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Cyn shouted something from behind them, but I couldn’t hear him over the fighting.

I glanced behind me at the edge, only a couple of feet away.

“Nowhere left to go,” the woman said with a grin.

“I’m not going with you.”

I looked past them and met Cyn’s eyes.

The panic in his expression rattled me. I’d never seen him look shaken by anything.

Despite his natural scowl and midnight eyes, his face conveyed so much that, after all the time I’d spent with him, I didn’t have trouble recognizing his emotions.

“I don’t think you have a choice,” the woman said, drawing my attention back to her. “Let’s go.”

The man lunged at me, but I avoided him, only for the woman to seize my arm.

I twisted hard, wrenching myself free, and stepped backward.

My foot came down on the edge of the roof, half of it hanging over empty air.

The woman snarled. “Don’t be stupid!”

But it was too late.

Before I could right myself, I slipped, going right over the ledge with a scream.

“Raelynn!”

Cyn’s roar followed me as my vision filled with a darkening sky and hundreds of colorful stars, only to be replaced by the sight of Cyn diving over the edge of the roof, reaching for me.

It all happened in slow motion.

A burst of red light exploded around him, providing a sudden thrust that propelled him forward just enough to grab me and pull me tightly against him. He cradled my head to his chest and tightened his other arm around my waist as we spun out of control during our fall.

It felt like forever, not five stories.

But the ground never came.

A sudden rush of wind moving in the opposite direction made me open my eyes. We were moving away from the ground.

I looked up at Cyn and gasped.

A pair of massive, black, leathery wings stretched what I imagined to be twenty feet from his back, their surfaces catching the warm glow of the setting sun and revealing a delicate network of veins. Several larger veins glowed with the same red magic that burst from him when he jumped.

Sharp black talons arched from the top of his wings, attached to a bone structure that flexed with each powerful flap, contracting and expanding as we ascended further from the ground.

He pushed my face against his chest again, and I shut my eyes, breathing in the comforting scent of jasmine and cedarwood.

I wasn’t sure how he had wings after Kalthea took them as a sacrifice for coming to Earth when I summoned them, but I wouldn’t complain if they could save our lives.

When we landed on the rooftop, Zeke rushed toward us, skirting around several dead bodies. “Rae!”

Cyn set me on my feet and looked over his shoulder at his wings. He flexed and stretched them, casting an imposing shadow over us.

“I thought you didn’t have wings anymore,” I whispered.

His chest rumbled with an unsettled growl. “I thought so too.”