Page 41 of Flight of Fate

No. “Leave her alone,”I shout at the god.“She’s innocent in all of this. She was never meant to be part of your plan.”

“She’s your blood, so she shares your fate. Become immortal, Ayna. Accept who you are and what you need to do, and I’ll make her immortal, too. Her life is now bound to yours just as your mate’s. You die, they die. They fail to protect you, they die as a consequence of their own failure.”

I want to punch him, to throw my power at him, the very one his blood gifted me, but this bird form won’t allow for it.

“Accept your destiny, Ayna, before Ephegos returns to fulfill the bargain he made with me.”

“What bargain?” It’s the first time Myron addresses the god, voice low, calm, deadly. I can sense him nearby, outside the ball of darkness I’m trapped in. The pressure on my chest keeps building, but I don’t whimper, don’t complain for fear Kaira or Myron will act rashly and earn the wrath of the deity who could choose to end us all.

Shaelak’s chuckle runs through me like a gushing river of darkness.“He asked me to kill you if he promised to protect Ayna’s life. I offered him a different bargain in exchange.”

I dread what that bargain is, why he’d offer it to begin with, but his voice sounds in my head.“I told him that I won’t kill for him, but if he managed to kill you, Myron of Winghaven, I’ll give him something better.”

I hold my breath as I wait for him to continue, star-bright eyes cutting from Myron to me.

“I’ll make Ayna his mate.”Which would make him King of Crows; he doesn’t need to add that.

“No!” Myron’s roar of defiance shakes the temple walls, and I have the vague sense of him leaping at the god.

I need to do something, need to break free from the cocoon of darkness Shaelak has trapped me in—for my own protection or for his entertainment, I can’t tell. Silver power flashes, cracking through the walls locking me in, and that pressure… That pressure on my chest makes my heart slow even as it wants to race for its life—for Myron’s life.

From behind me, Kaira shouts a warning at Myron. A crack tears the air, darkness splintering around me, and I catch sight of Myron sprawled on the floor, blood leaking from his temple where it hit the edge of the altar.

I need to get to him, but remaining tendrils of darkness hold me in place. I’m too weak in this form, too fucking helpless, not even my deadly claws making a difference as I slash at the bindings Shaelak bestowed upon me.

Inky black pours from the god as he bends over Myron’s form, probing with spindly fingers for where he’s easiest to break. Lightning cracks through the deity as he readies to unleash it on my mate.

No!

“No!” My voice breaks free from my throat like a shackled beast, tearing through the temple in a hoarse scream. The pressure on my chest lightens, and the bindings loosen around my body, no longer fitting my growing limbs, my long legs, my arms. I don’t hold a weapon in my hand, and my naked skin has none stored, so I’ll have to be the weapon. With the ire of the blood Shaelak has spilled from my mate, I reach deep down into the depths of myself, pulling up what power I can—and find a pool so vast I can’t see the bottom of it.

Without a second thought, I hurl it all at him, watching the explosion of silver light as it tears down the walls of the temple, ceiling crumbling into dust over our heads as I pulverize it with half a thought.

Only when the light fades and the dust settles, leaving a view of the fairy city beyond, and I’m sure Shaelak is well and truly gone, do I dare take a breath.

Twenty-Five

Myron

Bright light takesmy sight as I struggle to rise to my feet where Shaelak knocked me on my ass. My skull is near bursting from the blood-seeping bump on the side of my head, and my legs threaten to buckle as I pull myself up against the altar with my free hand, summoning both my silver power and that godsforsaken darkness to my other hand, ready to wield them at the god who created me only to destroy me.

“Myron.” Her thin voice weaves through the chill air settling over me as I stare at the spot where Shaelak stood a moment ago, but there is no deity. Not even a wall where that relief of him once graced the stone.

I whirl toward the voice, stabilizing myself against the altar that seems to be the only piece of this temple still intact.

It’s not Kaira’s slumped form at the foot of the altar where she must have fallen when Ayna’s power blasted everything to rubble, slow breaths indicating she’s unconscious but all right; my gaze snags on the snow-pale skin peeking from between rocks and dust where Ayna is kneeling in her human form—herhumanform. My vision blurs, tears burning in my eyes at the sight of my mate no longer trapped in her bird body.

“Ayna—”

“Myron,” she repeats, her voice brittle from disuse, and unsure, like she can’t believe she’s actually speaking my name aloud, like she wonders if I’ll hear her across the short distance separating us. But I hear her. Even through the roaring pain in my head, I hear her. And I see her. Skin aglow like the light of a thousand stars has been trapped there.

Staggering across the room, I fall to my knees at her side, not feeling the rocks digging into my kneecaps as I behold the glimmering stars in her eyes.

“How—” I shake my head. It doesn’t matter how she turned back into her human form as long as she did.

Ayna’s ash blonde waves glowing near-silver spill over her shoulders down to her waist, covering her breasts. Swaying, she sits back on her heels like her strength is leaving her, and I reach for her on instinct, catching her before she tilts to the side and nearly topples over, instead gathering her in my arms. With one hand, I fumble my cloak from my shoulders and wrap it around her, a weak protection against the icy cold slowly eating away the warm air once trapped within the now-crumbled temple walls.

Ayna stares up at me like she wants to say something but can’t find her voice—is no longer used to having a voice, and with Kaira down, her mind link has dropped as well.

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