They were untouchable. That was what their faces said. I wished I could see Tay’s face. Would this moment turn him back to me?
Shadows rose over the beach. More dragons flying toward the Fae who seemed untroubled.
How did we stop the Fae? I drew my knife, resolve hardening in my chest. The Nightwalkers were protecting them, but there had to be a way to end their song. Even without Lightbringer.
“Fine. You’ll do.”Lightbringer’s voice was aggrieved in my mind.
There was a snap within me, like a door catching a strong wind. Warmth and strength lit in my chest, then rushed through every muscle. It was the feeling I’d had with Lidi, multiplied a hundred times over.
My hands raised toward the Fae of their own volition.“Teach me to take their power.”
Fae faces turned toward me. Their mouths were no longer open, singing. They no longer looked bored.
I reached out without fully understanding how. My vision shifted, sharpening in that snap to a dragon’s eyes; I could see every detail of their faces. Their gaping mouths. Their beauty and the cracks in it, the glowing of the enchantments they carried, the purple blood in their veins.
Their magic arced around them, visible now.
“Mine.”I wasn’t sure if it was Lightbringer who said it or me who thought it.
I pulled, and their magic slowly pulled away from them, arcing toward me. It was as if their magic were tethered to them, and I was drawing the line out. Then suddenly, it snapped away from them, as if the line had broken.
Their power flooded through me in a rush. It was too much. Power, but with it a wave of heat and pressure rising from within. I didn’t know what to do with it, and sudden panic raced through my body. My pulse jumped, my breath coming in gulps as I tried to figure out what to do.
“Breathe, child. I know what to do. And you will learn.”Lightbringer sighed, clearly exasperated—perhaps by me and by herself in equal measure.
The sense of heat, pressure, panic all began to fade. Finally, I could take in what was happening.
The Fae: shock first. The shock of those who had thought they were superior, untouchable.
Then horror.
Then they were running.
They were scrambling, the power still wisping out of them as they ran, still flowing into me. They couldn’t stop it any more than the mortals had been able to stop walking.
Tay was running with them.
Magic wisped off of him, too. Shock rushed through me at the sight of my brother stumbling with them through the dark surf, blue magic still smoking between him and me.
The last of the magic left him, a last thread flowing quickly between him and me until it snapped into my body.
Tay fell in the surf.
He was not the first. One Fae, then another, lost the last of their magic and fell. The other Fae were running now, fleeing along the broken seawall.
I looked out over the city, picking out one mortal woman calling to others for answers, then a man, crying out as he saw his child. He wrapped the child in his arms. Mortals filled the streets, confused and distraught and alive. Bismyth had saved almost all of them.
I found Fear, running from the city down toward the sea, still shouting orders to Bismyth.
There were bodies bobbing in the water below, being pulled slowly out to sea. Asrael had one of the fallen shifters and was dragging him out of the sea. Near him, Kiegan and Sera were chasing down the fleeing Nightwalker who had tried to finish off the shifter.
Below.
My gaze snapped down.
I was above the scene. Above the eastern wall, above the sea, above the fleeing Fae and the city we had saved.
There was a shadow to either side. The sensation from my shoulders slowly came to me, something heavy pressing down on me. I looked to my side and caught a glimpse of my enormous spreading wings. They were the color of copper, bright and shining under the moonlight.
