Page 77 of Above Cursed Winds

A shriek of terror escaped her just as Key said, “Go get your mate, Zia.”

Wings spreading behind her, Zia launched into the air, fighting the remaining drafts that threatened to down her. Biting chill tore at her skin while she kept her eyes trained on Jeremiah’s descent.

The Elemental was clearly unconscious, making no attempts to right himself or catch his fall. Every second that passed saw him closer to certain death. Straining her wings, she flew upward, riding the drafts with blistering speed to catch him. Closer, closer, closer, then finally, her arms locked around his waist.

The smell of warm sunshine invaded her senses, the bond pulsing between them as her wings flared out to resist his descent. Her primaries caught the wind as it calmed around them, the element that claimed him feeling almost sentient.

Downward they went, Zia’s arms linked around her fated mate. Jeremiah was a massive male, his clothes waterlogged, and it took everything within her to keep them from plummeting toward the earth in a spiraling freefall. Tendons and muscle pulled taut, her wings vibrating with tension.

Fear spread through her limbs. Jeremiah had suffered her harshest treatment and still protected her people. Then, he’d literally dissolved himself into his element to get away.

The water in the air slicked down her face, accompanying her tears. One thought eclipsed them all: she couldn’t lose him. Zia had wanted to push him away—for his own good—but she couldn’t stand to feel his heartbreak.

Jeremiah was still in danger.

Unless … had this been his fall? Had Key’s prophecy already come true?

Desperate for answers, she searched the rapidly approaching ground for the Foreseer, but the woman was already gone. She instinctively realized her friend wouldn’t answer her.

When her feet finally hit the earth, Zia breathed a sigh of relief. She lay a still unconscious Jeremiah on the rain-slicked ground. Gideon was immediately at his side.

“Jeremiah, wake up,” the monarch commanded. “Come back to us, brother.”

Gideon’s knuckles connected abrasively with Jeremiah’s sternum through his sweat and rain-soaked shirt, unforgivingly attempting to wake the other man. Rona collapsed on his other side; her fingertips trailed to his neck. Two fingers searched for the pulse, and her shoulders slumped in relief when she found it.

“He needs rest, Nero.”

“Rise and shine, buddy,” Gideon said, the Elemental still rasping his knuckles against Jeremiah’s sternum. “I need to know that you’re okay.”

The slashes of his red eyebrows drew together, a soft groan loosening from his throat. “Present.”

Zia stifled her cry of relief, her fingers threading through his shoulder-length hair on impulse. When Jeremiah opened his eyes, everyone froze.

What’d once been summer blue was now an unearthly shade of crystal. A startling turquoise lay along the outer edges, overlaid with a gemlike silver. It made his entire iris seem like a cloud. The sky itself was ensnared in his eyes.

The effect held her in its thrall until Jeremiah closed his eyes once more, and his body lost any trace of tension. He lay before them now, completely unconscious once more.

“Is it just me, or did his eyes change color?”

Nero’s voice jerked her back to the present. “You aren’t seeing things; they definitely changed. Gideon, has that happened before? Where an Elemental becomes their element and then returns to this form?”

Glancing at the other Elemental, Zia was struck for the first time by the eerie canvas of his irises. “No, I don’t know of any other Elemental this has happened to—other than myself.”

“Did you notice any change?” Zia asked. “Other than your eyes?”

She sensed the exact moment Gideon had an epiphany. “You mean other than the fact that I’m now mostly immune to death?”

Zia physically shook off the taste of everyone’s puzzlement.

“We have to get Jeremiah to safety. Out of the rain.”

Nero nodded, “Where shall we take him, Zia?”

The answer her soul offered was immediate: to her bed, where he belonged. Regardless of their current circumstance, she couldn’t see him vulnerable anywhere else. Even if she had already rejected him, and their mating bond would go no further, it didn’t mean her soul wasn’t irrevocably tied to his.

“Is he your mate, Zia?”

Gideon’s question startled her, but as she met his gaze, she slowly nodded. “The bond exists. But it can be allowed to go no further.”

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