“What...” Uncle’s voice had gone thin.
I knew that sound. Knew it in my bones.
He hadn’t made it to fifteen.
The wall screamed.
Stone cracking. Plaster exploding. A roar that wasn’t a roar, something older, something that bypassed my ears and hit me straight in the chest.
The guard’s hands vanished from my arm. I lunged for Elspeth, tried to pull her free, to shield her, but uncle wrenched her back against him, grip white-knuckled on her wrist even as debris rained down around us. Dust choking. The world coming apart, and my sister just out of reach.
And then silence.
I looked up.
Tavrin filled the hole he’d made. He’d followed my voice through stone. Found me.
But this wasn’t the man I’d married. Not even the creature I’d left in the outside. This was something from before language. Before memory. Eight feet of fury and feathers, wings spread so wide they blocked the sky, eyes burning like the hearts of stars.
The guards were gone. I’d seen the moment they broke. One look at what came through that wall, talons and fury and eyes like dying stars, and they’d fled without a word. I heard them still running.
Uncle was on the floor. I didn’t remember him falling. He was making a sound, high and thin, an animal sound.
Tavrin didn’t look at him.
He looked at me.
I saw him take in the guard’s grip bruising my arm. The dust in my hair. The tears on my face I hadn’t known I was crying.
I saw him look at uncle’s hand still locked around Elspeth’s wrist.
I saw him understand.
The sound that came out of him made my bones vibrate.
“Tavrin.” I kept my voice steady. Calm. An anchor. “I’m okay. I’m okay.”
He was shaking. Barely holding on. One wrong word and he would tear uncle apart, and part of me wanted to let him, but Elspeth was watching and there were some things a fifteen-year-old shouldn’t see.
“Let go of my sister,” I said. Not to Tavrin. To uncle.
Uncle’s hand opened. He might have been crying. I didn’t care.
Elspeth stumbled toward me and I caught her. Pulled her close. She was shaking so hard her teeth chattered.
“Is that...” She couldn’t finish.
“My husband. Yes.”
“He broke...” A hiccup. A sob. “He broke the wall.”
“Apparently that’s an option.”
She laughed. Wet and hysterical and terrified. I held her tighter.
Tavrin took a step forward. Uncle scrambled backward through the rubble, glass cutting his palms.
“You can’t.” Gasping. “She’s mine. The law...”
