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Every breath was an agonizing struggle, a shallow, rattling gasp that brought no oxygen to my starving brain. The cold was sinking deep into my bones, numb and heavy, washing away the biting pain in my stomach, replacing it with a soft, dangerous weight that urged me to just close my eyes, to just stop fighting, to just let the dark swallow me whole.

Little ember...

Nyxaroth’s deep, ancient voice echoed in the absolute marrow of my chest—impossibly weak, a faint, flickering ember struggling against the suffocating weight of my dying body.

Nyx... I thought back, my mental voice barely a whisper in the vast, empty void of my mind. I’m... I’m tired...

Do not... submit... the Nyxalith rasped, his telepathic presence straining to hold the thread of our bond together. The Captain... is out of his mind... but he carries the fire... look at him, Tauriel... he carries the bleed...

I forced my eyes open one last time.

Caspian was looking down at me.

He didn’t care about the freezing wind cutting his face. He didn’t care about the clouds swirling around his shoulders, or the giant shadow-drake holding him by his armor.

His eyes were locked onto mine—burning with a fierce and breathtakingly devotion that made the cold air in my lungs feel molten.

“I told you, Trouble,” Caspian rasped, his rough voice carrying over the roar of the gale, vibrating directly against my cheek as he tightened his arms around my waist, pulling my dying body so close I could feel every ridge of his chest against mine. “I told you I would never let you go.”

“Cas...” I choked out, a faint tear slipping from my eye, freezing against my cheekbone. “We’re... falling...”

“Then we fall together,” Caspian whispered, his voice cut from iron and unyielding devotion.

He raised his head, looking up at his Umbrax.

The shadow-drake let out a low, mournful rumble that shook the sky—a deep, ancient acknowledgment of its rider’s absolute, insane command.

Caspian gave a single, quiet nod.

High above us, the Umbrax opened its massive, razor-sharp obsidian talons.

It released Caspian’s shoulders.

The sudden loss of support hit us with physical violence.

For a single, breathless fraction of a second, we hovered weightlessly at the peak of the mountain clouds—suspended between life and death, surrounded by the swirling grey mist and the biting cold.

Then, gravity took its hold.

We plummeted.

The world inverted into an absolute, screaming nightmare of motion and sound.

The air was sucked straight from my lungs as we dropped into a vertical, free-falling plunge toward the bottomless chasm below. The wind howled like a pack of starving beasts, tearing through my hair, ripping at our clothes, turning the grey fog into a blinding, streaking blur of white and grey.

We were falling at terminal velocity—dropping hundreds of feet through the mountain pass toward the dark, rocky abyss where no fae could survive the impact.

Caspian didn’t fight the fall.

FIFTY-FOUR

The sound of dragon wings was the last thing I heard before the world shattered into a blinding, silver impact.

It wasn’t like hitting water. The surface of the Mani Vatn did not yield soft and fluid; it struck like a sheet of ice-cold iron, the violent deceleration tearing the air straight from our lungs as we broke the surface. The deafening roar of Umbrax’s wings beating above the chasm was instantly snuffed out, replaced by an absolute, heavy silence that pressed against my eardrums with crushing force.

Then came the liquid.

It flooded over our heads in a luminescent tidal wave—cold, dense, and shimmering like molten mercury.