Page 206 of Heat of the Everflame

Through the bond, Sorae’s pain and panic commingled with my own. The world was spinning, bodies soaring, voices shouting. Something firm hit my palm. I grabbed it, clutching with all my might, barely keeping hold as my body crashed against a wall of muscle and bone. The flash of a dark-scaled gryvern whizzed past my face, along with the sound of Yrselle’s cackles. Somewhere, someone was screaming, the sound getting further and further away.

“Diem!”

Luther’s voice sliced through the chaos. My head jerked around until I spotted him—dangling below me, along with Taran, the belt connecting them hooked on Sorae’s claw. My body swayed erratically as I clung to the thick cartilage edging her wing. She listed to one side, fighting to stay airborne under the lopsided pull of my weight.

A hand closed around my wrist.

“Yrselle hit us,” Zalaric shouted as he dragged me onto Sorae’s back. “Alixe fell off.”

My gaze snapped downward—to the flailing figure growing smaller by the second.

“Hold on,” I yelled to Luther and Taran. “Sorae—go!”

She arched her head, and we dropped like a stone through the sky. Sorae flew at impossible speed, but Alixe was already so far away, her body falling so fast. Even my magic couldn’t reach her as I tried and failed to coax the wind into slowing her descent.

“Faster, Sorae,” I pleaded.

Her frantic heartbeat drummed beneath my hands—not for her own life, or even Alixe’s, but for me. For my happiness. A fraught desire to please me at any cost.

Before these past few weeks, I might have thought that a sad thing—something superficial, manufactured by the spellthat bound her life in service. But I’d now seen the heart of a gryvern whose obedience was built on enslavement alone. Unlike Tybold, Sorae’s affection for me was as real as mine for her.

Faster we dove as Alixe grew nearer. She threw out a tendril of her magic, but it was still well short of our reach.

Yrselle circled above us in leisurely pursuit. “I tried to warn you,” she chided. “Come back with me now, or you’ll lose them all.”

I ignored her and stroked Sorae’s neck. “Almost there, girl—go,go!”

The sea’s surface grew alarmingly close. My gaze locked with Alixe’s, and in it, I saw the same sad defeat I’d seen in Luther’s eyes.

She was making peace. Accepting her fate.

“No,” I screamed at the gods. “I will not let you have them! Not any of them, do you hear me?”

I hurled my magic out. Alixe jerked sharply, and Ifeltthe wind curl beneath her like an extension of my palms.

“Got her!” Taran cried, his hand wrapped around her wrist. Her boot skimmed the water’s surface as Sorae banked hard and shot us back into the sky.

With help from Zalaric, Alixe grappled her way onto Sorae’s back. Her face was chalk white and her hands were trembling, but true to her nature, she jumped right back into battle.

“Luther and Taran are stuck,” she warned. “Their strap is tangled. We’ll have to cut them fr—watch out!”

Yrselle’s gryvern rammed into our side. I smashed forward into Sorae’s neck, my vision going woozy. Alixe grabbed me with one hand and Zalaric with the other, miraculously managing to keep us both astride.

My satchel jostled loose at the impact and spilled its contents into the air. I watched helplessly as my jar of lavender flameplummeted toward the Sacred Sea, then shattered against its ink-dark surface.

My heart stung with unexpected sadness. I forced myself to look away with a reminder that gryvern was long dead and beyond saving—unlike the one who needed me now.

“I’ll give you one last chance,” Yrselle called out. Her gryvern fell into pace beside us. “Turn back now if you want your friends to live.”

Fight, thevoiceof the godhood seethed, its timbre lower, angrier, more savage.

This time, it wasn’t a mystery what it planned. The wolf in the forest, the man at my Challenging, the godstone bolt in the Arboros clearing—I’d wiped from existence with a single silvery flash.

I could do it again now. A Queen and her gryvern, dead without a trace.

I shivered at the thought.

“Give it up, Yrselle,” I shouted back. “I’m going home.”

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