbeat, I convince myself all I need to do is hurl myself a little to my left, where I can land on her back?—
Something hits me from behind, knocking the air from my chest.
Cold arms wrap around me and, for a moment, I think Stellen has plucked me from the air in a rush of ice.
But these arms are encased in black metal, and instead of sailing toward the ground, we fly forward, so fast that I can’t breathe.
Can only turn my head to the side, my cheek brushing cold steel, as a nearby forest of leafless trees rears up beneath me.
Between the trees we fly,rapidly descending until my feet touch ground, a landing so smooth that I don’t stumble when we set down.
The arms unwrap from behind me and I try to catch my breath, teetering in the middle of the snow, surrounded by gray, lifeless trees and a silence that’s somehow…
Breaking my heart.
Slowly, I turn.
A menacing male form looms only three paces behind me, fully clad from head to toe in black steel armor.
My heart…
