We were flying, low and steady, Ravel's arm crushing me to his chest and my face against his throat, and both of us shaking so hard I couldn't tell whose tremor was whose.
"I've got you." His voice was ragged. "I've got you, I've got you, Kailin. You're not going to die. Thank Elu, I've got you."
I couldn't speak. My whole body was one struck bell, ringing. I could feel his heart going like a hammer against my cheek, as wild as mine, and his arm wouldn't loosen, and I wouldn't have let it.
37
RAVEL
The decisive moment seldom brings new wisdom; it crystallizes what has long been forming unseen.
—From the journal of Commander Ravel Nidar
"Something is wrong!"Onyx said in my head, but his panic had already registered.
I looked up to where Kailin was flying above me, and my heart stopped.
Her saddle had slid half around, and for a moment, my mind couldn't process what I was seeing. Was she performing some new acrobatic maneuver? Something that idiot Morek had talked her into?
Except, Kailin didn't do stupid things.
She was falling.
The only woman I had ever loved was about to die.
The two realizations hit me at the same time, and they would have knocked me out if not for decades of experience kicking in.
Onyx was already shifting after her.
Thank Elu we'd been below Morgateth instead of above or to the side as we usually were. We had a one-in-a-million chance to save her, but it was better than none.
I leaned into the dive, urging him to go faster, but there was no going against the simple laws of physics, and given the aerodynamics, he was going as fast as his large body could manage.
The dive yanked the floor out of my stomach and punched the breath out of my chest. The peaks were coming up at us, and Kailin was dropping down toward them, and by Elu's grace, Onyx threaded the two targets together with the kind of precision I could never have managed on my own. He leveled off, and then rose into her fall, aligning his great body beneath where her trajectory was taking her, and then climbed the last of the distance to meet her. I came half out of my saddle with one hand locked in the harness and the other arm thrown wide.
She hit my arm, and the impact nearly tore both of us off Onyx's back, but I had her and I wasn't letting go even though my arm felt like it was being torn from my body.
I hauled with everything I had and then some, dragging her up and across, and then down hard against me. Instinctively, her hands came up and fisted in my jacket. She held on tight, locked against my chest, and I was never letting go.
"I've got you." I could barely hear my own voice. "I've got you, I've got you, Kailin. You're not going to die. Thank Elu, I've got you."
She was shaking.
We both were.
Her face was buried in my throat, and her heart was hammering hard enough for me to feel it through the layers of clothing between us.
Mine was drumming a similar beat.
Onyx leveled off and was just gliding on the current, slow and steady, waiting for us to regain our breath and feeding us both his strength because Morgateth was nowhere to be seen. The coward must have ditched the scene of the crime while Kailin had been still falling.
She hadn't called out to him or me when she fell. She only asked him to tell Alar that she loved him and was sorry. Onyx heard her, and I heard her through him, but the words hadn't penetrated through the panic.
They penetrated now, and dear Elu, they hurt.
In what she'd believed were her last seconds, Kailin had reached out with all of herself with a final message for Alar.
The sound of wings above us had me looking up, and I saw Morgateth, who hadn't bolted after all, and I was ready to take back my angry words, but then he folded and wheeled, climbing away from us so fast he was a dark smear against the sky as though something was hunting him.
