I feel every beat of my heart marking time as I’m airborne.
Reach it. Reach it. REACH IT!
My right hand makes contact first, and I grip hard, slamming my left into the available space and holding tight as my body swings so I don’t fly forward and trigger the trap.
“You’ve got this!” Ridoc shouts, holding out his arms.
“I will kick you in the face if you try to catch me!” I warn.
He grins and backs up a few steps as I take breath after breath, pushing back the blackening edges of my vision with sheer will, refusing to let the dizziness win.
I will not fucking die today.
Rocking my body back, I start to swing just like I’m on a Gauntlet obstacle, whipping my feet forward and back. When I have enough momentum, I mutter another prayer and let go, flying toward that rope line.
I hit the other side, and pain explodes in my knees as I fall forward, catching myself with my palms. You made it, you made it, you made it, I chant, forcing the pain into a neat little box and shoving a lid over it and stumbling to my feet. A quick sweep of hands tells me I haven’t dislocated my kneecaps, though the left argues that it came damn close to abandoning ship.
“See?” I force a smile to my face and turn. “You can do it.”
Maren pats Luella on the shoulder, and whatever she says makes the smaller flier nod as I back up, moving toward the center of the ledge and giving her space to land.
She takes the obstacle just like I did, her feet kicking for distance before she reaches the hilt and holds tight.
“There you go!” I shout. “Now swing until you feel you have the force to carry you.”
“I can’t!” she cries out. “My hands are slipping!”
Shit.
“You can,” Dain encourages. “But you’d better move now.”
“Move, Luella!” Maren yells.
Luella starts the same rocking pattern Ridoc and I used, swinging her feet to gain momentum, then lets go.
I hold my breath as she hurtles toward the line of safety.
Her feet land just before the rope and her eyes lock on mine, widening with terror as she throws herself forward, like the trap won’t notice her misstep if she’s quick enough.
Oh, fuck. Maybe Dain’s wrong. Maybe the trap is twelve inches before the rope line. Maybe she’s in the clear. Maybe we all are.
But clearly I have prayed to the wrong god.
Everything somehow slows and yet happens at once.
Luella dives forward, hurling her body where she was looking—at me instead of Cibbelair—and I barely have time to open my arms before she impacts, driving me backward at an angle into Visia…toward the edge of the cliff.
“Vi!” Ridoc shouts.
I try to pivot, to heave as much of our weight toward the safety of the wall as I can, but there’s not enough time or strength, and we flounder, tangled in one another.
Feet trip other feet, and I start to fall. We all do.
A hand grasps the waistband of the back of my leathers and pulls, changing the direction of my fall. Ridoc. My feet lose traction as my momentum shifts, and I hit my knees near the edge of the cliff just in time to see Visia and Luella start to slide over.
And I can no longer stop time.
“No!” I scramble forward, rock scraping over my torso, and throw out my arms, reaching for whoever is closest as a sound like gushing wind rushes over my head.
Visia grabs hold of my left hand and Luella grips my right wrist, the weight of both women nearly taking me to join them. My right shoulder pops from the socket, and agony rips from my throat with a scream.
Visia fumbles for a handhold along the cliff wall, but Luella has both hands locked on my wrist, her feet kicking for purchase.
“Pull me up!” Luella shrieks, and I’m in too much pain to verbalize that I can’t.
“Ridoc!” I shout as the edges of my vision blur, then blacken. “Help me!”
Feet pound, but Luella’s grip slips from my wrist to my hand, and I chance a look back over my right shoulder, hoping for rescue as Visia’s weight disappears, plucked from the side of the cliff by a giant beak.
Cibbe.
Visia was in his way. The gryphon dumps the rider on the ledge and then cranes his enormous neck toward Luella as bootsteps race down the ascent.
But all I see is Ridoc, staggering backward toward the wall, two arrows piercing the side of his abdomen.
“I’m all right.” He nods quickly, glancing down at the arrows, blood trickling from his mouth.
No. No. NO.
I scream up the cliff for the only person who can save him now.
“BRENNAN!”
When a gryphon bonds, it does so for life.
Guard your life as you would your gryphon’s, for they are forever intertwined.
—CHAPTER ONE, THE CANON OF THE FLIER
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Booted feet scurry toward me from both directions, and Sloane grabs hold of Ridoc as Dain hits his knees beside me, then lunges forward, reaching for Luella at the same moment Cibbe does.
I rip my gaze from Ridoc’s and focus on Luella’s hazel eyes as she slips down my limp fingers.
“Hold on!” I demand. They just need another second.
But she slips farther, and Cibbe’s beak closes on nothing as she loses her grip and falls, the cloud swallowing her whole.
“Luella!” a woman shouts from the left.
Cibbelair screams, and the shrill sound vibrates through my chest as I stare and stare and stare at the space where Luella was, as if she’ll somehow emerge from the mist.
As if there’s any chance she’s alive.
“Damn it!” Dain quickly pushes back onto his knees. “Vi—”
“I can’t move.” My voice drops to a whimper. “My shoulder’s out.” Any second, the adrenaline will wear off and the true pain of the injury will hit.
“All right.” His tone immediately softens. “I’ve got you.” His hands wrap around my rib cage, and he carefully lifts me to my feet, my right arm hanging uselessly at my side.
Cibbe’s screams become a keening wail.
“Something feels wrong,” Tairn says.
“It’s all fucking wrong.”
“You dropped her!” Cat charges toward us from the other side of Cibbe, fury rightfully etched in every line of her scowl.
“I never had her.” My chest crumples under the unbearable weight of the guilt because she’s partially right. I may not have dropped her, but I didn’t save her, either.
“Cat, no.” Maren hurries around us, putting her hands out as if to block her best friend. “I saw it happen. It’s not Violet’s fault. Luella almost killed both of the riders because she couldn’t jump the trap.”
“You fucking dropped her!” Cat surges against Maren. “Cibbe saved your precious rider, and you dropped our flier! I will kill you for this!”
“Knock it off!” Maren shouts. “You kill her, you kill Riorson. Everyone knows it.”
Fuck, it always comes down to that, doesn’t it?
“I can—” Cat starts.
“Take one step toward Violet, and I’ll throw you off this fucking cliff myself,” Dain warns, his voice low and menacing. “Unlike Riorson, I don’t give a shit who your uncle is.”
“I’ll do it just for fun,” Sloane adds.
“Ridoc,” I manage to say around the pain that throbs from my shoulder then devours the rest of me.
“Alive,” he answers weakly.
“Cat, let it go. Cibbe doesn’t have long,” Maren says, her hand trembling as she reaches for the gryphon.
Cat breathes deeply, then nods, moving to the gryphon’s side.
“Gryphons die with their fliers,” Maren explains, her tone softening as she strokes the line where feathers turn to fur.
Like Tairn and me.
Cibbe lets loose a stuttered, three-beat cry, and the entire cliff, both above us and below, echoes it, as though the gryphons grieve the loss of the flier as one.
The beat of wings approaches as Dain leads me back from the edge, and I watch the mist, waiting for a flash of orange, for Marbh and Brennan to arrive.
“Put my shoulder back in.” My voice croaks as I glance at Dain.
“Shit. Are you serious?” He lifts his brows.
“Do it. Just like when I was fourteen.”
“And seventeen,” he mutters.