White against the snow and ice, she still fought. Blood leaking down her sides. Red blood.

But she didn’t retreat into the water. Held her ground.

It was foolish—unnecessary. Ambushing them had been far more effective.

Yet Lysandra fought, tail snapping spines and giant maw ripping off heads, right where the river curved past the city. He knew something was wrong then. Beyond the blood on her.

Knew Lysandra had learned something that they had not. And in holding her ground, tried to signal them on the walls.

His head spinning, arm and ribs throbbing, Aedion scanned the battlefield. A group of soldiers charged at her. A whack of her tail had the spears snapped, their bearers along with them.

But another group of soldiers tried to charge past her, on the riverside.

Aedion saw what they bore, what they tried to carry, and swore. Lysandra smashed apart one longboat with her tail, but couldn’t reach the second cluster of soldiers—bearing another.

They reached the icy waters, boat splashing, and Lysandra lunged. Right as she was swarmed by another group of soldiers, so many spears and lances that she had no choice but to face them. Allowing the boat, and the soldiers carrying it, to slip past.

Aedion noted where those soldiers were headed, and began shouting his orders. His head swam with each command.

In Lysandra sneaking to the river through the tunnels, she’d had the element of surprise. But it had also revealed to Morath that another path existed into the city. One right below their feet.

And if they got through the grate, if they could get inside the walls …

Fighting against the fuzziness growing in his head, Aedion began signaling. First to the shifter holding the line, trying so valiantly to keep those forces at bay. Then to the Thirteen, perilously high in the skies, to get back to the walls—to stop Morath’s creeping before it was too late.

 

High up, the cries of the wind bleeding into those of the dying and injured, Manon saw the general’s signal, the careful pattern of light that he’d shown her the night before.

A command to hurry to the walls—immediately. Just her and the Thirteen.

The Crochans held the tide of the Ironteeth at bay, but to fall back, to leave—

Prince Aedion signaled again. Now. Now. Now.

Something was wrong. Very wrong.

River, he signaled. Enemy.

Manon cast her gaze to the earth far below. And saw what Morath was covertly trying to do.

“To the walls!” she called to the Thirteen, still a hammer behind her, and made to steer Abraxos toward the city, tugging on the reins to have him fly high above the fray.

Asterin’s warning cry reached her a heartbeat too late.

Shooting from below, a predator ambushing prey, the massive bull aimed right for Abraxos.

Manon knew the rider as the bull slammed into Abraxos, claws and teeth digging deep.

Iskra Yellowlegs was already smiling.

The world tilted and spun, but Abraxos, roaring in pain, kept in the air, kept flapping.

Even as Iskra’s bull pulled back his head—only to close his jaws around Abraxos’s throat.

CHAPTER 89

Iskra’s bull gripped him by the neck, but Abraxos kept them in the air.

At the sight of those powerful jaws around Abraxos’s throat, the fear and pain in his eyes—

Manon couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think around the terror rushing through her, so blinding and sickening that for a few heartbeats, she was frozen. Wholly frozen.

Abraxos, Abraxos—

Hers. He was hers, and she was his, and the Darkness had chosen them to be together.

She had no sense of time, no sense of how long had passed between that bite and when she again moved. It could have been a second, it could have been a minute.

But then she was drawing an arrow from her nearly depleted quiver. The wind threatened to rip it from her fingers, but she nocked it to her bow, the world spinning-spinning-spinning, the wind roaring, and aimed.

Iskra’s bull bucked as her arrow landed—just a hairsbreadth from his eye.

But he did not let go.

He didn’t have the deep grip to rip out Abraxos’s throat, but if he crunched down long enough, if he cut off her mount’s air supply—

Manon unleashed another arrow. The wind shifted it enough that she struck the beast’s jaw, barely embedding in the thick hide.

Iskra was laughing. Laughing as Abraxos fought and could not get free—

Manon looked for any of the Thirteen, for anyone to save them. Save him.

He who mattered more than any other, whom she would trade places with if the Three-Faced Goddess allowed it, to have her own throat gripped in those terrible jaws—

But the Thirteen had been scattered, Iskra’s coven plowing their ranks apart. Asterin and Iskra’s Second were claw-to-claw as their wyverns locked talons and plunged toward the battlefield.

Manon gauged the distance to Iskra’s bull, to the jaws around the neck. Weighed the strength of the straps on the reins. If she could swing down, if she was lucky, she might be able to slash at the bull’s throat, just enough to pry him off—

But Abraxos’s wings faltered. His tail, trying so valiantly to strike the bull, began to slow.

No.

No.

Not like this. Anything but this.

Manon slung her bow over her back, half-frozen fingers fumbling with the straps and buckles of the saddle.

She couldn’t bear it. Wouldn’t bear it, this death, his pain and fear before it.

She might have been sobbing. Might have been screaming as his wingbeats faltered again.

She’d leap across the gods-damned wind, rip that bitch from the saddle, and slit her mount’s throat—

Abraxos began to fall.

Not fall. But dive—trying to get lower. To reach the ground, hauling that bull with him.

So Manon might survive.

“PLEASE.” Her scream to Iskra carried across the battlefield, across the world. “PLEASE.”

She would beg, she would crawl, if it bought him the chance to live.

Her warrior-hearted mount. Who had saved her far more than she had ever saved him.

Who had saved her in the ways that counted most.

“PLEASE.” She screamed it—screamed it with every scrap of her shredded soul.

Iskra only laughed. And the bull did not let go, even as Abraxos tried and tried to get them closer to the ground.

Her tears ripped away in the wind, and Manon freed the last of the buckles on her saddle. The gap between the wyverns was impossible, but she had been lucky before.

She didn’t care about any of it. The Wastes, the Crochans and Ironteeth, her crown. She didn’t care about any of it, if Abraxos was not there with her.

Abraxos’s wings strained, fighting with that mighty, loving heart to reach lower air.

Manon sized up the distance to the bull’s flank, ripping off her gloves to free her iron nails. As strong as any grappling hook.

Manon rose in the saddle, sliding a leg under her, body tensing to make the jump ahead. And she said to Abraxos, touching his spine, “I love you.”

It was the only thing that mattered in the end. The only thing that mattered now.

Abraxos thrashed. As if he’d try to stop her.

Manon willed strength to her legs, to her arms, and sucked in a breath, perhaps her last—

Shooting from the heavens, faster than a star racing across the sky, a roaring form careened into Iskra’s bull.