The world reduced to velocity and the shape of her falling.
I had shifted my wings alone a thousand times, the change as natural as breathing, Shadowbane’s body growing as familiaras my own. The feeling of bones remaking themselves, of wings catching air, the cold rush of the wind against skin and scales. But I had never moved quite like this, without thought, without strategy, driven by need.
There was a direct line between me and the only thing in the world that mattered now, and it drew me toward her like an arrow shot from a bow. Wind screamed past.
Below, she was falling. Her face was wild with terror, her body buffeted and bent by the wind, hair whipping across her face. One hand reached out, seeking Lightbringer.
Lightbringer wasn’t coming.
She wasn’t shifting.
Then her body turned, and her hand was extended toward me. Desperately reaching. For once, there was nothing guarded about her face.
I hit the currents below the cliff face and pulled hard, timing it against her trajectory, and my arm found her.
The impact shuddered through me from wrist to shoulder to chest as I caught her and pulled her against me.
Her weight, sudden. My grip closed on instinct, wrapping her with a force I knew was too much and would leave marks tomorrow.
She made a sound I’d never heard from her before, short and involuntary. Her eyes, wide and terrified and vivid as the ocean just below, met mine. The two of us skimmed over the waves, spray splashing over us both.
Her hand that had been reaching for Lightbringer found my shoulder instead, clinging to me with raw need that she rarely exposed. Her body pressed into mine, her face turning into my chest, and I pulled her close.
For one unguarded moment, there was nothing complicated between us. There was only her fear falling away, though her heart still pounded away like a rabbit’s.
“I’ve got you,” I told her.
Her eyes flashed up, searching mine, her red lips parting. I regretted the words immediately. They’d been as unguarded as her reaction.
I was still angry—nothing could defuse the anger she deserved so well—so why did I comfort her?
Why was it true?
There was no world in which my wife would fall and I wouldn’t leap to catch her, even if there was still a knife in her hand.
Above, on the overlook and the rooflines, the Nightwalkers had seen everything.
I landed on the cliff path below the barracks. Just for a moment. Here we were barely above the waves that broke against the stones at our feet, spraying salty and cold across our faces. No one could hear us.
“You should have let me fall.” Her face was closing again, shutting me out. The face I had seen when I carried her after she tried to kill me.
“No.” The word was flat, curt.
“I was trying to summon Lightbringer.” Her hand against my shoulder flattened. Her fingers had been gripping me so tightly that doubtless both of us would be decorated with the other’s bruises now. “I tried to stab you. Surely you can try to let me fall to my death. It seems fair.”
“Why did you jump?” If she was suicidal, I needed to know. I needed a partner that was as interested in surviving the queen as I was.
“You told me to jump.”
She pushed away from me, but I wasn’t going to set her down on the narrow path just above the sea. My wings extended to either side, giving us both balance and escape if a larger wave sought to break on, not just the rocks, but our bodies.
“After what I did, why not let me fall? Am I even any use to you without Lightbringer?”
She wanted me to have saved her for strategy, for politics, for the rebellion. I could’ve given her that, and it would have both soothed my ego and salved her guilt.
Today would have no rest for either of us.
“I will never let you fall when I can save you.” I brushed a salt-damp strand of hair from her face.
