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“Are you two all right?” Rhyan asked. He opened his window, pulling back the curtains to peer out.

“We’re fine,” I said. “Anything out there?”

Rhyan shook his head and frowned, eyebrows narrowed, continuing to scan the night’s sky.

There was silence save for the wind as we soared. And then it happened again. The whole carriage rocked.

“Fuck!” I yelled. My wrist. The blood oath didn’t seem to affect me constantly. The pain came and went at irregular intervals.

Our seraphim shrieked, a horrid, terrifying, high-pitched sound.

Rhyan was by my side in an instant, pulling back the curtain of my window.

A burst of magic rumbled beneath us, black and glittering, moving quickly against the wind until it took shape, sprouting a beak, and wide, black, glittering wings.

A black seraphim was flying right at us.

Our seraphim, already upset from the storm, shrieked in panic, her wings flapping ferociously to change direction. She jerked her body, and the carriage tipped sideways. The cabinets spilled open, and the blankets we’d covered the floor with flew at me until I was tangled underneath them. I scrambled to my feet just as the seraphim turned again. Meera was teetering too close to a window. I launched myself across the carriage and pushed her out of the way.

“Lyr!” Rhyan yelled, reaching for me, his hand outstretched as I fell, my back smacking against the wall. We turned sideways again. “LYR!”

There was a shriek, a sudden turn, and the sickening feeling of the carriage turning too quickly to the other side. My heart leapt into my throat then plunged directly into my belly.

A window burst open, and a gust of wind exploded inside the carriage.

One second, I was holding onto the wall, and the next, I’d been flung across the carriage right out the opened window.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Therewasnothingbeneathmy feet, just air and sky and wind. I reached blindly as I flew out the window, grasping desperately for anything to hold onto. My fingers landed against the bottom of the seraphim’s harness, but I didn’t have the strength to pull myself up, and my hold was already faltering, my arms sore, my fingers sweaty. The carriage jerked with another shriek of our seraphim, and my grip loosened.

Rhyan hung half out of the carriage window. He seemed to have soared out chasing me. He screamed for me to take his hand, tried to get hold of me. But I couldn’t move. If I lifted one finger, that was it. I’d fall.

Meera screamed, crying, begging Rhyan to save me.

The wind whipped against my face, blowing my hair in every direction. I couldn’t see, couldn’t focus. I could barely breathe from the pressure of it. Was this it? Was this the price of the magic? Of breaking my oath?

Another jerk. My hand flew off the harness. The wind swallowed my scream.

My hand flew right into Rhyan’s. He was leaning too far out the window, as Meera stood behind him, holding onto his cloak. He wrapped both of his hands around me and hauled me up and up to the window’s ledge, and with a final grunt, he hoisted me inside.

We flew across the carriage, landing with Rhyan on his back with me in his arms.

He tightened his grip around me, pressed his head to mine. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you. You’re safe.” His voice shook, like he was trying to convince himself. “You’re safe.”

My whole body was cold, my limbs shaking. I wanted to hug him back, to wrap my arms around him and hold on, to reassure myself that this was real, that I was alive and in his arms, inside the carriage, not falling, not dead. But my arms were useless, shaking and shivering at my sides.

Meera pulled me off him and cradled me against her, squishing my face before bursting into fresh tears. “You’re all right, Lyr. By the Gods, you’re all right.” She hugged me tighter, but I couldn’t hug her back. My arms were still shaking and useless. “We need to go straight to Father. I never,” she shook her head, “I never should have let you swear that oath.”

Rhyan got to his feet, jaw muscles flexing as he closed and locked every window.

There was another shake of the carriage, and our seraphim turned so abruptly beneath us that we slid into the wall. Every window opened again, and a gust of wind swirled around me.

“It’s the oath!” I screamed.

“NO!” Rhyan dove forward, wrapping his arms around me and laying me on the ground beneath him. His body tensed, hovering over mine. He kept one arm around me, cradling me, the other lifted to the window. “The magic will have to get through me first.”

Meera crouched beside us. “And me.”