Page 75 of The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King

“You want to find out?”

Time slowed, stilled. My heartbeat was fast. I should have moved away. I should have pushed him back. I didn’t.

The tip of his nose brushed mine. For a moment, the overwhelming—traitorous—urge to close that small distance between us seized me. A primal, nonsensical desire, low in my stomach. Desperate.

His gaze flicked down to my mouth. Back to my eyes.

“Do you remember,” he whispered, “that time you threw me out of the window?”

My brow furrowed. “Wh—”

He gave me a firm, forceful push, and then I was falling.

23

ORAYA

Iwas going to die.

I was going to die I was going to die I was going to die.

That one reality, a certainty, cycled through my mind with every heartbeat as the world rushed around me, nothing but smears of color and darkness and nothingness. My limbs flailed vainly.

One second. Two. Free fall. Might as well have been a lifetime.

Raihn’s voice rose over the rushing air. “You can do this, Oraya!”

He sounded so certain. I wanted to laugh at him.

He shouted, “Look at thesky!”

I forced my eyes open. Forced them up—to the starry velvet above. It was jarringly still. So close I felt like I could reach out and touch it.

I realized that the air, even while plummeting, did have a rhythm to it, like a pulse I could align with my own. I stretched out my limbs, drew in a breath—let the violent rush of the sky fill my lungs, even though the force of it burned my chest.

I let myself become a part of it.

And then, time seemed to stretch and slow. The direction of the air shifted. My stomach dropped, leveled out.

Behind me, Raihn let out a wordless whoop—a sound I barely heard over the rush of wind in my ears and my own thrumming heartbeat, a heartbeat that grew faster and stronger as I tilted my face toward the stars.

And then looked down.

The world was no longer rushing closer. Instead, it all spread out beneath me, ruins and sand nothing but abstract shapes in the moonlight.

“Mother,” I whispered. My voice was shaking.

Maybe I was already dead, and I was hallucinating. I didn’t want to move, in case it all shattered.

Raihn swooped down beside me, and I chanced a glance at him. He was grinning with pure, childlike joy. That smile—it made my stomach clench.

“Fucking amazing, right?” he said.

And it was his reaction that made it actually sink in.

I couldn’t do anything but grin and nod. Yes. Yes, it was fucking amazing.

I was fucking flying.

---