“Breathe,” he said.
I took one breath.
He stepped off the cliff.
Falling.
The world ripped away. My stomach slammed into my throat. Wind screamed past my face, tearing at my hair, my clothes, my skin. I couldn’t see. Couldn’t think. My hands clenched the straps so hard the leather cut into my palms and the scream that came out of my mouth wasn’t a choice, wasn’t a word, was just pure animal terror ripping itself free.
We were going to die. The darkness was rushing up to meet us and I was going to shatter against whatever was at the bottom and no one would ever know what happened to me, no one would ever find my body, I was going to die strapped to a monster in the dark.
The wings snapped open.
The force wrenched us upward so hard I felt it in my teeth. My vision went white. My body slammed against his chest, against the harness, against the straps that were suddenly the only thing keeping me from being ripped away into nothing.
And then we were climbing. Rising. The cliff face rushed past us, and then it was gone, and there was nothing below us but empty black air.
I couldn’t breathe. The wind was too strong, filling my mouth and nose, leaving no room for air. I tried to turn my head and couldn’t. Tried to gasp and couldn’t. My chest was burning. My vision was going dark at the edges.
The cloak folded around us.
Darkness. Different darkness. Warm and close and suddenly, blessedly still. The wind vanished, cut off by the wall of feathersthat now enclosed us both. The artifact wrapped around me like it knew I needed shelter. Like it was responding to him, to his need to protect.
I gasped. Choked. Gasped again. Air. There was air in here, trapped between the feathers, and I sucked it in desperately while my whole body shook.
“Breathe.” His voice resonated through his chest into my bones. “Slowly. You are safe.”
“That was not...” I couldn’t finish the sentence. My teeth were chattering. “That was…”
“I know.”
“You could have warned me.”
“I did warn you.”
“You said the height was significant. You didn’t say you were going to throw us off a cliff.”
“I did not throw. I stepped.”
I laughed. It came out broken, half a sob, but it was still a laugh. “You stepped. Into nothing. With me strapped to your chest.”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t see how that might have warranted more warning.”
“I find that warnings increase fear. The anticipation is worse than the act.”
“The anticipation of being dropped off a mountain?”
“Yes.”
I laughed again. Couldn’t stop. The terror was draining out of me and leaving something giddy and strange in its place, and I was wrapped in feathers in the middle of the sky laughing like I’d lost my mind.
Maybe I had.
“You are all right?” His voice was careful. Uncertain.
“I don’t know. Ask me when we land.”
