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Creon.

I dragged in a breath, not daring to turn towards him even for the briefest thanks. For fuck’s sake. I’d been planning to take care of these three bastards, hadn’t I? And now Purple Wings had ended up with Creon’s knife in her throat anyway, my moment of weakness nearly the end of both of us – as if I needed coddling after all.

Fury did what fear hadn't managed. Two brisk attacks ridded me of my next opponent, and just like that I’d found my footing again, Creon at my back and magic itching under my fingertips. Damn them, and damn their hidden hurts. I had lives to save here. Two binding-protected fae left to handle, and this time Iwasgoing to handle them.

The blond male with the pompous, lion-shaped helmet wasn’t hard to spot. With that clump of gold around his head, I’d have noticed him a mile off. Making my way towards him would leave Creon’s back vulnerable, of course, but that wasn’t to say I couldn’t move anythingelsehis way …

My dress had gone dull, not a glimmer of softness left. But Creon was mere steps behind me, methodically cutting fae to pieces, and his wings lay smooth and velvety against his shoulders.

I struck my red at the small mast before me as hard as I could, then jumped back and planted my palm against the tight, velvety membrane of those wings. Again I drew soft magic for movement. No more than a little nudge was needed to push the towering length of wood just where I wanted it to fall. Silly Helmet’s attempt to avoid the weight was timed to objects obeying the laws of gravity, not to objects dropping down with magical speed; he was just a fraction too slow, wood crashing into wing and flesh with blood-curdling precision.

Pinned between mast and deck, he had no way to flee me, no way to dodge my attacks. I blew another fae out of my way and risked two steps forward, just enough to bring Silly Helmet within reach of my magic. Someone moved in the corner of my eye. An issue for the next second; I decided in the shortest fraction of a heartbeat that my magic could fend off that attack. First I had to get rid of this bastard before he healed himself back to fighting shape with the blue still contained in his green-brown shirt.

Red cracked from my fingertips, stilling Silly Helmet’s wretched screams at once.

In the same moment, something smacked against my back.

Everything happened far, far too fast. I was still parting my lips to scream, was still trying not to topple over, when a hand clasped over my mouth, pressing a cold, sharp weight into my bare cheek. Another arm locked around my waist, pressing me roughly against an unfamiliar body. A single slap of wings, and my feet came away from the slippery deck, into the open sky.

Fuck.

Fuck.

I reacted reflexively, clawed my nails into that tanned arm around my waist, and drew as much red from my dress as I could. But the familiar tingle of magic didn’t come – as if I was trying to suck the colour out of a white sheet of paper.

Only then did my mind fully register that cold sting against my cheek.

Alf steel? I forgot to breathe for a moment as my abductor dragged me higher into the sky, as much as breathing was even possible with that stranger’s arm pressing my guts into my ribcage. I hung magicless and unarmed in an enemy’s grasp, dozens of feet above the deck, soaring around a tattered sail and out of Creon’s sight, and red wings slammed behind me, carrying me farther and farther.

Red wings.

Iorgas.

Blinding panic twisted through me. Even when Creon came after us, his binding would stop him from harming my abductor. At least I wasn’t dead yet, at least Iorgas could use as little magic as I could with that alf steel trinket pressed against his fingers. But all he needed was a knife and a free hand …

Think. I had tothink.Wind whistled around us, Iorgas’s ragged breaths and the stench of his sweat filling my mind. I tried to twist and squirm out of his hold, and in reply, he tightened his grip on my waist so violently that I nearly threw up. Black spots danced on the edge of my sight as his hand on my mouth and nose clenched tighter.

I tried to bite his finger, to no avail.

‘Little bitch.’ He growled the words, his lips a hair’s breadth from my ear. Goosebumps rose around my spine – a cold, paralysed shiver. ‘Calm down, or I’ll—’

I jerked my head back before he could finish that threat, slamming the back of my skull into his nose.

Bone cracked. Iorgas roared a curse. His left hand let go of my face, let go of the alf steel, and I blew every bit of red I could find into his right arm before he recovered, digging a deep cut through his skin. A desperate half-turn, half-squiggle did the rest of the job. I slid from his arms, away from his body …

Into the empty air.

Only one thought reverberated through my mind as I hung weightlessly in the air for an endless sliver of time –You’d better be there to catch me, Creon.

And then I crashed into the frigid ocean with a smack that drove every last breath of air from my body, and I stopped thinking entirely.

The water was cold – cold enough to chill me to the bone in that first instant. I barely managed to shriek in half a breath before the first wave swept over me and drowned me in a world of darkness and pressure, the salty water enveloping me as if determined to keep me submerged forever. After the mayhem of the fight and the roaring of the sea, the silence underwater was deafening – a silence that made me wonder, for one numb moment, whether maybe I was already dead.

Stop that, some last voice of reason chided.Swim, you idiot!

My legs kicked frantically, and I came up, gasping in the salt-flecked air.Swim– but the ship was two hundred feet away at least, and already the freezing cold was paralysing my limbs and lungs. Creon, I reminded myself, Creon would come and look for me … But he was nowhere to be seen, and if he flew this way now, how would he even find my tiny head between the man-high waves and the bodies of fae drifting around the hull?

Red flickered over me.