“Shift,” she told Falkan, who monitored the panicking spiders, who balked at their leader’s screaming orders to put out the fire atop her abdomen. “If you are going to shift into something, do it now.”
The shifter turned that hideous spider’s face toward them. Sartaq sliced off another piece of his braid and slid it over the head of her third arrow. “I will hold them,” Falkan said.
Sparks showered, flame kindled on that third flaming arrow.
“A favor, Captain,” the shifter said to her.
Time. They did not have time—
“When I was seven, my older brother sired a bastard daughter off a poor woman in Rifthold. Abandoned them both. It has been twenty years since then, and from when I was old enough to go to the city, to begin my trade, I looked for her. Found the mother after some years—on her deathbed. She could barely talk long enough to say she’d kicked the girl out. She did not know where my niece was. Didn’t care. She died before she could give me a name.”
Nesryn’s hands shook as she aimed the arrow toward the spider trying to edge past her burning sister. Sartaq warned, “Hurry.”
Falkan said, “If she survived, if she is grown, she might have the shifter gift, too. But it doesn’t matter if she does or does not. What matters … She is my family. All I have left. And I have looked for her for a very long time.”
Nesryn fired the third arrow. A spider screamed as it found its mark. The others fell back.
“Find her,” Falkan said, taking a step toward the horrors churning below. “My fortune—all of it is for her. And I may have failed her in this life. But not in my death.”
Nesryn opened her mouth, not believing it, the words surging up—
But Falkan sprinted down the path. Leaped right in front of that burning line of spiders.
Sartaq grabbed her elbow, pointing toward the steep slope downward from the tiny peak. “This—”
One moment, she was standing upright. The next, Sartaq had thrown her back, his sword whining.
She stumbled, arms flailing to keep her upright as she realized what had crept up the other side of the peak. The spider now hissing at them, enormous fangs dripping venom to the stone.
It lunged for Sartaq with its front two legs.
He dodged one and swung down, striking true.
Black blood sprayed, the spider shrieking—but not before it slashed that claw deep into the prince’s thigh.
Nesryn moved, her fourth arrow flying, right into one of those eyes. The fifth and final arrow flew a moment later, shooting for the spider’s open mouth as it screamed.
It bit down on the arrow, slicing it in half.
Nesryn dropped her bow and drew her Fae blade.
The spider hissed at it.
Nesryn stepped between Sartaq and the spider. Down below, the kharankui screamed and shrieked. She did not dare to look to see what Falkan was doing. If he still fought.
The blade was a sliver of moonlight between her and the spider.
The kharankui advanced a step. Nesryn yielded one, Sartaq struggling to rise beside her.
“I will make you beg for death,” the spider seethed, advancing again.
It recoiled, preparing to spring.
Make it count; make the swing count—
The spider leaped.
And went tumbling off the cliff as a dark ruk slammed into it, roaring her fury.
Not Kadara. But Arcas.
Borte.
CHAPTER
51
A whirlwind of fury, Arcas reared up, then dove again, Borte’s battle cry ringing off the stones as she and her ruk aimed for the kharankui in the pass below. To the spider holding them off, blood—red blood—leaking from him.
Another cry split the night, one she’d learned as well as her own voice.
And there was Kadara, sailing hard for them, two other ruks in her wake.
Sartaq let out what might have been a sob as one of the other ruks broke away, diving to where Borte swept and lunged and shattered through the kharankui ranks.
A ruk of darkest brown feathers … and a young man atop it.
Yeran.
Nesryn did not recognize the other rider who sailed in behind Kadara. Blood stained Kadara’s golden feathers, but she flew steady, hovering overhead as the other ruk closed in.
“Hold still, and don’t fear the drop,” Sartaq breathed, brushing a hand over Nesryn’s cheek. In the moonlight, his face was caked in dirt and blood, his eyes full of pain, and yet—
Then there was a wall of wings, and mighty talons spread wide.
They wrapped around her waist and beneath her upper thighs, hauling her sitting upright into the air, Sartaq clutched in the other, and then the great bird shot into the night.
The wind roared, but the ruk lifted them higher. Kadara fell into rank behind—guarding their rear. Through her whipping hair, Nesryn looked back toward the fire-limned pass.
To where Borte and Yeran now soared upward, a dark form clutched in the claws of Yeran’s ruk. Utterly limp.
Borte was not done.
A light sparked atop her ruk. A flaming arrow.
Borte fired it high into the sky.
A signal, Nesryn realized as countless wings filled the air around them. And as Borte’s arrow landed atop a web, flame erupting, hundreds of lights kindled in the sky.
Ruk riders. Each bearing a flaming arrow. Each now pointing downward.
Like a rain of shooting stars, the arrows fell upon the darkness of Dagul. Landed on web and tree. And caught fire. One after another after another.
Until the night was lit up, until smoke streamed, mingling with the rising screams from the peaks and wood.
The ruks veered northward, Nesryn shaking as she clung to the talons holding her. Across the way, Sartaq met her gaze, his now-shoulder-length hair rippling in the wind.
With the flames below, it made the wounds to his face, his hands, his neck all the more gruesome. His skin was wan, his lips pale, his eyes heavy with exhaustion and relief. And yet …
Sartaq smiled, barely a curve of his mouth. The words the prince had confessed drifted on the wind between them.
She could not take her eyes from him. Could not look away.
So Nesryn smiled back.
And below and behind them, long into the night, the Dagul Fells burned.
CHAPTER
52
Chaol and Yrene galloped back to Antica at dawn.
They left a note for Hasar, claiming that Yrene had a gravely ill patient who needed to be checked on, and raced across the dunes under the rising sun.
Neither of them had slept much, but if what they’d guessed about the healers was true, they did not risk lingering.
Chaol’s back ached thanks to yesterday’s ride and last night’s … other ride. Multiple rides. And by the time the minarets and white walls of Antica appeared, he was hissing through his teeth.
Yrene frowned at him the entire painful trek through the packed streets to the palace. They hadn’t discussed sleeping arrangements, but he didn’t care if he had to walk up every single one of the stairs of the Torre. Either her bed or his. The thought of leaving her, even for a heartbeat—
Chaol winced as he climbed off Farasha, the black mare suspiciously well behaved, and accepted the cane the nearest stable hand had retrieved from Yrene’s mare.
He managed a few steps toward her, his limp deep and splintering, but Yrene held out a warning hand. “Do not think about attempting to lift me off this horse, or carry me, or anything.”
He gave her a wry look, but obeyed. “Anything?”
She turned a beautiful shade of scarlet as she slid off the mare, passing the reins to the waiting stable hand. The man sagged with relief, utterly grateful to not have the task of handling the impetuous Farasha, who was currently sizing up the poor man attempting to drag her toward the stables as if she’d have him for lunch. Hellas’s horse indeed.