Page 203 of Heat of the Everflame

Forty-One

Falling in loveis an interesting metaphor.

I was never Emarion’s foremost expert on love. With Henri, it felt a lot more like running. Running to him, then from him, then beside him, though on different paths.

But recently—veryrecently—I had become pretty acquainted with falling.

Most people would say to fall is to give up. To accept total helplessness to one’s predicament. For those fleeting, frightening moments in the air, both time and your heart stand still, and you’re at the mercy of gravity’s pull—and whatever awaits you on the ground.

But that’s only what happens when you’re pushed.

When you jump—when you stand on the ledge, look down, and embrace what you see with arms wide open—there’s nothing helpless about it at all. Instead of terrifying, it’s liberating. You’re not in freefall... you’re inflight.

And when I stepped off Yrselle’s balcony and began my rapid descent to the canyon floor, the beautiful, scarred man I loved was exactly who I had in my mind.

My body twisted in the air to face the ground, my snow-white waves whipping in a trail behind me.

I held my breath.

Closed my eyes.

And when three clawed talons closed around my ribs and snatched me into their grasp... I smiled.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Luther shouted from Sorae’s back. “Two more seconds and you would have been dead.”

I looked up and guiltily bit back my grin at the worry etched so deeply in his features it might now be permanent. “I knew Sorae would catch me. She’s the best gryvern there is.”

She purred proudly, but even her reptilian face looked as ashen as my companions.

“You could have warned us,” Taran grumbled, grabbing my hand to haul me upward.

I threw a leg over Sorae’s back and settled into place just behind her wings. “I couldn’t risk one of them reading your minds and seeing my plan.”

Luther’s arms locked around me with bruising force, the thump of his heartbeat vibrating into my back. He lowered his lips to the curve of my neck and lingered there, breathing in deep, as if needing the smell and taste of me to assure himself I was safe.

“I’m sorry I worried you,” I said softly, curling a hand over his. “I’m not going anywhere. Not until you’re healed.”

He tensed, and my grip on him tightened.

“Why didn’t you come with us?” he asked.

“I had to at least try convincing Yrselle to let me go without a fight, for my mother’s sake.”

A silent moment passed. I felt the guilt roll off him. “Did it work?”

I glanced over my shoulder at a dark spot in the distance. “No. Everyone—hold on tight.”

I shot an order out to Sorae. She immediately pulled up, and we disappeared into a blinding mass of clouds.

For a single, peaceful minute, total silence ruled the sky. Sorae angled her outstretched wings, allowing us to glide on the wind as both the sea and the sky disappeared from sight. Other than the breeze through our hair, I might have thought we were hovering, suspended in time and space, a serene harbor where trouble could not find us.

But find us, she did.

A piercing shriek rang out from below as Yrselle and her gryvern appeared at our flank. Sorae felt the fear stab through me and slammed her wings downward, shooting us above the cloud layer and pitching Yrselle in our turbulent wake.

The dense muscles beneath Sorae’s skin bunched and pulled. On a normal day, she could outrun any gryvern with little effort, but this was no normal day. She was overloaded with too much weight and already worn down from her urgent sprint across the sea. Just getting home without resting would be an effort—if we couldn’t shake Yrselle, we’d be ground-bound in no time.

“Use your illusions,” I yelled back at Alixe and Zalaric, who I was relieved to find back in control of his mind. They each threw out a palm, and we melted into the star-flecked night just as Yrselle and her gryvern smashed through the clouds.

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