“All right.” I held on to him one-handed, hoping it would be enough. I no longer had the ability to grip anything with the other, and likely never would again.
He stretched out both arms in front of him and counted to three. His muscles coiled before he sprang, and I moved intuitively with him so that we took the leap in perfect tandem. He caught the bar of the Moth, and it glided away from the tower.
For one perfect moment I felt nothing except the wind in my face and a heart-pounding surge of energy as we swooped through the sky. Was this how Ina felt when she flew? The cool night air whipped loose strands of my hair and slipped into the gaps in my clothing, but I barely noticed, too caught up in watching Hal manipulate the wind in my Sight. It was a little like dye being gently stirred into water, the way he pulled the thermals toward us to give us altitude. We glided left and then banked right as he shifted his weight, floating over the city in a serpentine pattern that allowed us to lift through the turns. After a few weeks of near blindness thanks to the peaceroot, having my Sight back made me feel alive again.
When we lost enough altitude to almost sink into the fog over the city, Hal called a more powerful gust to lift us closer to the dome of stars overhead. I never wanted to stop flying. No one could reach me here, and even without the bed of stardust, I felt as safe as I ever could have wished in my dreams.
Like all good things, it came to an end too soon, when the opposite side of the canyon came into view.
“We’re going to hit the ground hard,” Hal shouted. “Try to run with the momentum if you can.”
We barely cleared the far side of the canyon before our feet hit the ground. We ran, stumbling over the rocks and grass, coming to a crashing halt when the Moth slammed into the ground in front of us and pitched us both into the dirt. I barely muffled a cry as I caught some of my weight on my wounded arm.
Hal unhooked me from the Moth and helped me slip out of the harness. I lay on my back for a moment, trying to ignore the buzzing of damaged nerves in my injured arm. My heart still raced from the flight, and a swell of fierce gratitude made my breath catch. Never in my life had I been so thankful to feel earth and grass underneath me. I was free. Thank the Six, I was free.
Hal bundled up both our harnesses, tying them securely to the Moth’s navigation bar, then teased the contraption back into the air with conjured gusts of wind, sending it out across the canyon and over the fog to the south.
I sat up. “Why did you do that? Couldn’t we have flown farther?”
“The Moth is too difficult to travel with—my magic can only carry us so far, and if I were to exhaust myself in the air and lose consciousness . . . well.” He didn’t have to finish the sentence. “It will be more useful as a decoy to keep Nismae off our trail. She’ll notice me missing, and she has spies everywhere in this city. There isn’t anywhere safe to hide in Orzai. Might not be out here either,” he said grimly.
I sighed, brushing the fingers of my uninjured hand gently through the leaves of a dandelion. My satchel was gone, probably forever. Nismae had all my notes, precious years of Miriel’s work and mine, details about how to enchant my blood. I had no doubt she’d succeed in doing great things, or that she’d come after us as soon as she noticed our absence. Hope seemed very small and far away, but at least outside the confines of the tower, it existed.
“I need to sit down for a minute,” Hal said as soon as the Moth was out of sight.
“Help yourself,” I said, still sitting on the ground.
He collapsed beside me. “I know you’re probably angry with me, but you need to know what’s going on. Nismae read that journal of yours and figured out how to enchant your blood to give Ina some of your powers. The shielding. The magic draining. She saw you do both those things when trying to defend yourself from her, so it wasn’t hard for her to replicate. Now that she has another batch, she might be able to do more.”
My stomach clenched. Everywhere I turned and everywhere I went, my blood led only to further doom and destruction.
“I should have unhooked myself from the Moth somewhere over the city,” I said.
“Don’t say that,” Hal said firmly.
“You don’t get to tell me what to say,” I replied.
“No, I don’t. But maybe there is a safer way to use your true power. I can take care of you if it comes down to having a headache, like I get with mine—”
“No.” I interrupted him. Power always had a cost. I knew what the price of my gift was. It wasn’t so much aging or pain that frightened me, but the unexpected collateral damage that always seemed to result. A flood that killed thousands. A village destroyed by bandits just so one girl could find her manifest. What would happen next?
“There’s one other thing. Nismae plans to try to use the other demigods to help her. She wanted to start with me. She asked if she could have some of my blood, too, to see if there is a way to bestow my powers on a mortal.” He looked out over the horizon. “I said no.”
I studied his features in the moonlight—the gentle curve of his nose, the shadows beneath his cheekbones, the bold and curling eyelashes that gave his face a constant air of innocence. I couldn’t tell what he might be feeling. My heart tugged me in directions at odds with my mind. It would be so easy to scoot closer to him, to rest my head on his shoulder, to lull myself into believing he’d be there when I needed him. He’d rescued me, hadn’t he? But how could his loyalties lie with anyone other than his sister? How could he have led me to her in the first place? I didn’t know what to believe.
“Is that why you betrayed Nismae to rescue me tonight? Because she wanted to use you?” I asked.
“No. It was that thing I Heard at the top of the cliff in the Tamers’ forest.” He shuddered.
“His name was Leozoar,” I said. As terrible as the old man had been, I understood him. He deserved to have his name remembered by someone.
“He didn’t speak to me like my siblings might have, though I suppose he once was one. More like he was muttering to himself, lost in his own mind. It was mostly nonsense, but there was so much suffering and agony in the words. If Nismae finds a way to pull the magic out of us and use it, or if we let our abilities be used by others for evil, who’s to say we won’t end up just like that—some twisted thing, barely more than a wraith?” Fear shone in his eyes.
“So it’s selfishness, then? Self-preservation?” It was too much to hope that he’d come for me because he cared, but still, I did. I longed to mean something to him. I wanted to matter to someone—something I was less and less sure I ever had.
“No. Not just that. I don’t think what she and Ina are planning is right. I don’t believe in hurting innocent people like you, even if they think it’s for the greater good.” He spoke softly.
I swallowed hard against a surge of guilt. I wasn’t as innocent as he thought.
“Do you think killing the boar king is for the greater good?” I asked.
“No. But coming for you was.” He looked at me, finally, sadness in his eyes.
It took everything I had not to embrace him, to thank him for caring enough to come for me. But if there was one thing I knew, it was that I couldn’t trust anyone but myself ever again. And with only myself to rely on, there was only one thing left I could do, now that I was free.
“I have to go to Corovja,” I said. “I have to go to the Grand Temple and try to talk to the shadow god myself.”
“That’s daft,” Hal said. “You can’t. Nobody can enter the Grand Temple without permission from the king, even demigods. And even if you could get in, how could you get the gods to speak to you?”