Page 35 of Fallen Star

I’m alone, and I’m going to die. For real this time.

In the occasional moments when I break the surface, I hear Sapphire screaming my name and see flashes of Riven’s blade.

But I can never stay up for long.

Then, something tugs at me. Not the water, but arms wrapping around my waist and yanking me upward.

Air bursts across my face, and I gasp, choking as I’m pulled out of the water.

Not by a nixie.

By a dark angel.

His face is sharp and beautiful in a way that feels wrong—like it was carved from shadow—and his black wings look somehow darker in the night.

Terror floods back, just as paralyzing as my fear of drowning.

“Sapphire!” I try to scream, but my voice is too weak from all the water I inhaled.

She sees us anyway. Even from this distance, I can make out the horror on her face as the dark angel carries me higher, away from the battle still raging by the waterfall.

The world tilts as he ascends, the trees shrinking below us.

Sapphire’s screams are lost in the wind rushing around her, and Riven’s sword gleams, a blur of silver as he cuts through the nixies with brutal efficiency.

But they’re getting smaller, farther away.

“No!” I thrash against the dark angel, but his grip is iron strong. “Let me go!”

“Be still,” he commands, and I do.

Not because I want to stay with him. But because if I fall from here, it’ll be surer death than if I was still trying—and failing—to swim at the bottom of those falls.

Plus, there’s something about his voice that calms me. That helps me relax.

Now, all I can do is watch helplessly as we glide above the treetops, break through the canopy, and descend into a small clearing, where a massive black jaguar waits with eyes gleaming like golden coins in the darkness.

The dark angel lands smoothly, his wings folding behind him as his boots touch the ground. But he doesn’t release me. Instead, he carries me to the jaguar and sets me down, grabbing a length of rope from a satchel at the animal’s side.

I start to make a run for it—the burst of energy exploding inside me like a firework—but he easily yanks me back.

“Don’t struggle.” He shifts me onto the jaguar’s back and ties the rope around me with practiced efficiency, studying me with intense, midnight eyes. “It will only make this worse for you.”

“Makewhatworse for me?” I ask, desperation rising in my voice, knowing there’s nothing I can physically do to stop him. “Why did you save me? What do you want with me?”

He doesn’t answer my questions. He just adjusts the rope, tightening it, ensuring there’s no way I can fall—or escape.

Once he’s done, he jumps on in front of me, his wings retracting into his back so they don’t smack into my face.

“Hold tight,” he says, and the jaguar surges forward, faster than any horse I’ve ever ridden. Even faster than Ghost.

The forest blurs around us, and my mind races, panic clawing at my chest as I glance back over my shoulder.

No sign of Sapphire. No sign of Riven.

Only darkness and the pounding of the jaguar’s paws against the frozen earth.

I’m sorry,I think, tears freezing on my cheeks as I remember the devastation in Sapphire’s eyes as I was carried away, knowing she couldn’t reach me in time.I was too weak to protect myself. Again.

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