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“Five seconds.”

Skye couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbled up. That was Ivain’s voice. That was Ivain standing above the gunport. That was Ivain’s crest—the Fairmont fox—flying at the mast of the massive airship.

A rusted sunburst swirled across the bow, sweeping along the sides in whorls of burnished red, and great wings of tattered canvas propelled it forward on a howling river of wind and rain. Aline of air mages stood along the main deck, their bodies consumed by light as they raised their hands to the sky, summoning the squall.

“Lyric—take command of the deck,” Ivain said, curt. “I’m going groundside.”

With renewed vigor, Skye plunged into the rank of shades that pressed through the gap in the barricade as fully armored men and women dropped from the sky. Each one wore leather and steel, and they carried magical hammers and staves, each one glowing with magic.

Bursts of fire and ice and electricity hailed from the sky as the contingent of shadow mages split the air, striking the ground with explosive thuds that cracked the pavement. Shades flew back, knocked off their feet in waves, and the shadow mages cut their way forward. Each man and woman looked hale and rested, and Skye could scent the tang of aether over the stench of rot. The enemy flank was already starting to fall as the airship continued its assault.

And through the clash of steel and the sting of smoke, Skye kept his eyes trained on that familiar figure in black armor that was already cutting his way forward with lethal precision.

The other shadow mages flanked him, but it was Ivain that led the charge. The man was a storm, a raging tempest of fury and death. He carried a massive hammer, and among the lines of blue and red that pulsed beneath the polished granite, electricity crackled. A touch followed by a brief flare of shadow magic was all it took to send the shades sprawling. Wave after wave, until the road was laden with pieces of bone and bits of gore, stained black with rotted blood.

The roar of battle began to wane as Ivain’s mages whittled down the enemy force, and the airship continued to circle overhead. And when Skye swung his staff for the last time, crushing it into a body so far gone he could no longer tell if it had been a man or a woman, fey or something else entirely—he simply stood there for a moment, almost bewildered to be standing still again as he watched a troop of mages disappear into the trees, no doubt looking for stragglers.

A bright flare streaked the sky to the south, followed by a rippling cheer that rose above the screams of the people still trapped on the bridge.

Skye could only stare as the flash began to fade, like a dying star.

He felt numb—numb to the pain of his wounds that had yet to heal, numb to the burn that had settled in his lungs, numb to everything except the overwhelming fatigue that rushed in to fill every empty space.

Because the fighting… the fighting had stopped. The shades were gone, and the healers were rushing onto the field, looking for wounded.

Somehow, by some miracle… they had won.

Chapter 7

-An excerpt from On Time: Unraveling the Mystery

The time mage is an inherent contradiction. They exist both within and outside the natural order; they are both the weavers and the thread. Objectively weaker than any other class of mage with seemingly no offensive capabilities—a single time mage can shape a nation.

Taly leaned farther back in her chair, watching the slow creep of dawn edge across the floor. Rows upon rows of books lined the walls of the small tower library, and every so often, a gust of wind would rattle the strips of leaded windows set into the walls high above. In the next room, the terrace door stood open, letting in the scent of rain.

It rained every morning before dawn for approximately seven minutes—a typical summer storm that rolled in without warning and disappeared just as suddenly. Taly knew this because after spending two weeks in a place doomed to replay the same day over and over again, she’d cataloged every sunrise and sunset, every drop of rain. She’d even timed the explosions that would start at the end of every day, using what she knew of the island to match them to the individual gates.

An ambitious undertaking, but there hadn’t been much else to do. Taly hadn’t seen or spoken to the Queen since that day in the Water Maze, and the fairies kept their distance. She might’ve thought she’d been forgotten entirely if it weren’t for theassignmentsLeto delivered every morning with breakfast—books and papers that Taly was to have read and analyzed before her first lesson.

Not that anyone had told her just when that was going to be. That would’ve required talking to her, maybe answering a question or two. And really, the not knowing was the point, she had decided. It wouldn’t be proper psychological warfare if the prisoner knew when their purgatory would end.

Biting back a yawn, Taly swung her bare feet off the surface of the heavy oaken desk. Her nightgown twisted between her legs, and she tugged at the fabric as she gracelessly lurched out of her seat and began to pace. The white marble tile was comfortably warm beneath her feet—heated by magic, no doubt—and as she finished the familiar circuit only to begin again, she eyed the bed peeking through the arched doorwaylongingly, sighing at the mess of blankets piled on the floor.

She’d had another nightmare. Just one of many since she’d come to the palace. Sometimes she woke up sobbing, sometimes screaming, usually both. Every night, she watched Skye die in some new horrible way, and every night, there was nothing she could do to save him.

The dreams were so real, so full of blood and rot and death.

Last night, she’d barely made it to the washroom before she began to retch. There had been no going back to sleep after that.

Taly drew in a long breath, then released it as she circled back around to her desk, picking a random book from the stack sitting on the corner. Her latest assignment, delivered by Leto the previous day.

“Aether Mechanics,” Taly read aloud, running a finger across the silvered letters stamped into the spine. Snorting, she tossed it aside. She’d read all three volumes before she turned ten.

Selecting another book, she flipped through the pages, and then tossed it back onto the pile. She picked another, scowling when she saw the title.

Every book she’d been given so far was part of the first seal curriculum, and that made sense, she supposed. The study of magic required a basic understanding of aether, and the first seal examination was little more than a demonstration of that knowledge. Every magical guild was structured this way, and they all used the same standardized testing format to initiate new mages.

Still, Taly couldn’t help her frustration when Leto kept delivering books likeIntroduction toAetheralong with silly little block games that were obviously meant for children. She’d grown up with shadow mages for Shards’ sake, and taken the same courses as Skye, who was already a solid decade ahead of his peers. She knew more about aether than most Highborn mages would learn in a lifetime and had told Leto as much, though it never seemed to do any good. Leto arrived with the same books and papers and stupid games every morning, and absolutely no word from the Queen.