Imril twisted his body until they were upright again and snapped his wings open, catching a gust of wind. He held the creature tightly as they were jerked violently out of freefall, angling his wings to catch the slipstream.

For a moment, he hovered on the wind, looking down upon his vast world. Soft starlight fell upon him from above, and for the first time, he realized something.

The Shadowring was gone.

Of course it was. The Dagger had crashed, tearing down the dark mist that had obscured their planet from the rest of the Universe for aeons.

But… how?

What had happened on Khira while he’d been in his deep slumber? Dark fragments of memories swirled through his mind.

His wings drooped from sheer exhaustion. Every single beat was agony, and his right wing didn’t work as well as the left, causing him to tilt to one side. Perhaps one of his wing-bones was broken.

He was injured, sick, and completely depleted of vir. The plague had spread from eyrie to eyrie, wiping out thousands of Drakhin, ravaging Imril’s body with terrible ulcers and filling his lungs with poison so that he could barely breathe.

That mad bastard, Nykithus… he had opened a chest of horrors. A pathogen that killed only Drakhin could only have its origins in one place.

Still, Imril was one of the original Twins, and he was stronger than all the others. He would survive this, but right now, he felt so damn weak. He’d been flying for such a long time, and his wings were so damn tired.

He started to fall…

He squeezed his Source, taking care not to touch her bare skin. “Wake up,” he growled. “You are not permitted to die on me.”

Nothing. The alien lay limp in his arms, her eyes closed, her expression serene.

At least she breathed.

And she still radiated vir. That meant she was still alive, just unconscious.

Just a little bit more.

Her shimmering golden aura tempted him so badly. It was like those potent substances some of the Drakhin used to ingest to achieve a state of euphoria—a drug.

It took all of his self control to stop himself from touching her again. At this rate, he was going to end up addicted.

Imril flew on, gaining speed as he crested a ridge of snow-capped mountains—the Isskar range. He caught sight of a vast lake in the distance, and remembered that it had once been home to a minor Lord called Kunlo.

He’d met the bastard once, only briefly, and found him tiresome. Afraid to speak their true minds, the lesser Drakhin all used to grovel around him.

Was Kunlo still alive? He doubted it.

But Kunlo’s eyrie was there, rising through the mists above the glassy surface of the lake. It was small compared to Imril’s great tower in the sea, and it lacked Eleia’s architectural elegance, but it would do for now.

Kunlo’s eyrie was nothing more than a squat grey tower perched on a tall stone pillar, with five narrow spires ascending from the roof, the largest of which rose from the center like a cursed sekkhoi thorn.

Ugly thing.

Imril would have much preferred to take her to his own eyrie, but that was on the other side of the world, and she was fading fast.

So Kunlo’s tower it was, and she had better respond to his care, because he wasn’t yet back to full strength, and he needed her vir.

Perhaps when he was fully recovered, he would go back and capture more of those soft-skinned brown creatures. He would keep an entire stable of them, drawing on their vir as he pleased. Unlike the other Drakhin, Imril was not a cruel master. He’d always taken care of his servants.

He’d even grown quite fond of some of them.

As long as she gave him what he needed, he would treat her well.

Now she just needed to survive.