Page 185 of A Bond so Fierce and Fragile

He didn’t even cry.

It was as if he knew.

He let Pellie take his hand as he asked, “Where?”

Lessia slapped a hand over her mouth, violent sobs beginning to shake her body, and not even Merrick’s hand on her back helped anymore as her eyes darted to where they’d left Thissian, and Kerym walked right over, sinking to his knees and lying down across his brother’s chest.

Pellie sat right beside him, her hand whitening under the pressure of Kerym’s grip, but the woman didn’t complain once as Kerym seemed to hold on to her with everything left within him.

“We need to go,” Zaddock urged, and although his face did not betray his fear, his arms did.

They shook as they held on to her friend, and Lessia knew Amalise must be truly injured because she didn’t make a joke about it—she only turned her face in to Zaddock’s neck when Kerym’s low wailing began folding all around them.

Lessia couldn’t stand the sound.

Nor could she stand her sister clinging to Raine while he looked down at her, seemingly as devastated as Kerym as he pressed his forehead against Frelina’s.

Not even watching Soria help Loche chain his mother to the ship, her screams of betrayal layering across the crimson-stained water, was bearable.

Actual tears flooded the regent’s eyes as they traveled to his people—the ones now caged between the tall, curved cliffs and the equally tall wave.

Lessia’s gaze flew to the scene where both the people of Ellow and the rebels had started to realize the trap they’d been driven into.

Blood-curdling screams bounced against the water, and panicking rebels and humans alike jumped into the sea when rocks began falling upon them, lifted into the air by invisible hands, steered by the Fae on the cliffs above them, while the merciless wave neared faster than should have been possible even with magic.

It must have been the Oakgards’ Fae who stood upon that dark cliff, Lessia realized with a sinking heart, given their tan skin and darker features, the more rounded ears they sported, and… their magic definitely worked.

Her eyes snagged on the wyverns who hadn’t moved backward, but not forward, either, their colorful scales seemingly too gaudy for the abominable sight ahead of them.

Rage, moving as fast through her body as the damned wave ahead, surged within her, and Lessia didn’t care that Merrick said something, his hand tugging at her own.

Shutting him out, she turned inward, screaming at the wyvern leader.Are you just going to let us die? Is that what you stand for?

It was easy to find the bond within her, the one forever tying her to the cowardly creatures, and she tugged on it when Auphore didn’t respond quickly enough.

We won’t make it in time, Elessia.

Try!she screamed back at him.Just! Fucking! Try!

She would have compelled him, and in turn all the other wyverns, as that’s how the bond must have worked.

She would have forcefully pulled on all those strings.

But Auphore sounded truly crushed as he responded,It’s too late.

“No!” Lessia realized she screamed it out loud when the truth of Auphore’s words sank in.

The wyverns were too far behind the wave.

Lessia shook off Merrick’s hand as she ran to the railing, and her voice cracked and trembled as she turned her scream to the Fae above them—the only ones who might hear her plea.

“Please!” she cried. “Please don’t do this! Please stop!”

Lessia could feel eyes on her, their warmth shifting over her face.

But the rocks kept falling.

And the wave Rioner was conjuring kept rushing.