I look at him. At his brilliant eyes. At the last of the raindrops shimmering off his skin. His breath slides out and mixes with mine as he tips his head toward the ships, then drops his gaze to my lips.
Abruptly his mouth is against them, pressing in, soft and insistent—as if he can draw out every bit of broken in me and repair the pieces with his own calm, his own heart that is beating and blurting out a confession:
That I am his weakness.
I have always been his weakness.
An image flashes of my five-year-old self being dragged through the snow from my burning home. My screams muffled by his unfeeling boy-size hands so his father wouldn’t hear. Those same hands that had minutes before set fire to my house.
Oh hulls. I stare up at him. I have always been his weakness.
He leans back and brushes a hand down my neck and my shoulder. I swallow a sob. I don’t want to be his weakness, I almost tell him. I want to be his strength. But he traces a quick finger over my jaw and raises his eyes to mine. “I think this is the part where you let go, Nym.”
Then he steps away. And before I know it, he’s pulled back from my touch.
The shield releases just as he slashes the knife through the monster’s gut.
Draewulf falls two paces backward. Swipes at the air, at Eogan, at the empty space behind him, but even the ghostly fog drifts aren’t able to hold him as he stumbles toward the cliff’s edge.
I turn and hurl the rainbow-mist shield toward the sky.
Crack! The sound is ear shattering as the atmosphere fractures like broken glass and explodes into a thousand pieces of night. Dissolving the inky wisps in a cyclone of air that rushes over Faelen. Pushing the airships back, shoving, throwing, heaving them past the borders of our island and over the Sea of Elisedd in one enormous wave.
The entire fortress rocks from it.
Just like the others, the airships dip and bob, looking like a horde of fireflies as they disappear into the night. Along with the remnants of Draewulf’s black haze that fades, as do all traces of the storm.
I glance around for Eogan, but I don’t see him.
I’m just about to call for him when the next moment I’m scared the stars are falling off their fiery hinges, knowing it was me who broke them.
But it’s not the stars. It’s just a few of the broken airships here in the pass, burning up before hitting the ground. And when they clear, I’m certain someone’s taking a paintbrush to the world’s ceiling, swathing it in pure beauty before splattering it with tiny golden dots. They’ve even strung up the giant silver moon low enough to touch.
I reach out and imagine touching it just as my name is spoken. It’s followed by shouts and tumbling bodies coming from the direction of the crumbled fortress gate. Some of Bron’s men have found their way through.
I hear Eogan’s voice demanding to speak with their generals in a tone that reminds me these are his people. His army that he used to command. And I’m simultaneously sighing with relief he’s all right and swerving round to see him standing on the wall, being approached by official-looking men whose clothes are a tad too clean to have done any fighting themselves. Especially next to Eogan, who looks like he’s been in a bloodbath.
My stomach cringes at the amount of bruising and gashes he has on his arms and face and back. He looks exhausted, sallow.
I step toward him.
My name is called again.
I shake my head at whoever it is, only to jerk forward and stagger, and abruptly my teeth are chattering and every one of my own cuts and scratches feels too warm, and my leg wound is scalding as if I’m going into shock.
I reach out and grab the wall. Then the courtyard is spinning, and suddenly there’s a pair of hands on my arms pulling at me. I think they want me to come with them.
“I need to talk to Eogan. I need to see him.”
But they don’t understand. The hands just move to my waist and start to lift me.
I bat them away. “Draewulf . . .”
“Went over the cliff,” the voice attached to the hands assures me, and then he’s hoisting me over a shoulder covered in blood and Faelen colors. Rolf’s face comes into focus for a second. “It’s all right. Eogan asked me to look after you.”
“I don’t want to go.” I want to see Eogan. “Put me down.” But Rolf must not be hearing right because no matter how loud I yell, he just keeps telling me it’ll be all right and complimenting me that I have done my job well.
That I have saved Faelen.
CHAPTER 37
We are flying. Skimming somewhere between sea and sky. I hold out my hand and watch the buttery sunlight trickle through my fingers with the wind. Warming my skin as it spills across my arms and face through the airship window. Like the foamy ocean spray wafting from below.
The ship rises and dips on the air currents just as Eogan steps in front of me, blocking my view of the distant coastline as he runs a hand through his hair.
“What do you think?”
“Of?”