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The forest spurred into flames again.

When a vampyre darted—faster than I had ever seen any vampyre—from the trees and tackled Lanson, the flames ceased completely.

“Huntress.” Wolf’s voice dropped dangerously low. “On your left.”

I glanced to find the entire forest bustling with movement.

Vampyre movement.

I immediately backed into him. We could fight a few vampyres, sure, but this?

I bumped into his chest and turned, only to find an equal amount of the bloodsucking creatures to our right.

We were trapped.

“You have to fly us over,” I thought aloud. “It’s the only way we leave this fight alive!”

When he didn’t respond, I turned to look at him. His right wing expanded fully, the burnt feathers falling to the ground, but the left wing…

The back of it had burned completely. He couldn’t even expand it from the tight position behind his shoulder blade.

Goddess above.Wolf was burned so badly by Lanson’s fire, he couldn’t fly.

“What do we do?” I asked. He could heal himself, but the vampyres were only feet away. He wouldn’t have the time, and I wasn’t entirely sure either of us had enough magic left.

Wolf squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them again, he wasn’t really there. He had gone somewhere else in his mind, somewhere I could not fully follow him in the darkness.

“I’m going to stay back and fight as long as I can, Huntress. You’re going to get into The Golden City, regardless of whether I’m alive to see it.”

Chapter

Thirty-Nine

It took me two full seconds to understand what Wolf meant, two more seconds to curse at him with the harshest words in our language, and one second to slap him as hard as I could in the chest.

“Have you lost your mind? That’s not even a question, Wolf. Do you really think that lowly of me?”

“No,” he answered. “I don’t think lowly of you at all, Huntress. Can’t you see why I’m doing this?”

I shook my head. We didn’t have much time.

“I don’t care why you think you’re doing it!” I screamed. “I’m not leaving you, Wolf!”

“You have to!”

“No!”

We stood there, chests rising and falling and eyes wild, in the chaos of death and claws and decay.

“I’m not going anywhere without you,” I added. “Not after everything.”

He hesitated, and I thought for a second he would try to argue with me again.

But then he smiled; the sad version of his smile, not the epic one. “Okay,” he said. “Then we better fight like all hells, becauseI’m going to be pissed if I saved your life all those times for nothing. I kept count, remember?”

I half-laughed, half-sobbed as I rotated Venom in my grip.

And then I turned.