“Not to me, to hermane.”
“Excuse me for never having done this before!” I cried into the night. Cobalt snapped her wings and veered sharply to the right, ascending abovemountains of clouds. My heart thudded wildly, and not entirely with fear.
We were flying.
Iwas flying.
It was unlike anything I’d ever known: terrifying, freeing, and impossibly light. I marveled at the Pegasus’s powerful wings and how they carried us with such ease away from the city. The city that once appeared so colossal could now fit between my pinched fingers.
“This is incredible!” I laughed, the wind swallowing my breaths. Perhaps it was the lingering effects of the tonic that made me forget who I was with and where I was going, but in that moment, I was alive—free from Allory and Markus’s wicked clutches. At this speed, the music was louder than ever. It was all so beautiful that tears welled in my eyes.
Against my better judgement, I peered back at the fiercely stoic man behind me. My captor… and rescuer. His thighs bracketed mine, securing me in place with one hand on my hip. I shouldn’t have enjoyed this—especially withhim, given the circumstances—but I couldn’t help it. We were so utterly free and weightless amidst the stars and clouds.
As his unreadable eyes roamed my face, I flashed him a mocking smile. The musical wind tousled our curls, darkstrands whipping and intertwining in the rush of air.
He smirked, clicking his tongue. Cobalt suddenly dipped in response. Stomach flipping, I gasped as we dropped—no,plummeted. My fists tightened around the fabric of his pants, our eyes remaining locked the whole time.
As if in challenge.
My smile turned genuine from the liberating exhilaration. I wasn’t afraid; no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t scare me.
Not when I’d already prepared to die tonight.
And for a moment, I thought I saw his lips twitch. As if maybe—just maybe—he were enjoying this as much as I was.
Chapter 21
Raithe
Her smile had leftme awestruck.
For all intents and purposes, shewasbeing abducted. She shouldn’t have been smiling.
Still, the look of wonderment in her eyes reminded me of the first time I ever flew on Cobalt twelve years ago: exhilarating, freeing, completely out of control.
Cobalt was born and bred for flying, but there were fleeting airborne moments where I thought the same for myself.
“You really can’t say why your seer wants me?” Rahzlyn asked an hour into the flight.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” I said, peeling a lock of her hair that incessantly whipped against my mouth. We both would. The only logical reason Gregorios—or rather Gemini—sent me to find the woman situated between my thighs was because she was an apostate, confirmed by the fresh brand on the bottom of her foot. It had to be. “What exactly was your plan to seduce the king?”
I steered Cobalt through a mountain of clouds toward the arch back to Scorpio. The sky brightened. Sunrise loomed on the horizon. We still had a long flight ahead of us, and she didn’tstrike me as the type of woman who preferred quiet solitude like I did.
Rahzlyn craned her neck, causing her cheek to graze my nose. I stiffened, our proximity unsettling. “It wasn’t my plan. I was tricked into doing it for my brother.”
I had no intention of returning for him. If the Black Rose’sfamilyneeded protecting, Gregorios would have specified. Guilt sank its claws into me as I recalled how her hopeful eyes had brightened as we shook hands.
Rahzlyn peered down. “That’s the Barrier, isn’t it?”
We coasted low enough in the skies but still at a safe distance from the tufts of ominous clouds that spanned the entire realm. “Cobalt knows to steer clear of it.”
“Smart animal,” she murmured. “It’s greener than I remembered. More eerie.”
“You’ve been this close before?”
“Years ago, when Basil and I visited a client with our grandmother. It was a small isle owned by a noble. I remember it so vividly.”
I usually had little patience, or desire, to hear such mundane details about another. I didn’t bother to interrupt her though. I was… intrigued enough by her nostalgic tone to want to listen. In case she revealed apostai intelligence, of course. If she were smart, she wouldn’t share anything with her captor that could be exploited against her.
