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A S D AAL LANDED behind the saddle, Nyx held tight. His impact shoved them all deeper into the ravine. Rocks and boulders swept beneath Bashaliia’s belly, brushing the downy fur below. A few sliced deeply, reaching skin.

Nyx winced from the shared pain.

Above, without the anchor of Daal’s weight, Pyllar rose higher, as if buoyed by the lift-gasses of a wyndship’s balloon. Heffik towed him on ahead, clearing past where Bashaliia glided.

With the way free, Nyx urged Bashaliia away from the sharp rocks. She glanced back to check on Daal. His legs, bent at the knees, straddled to either side. His hands clutched the bases of her lap strap. She wished those arms had wrapped her waist, but she knew she had to stay focused.

Ahead, Heffik flew onward, her wings skimming and beating. Pyllar kept pace. He showed enough renewed vigor to allow the tethered rope to go slack at times, but not always.

Despite this boon, Nyx knew this reprieve would be short-lived. Pyllar would eventually need the crutch of his tether. And that was not her only concern.

Daal voiced it. “We’re still moving too slowly.”

Nyx stared up at the corsair’s looming shadow. She had hoped for more speed after unburdening Pyllar, but that was not the main reason she had asked Daal to make that leap.

She sang a rising storm of notes, driving Bashaliia upward, climbing out of the shadows.

As they headed toward the bright sky, Nyx shouted down to Tamryn, “Keep going! Get everyone to the ship.”

Tamryn acknowledged this with a raised fist before vanishing into the shadows.

Bashaliia continued upward.

Daal understood her goal. “You mean to confront the corsair.”

“We must stop it, or at least delay it. It’s our only hope to escape.”

Punctuating this, twin bursts of cannon fire erupted above. The fiery flashes limned the ship’s shadow. Thunder shook dust from the walls. Iron balls shattered cliff faces and sent cascades of flying rock into the ravine.

Nyx looked below, searching.

As best she could tell, Tamryn and the two raash’ke had escaped.

If they had been any slower…

Daal leaned closer. “The corsair will need to reload their cannons.”

“Then we dare not waste this moment.”

She urged Bashaliia into a steep, spiraling climb out of the ravine. Daal clutched her lap strap. His breath gasped at her ear. Above, the desert glare blinded. She squinted against it, but they dared not slow to allow their eyes to adjust.

With every beat of Bashaliia’s wings, the heat grew more intense.

Finally, they swept clear of the ravine and out into the open, rising like a whirlwind. She could only imagine what this sight must look like. They had exited a short distance from the corsair’s bow.

She sang Bashaliia higher until he crested above the ship’s sleek gasbag. Below, she caught glimpses of figures scurrying across the deck. Most of the bustling centered on the ship’s two cannons. Yet even those men fled back from the sight of a monstrous bat sweeping past their bow.

As Bashaliia circled to face the corsair, Nyx scowled at the flag waving atop the balloon. The sigil of a dark crown and gold sun stoked a fury inside her. That symbol—of the Massif royal family of Hálendii—had plagued her for most of her young life. It had slaughtered her mother, crippled her father, orphaned her as a babe. It had pursued her across half the world.

And here it is again.

She steadied Bashaliia before that threat. Half a year ago, under the frozen stars of the Wastes, she had faced another Hálendiian ship—a battle barge—and had shattered it to pieces. She could not hope to do the same here. Back then, she had been rife with power, raw and untamed, her body overflowing with wild energies after absorbing a firestorm that had raged inside a copper-and-crystal ta’wyn dome. She had carried the maelstrom out into the endless night, driven to the edge of madness, unable to contain such a force. She had unleashed it all with such fury that it had cracked the barge in half, sending its fiery ruins crashing into the ice.

Nyx trembled at that memory, fearful of ever having to contain and wield such power again. She knew with certainty it would destroy her—if not in body, then certainly in mind.

She had barely survived the first time. It took Daal to draw her back from a dark precipice of madness. In doing so, she had come to realize the true gift given to her by the Oshkapeers, those Dreamers of the Crèche. They had forged Daal to be not only a wellspring of power for her, but also an anchor, one she would need to steady herself.

As Nyx faced the corsair, she appreciated the heat of Daal’s body at her back, his breath on her neck, his simple presence. Without touching his wellspring, she drew strength from him.

Be my anchor once more .

Still, part of her balked at what she must attempt. Over the past half year, she had trained with Shiya, worked with Daal, all to hone her skill with bridle-song. But she had never again touched the sigil burned into her mind by the raash’ke horde back in the Wastes.

At least, not purposefully.

In her ears, she heard the shattering of Daal’s bones, his cry of agony.

Dread tempered her anger at the sight of the Hálendiian flag.

“Nyx…” Daal whispered at her ear, sounding equally worried.

Without turning, she answered that fear. “Do it.”

We have no choice.

Daal hesitated for another breath. Then he unlatched his hands from her saddle belt. Iron-muscled arms reached and wrapped around her chest.

The song Nyx had been holding at bay, a tempest bridled to her will, responded to his touch.

Fire ignited between them, melding two into one.

With a gasp, she fell into Daal’s embrace—and kept falling. Into him. Into herself. Lines blurred between them. She felt his heart thundering in her own chest. Each beat pounded more energy into her, feeding the bottomless abyss within.

He is flashburn, and I’m the forge.

Fueled by his wellspring, her bridle-song burned brighter.

She remembered the last time this had happened, entwined in Daal’s arms, lost in each other’s bodies. She fought to hold control as more power flowed into her, drawn from the marrow of Daal’s bones, from the iron in his blood, from every fiber of his muscles.

Still, the demand inside her grew greater.

She loosened a hand and grabbed his arm.

Nails sought to dig through leather, to reach skin.

Daal pushed her away—but not in rejection.

He slipped his fingers, then his whole hand under her riding vest. He searched and clawed until his palm discovered bare flesh, just under her bosom. He placed his hand over her sternum. Her back arched at the burning ember of his touch.

Still, she breathed deeply and drew heat from that fire.

The darkness inside her cried a single word.

More…

Daal responded. His lips found her neck, a searing kiss offering all of himself, casting everything atop her burning altar.

“Daal…”

She could not say who spoke it.

It was both name and warning.

Lost in each other, she sensed the inescapable pull between them. He was a fiery sun. She was a black hole from which nothing could escape, an abyss that could never be sated. She drew upon his power and his life, sucking all from him, leaving him cold.

She let the power build and build until it filled every corner of her, spilling from her skin, out each breath. She could hold it no more—not without risking all.

Fear grew—both hers and Daal’s.

Trapped by the tides flowing between them, Nyx fought to tame that maelstrom. She used the echo of breaking bones to help her focus. She refused to be a slave to her dark desires, to the raging power inside her.

Never again.

Fixing this determination, possibly drawing the same from Daal, she reached a golden strand of bridle-song toward the sigil that burned like a fiery sun inside her. She hesitated, still terrified of the untapped power in that branded symbol.

A warning rose at her ear.

“The corsair,” Daal gasped out. “The cannons…”

Through the fire across her mind’s eye, she focused back on the Hálendiian ship. At the bow, two cannons had been cranked upward, their black muzzles aiming toward the sky, toward them. A pair of crewmen held flaming tapers and lowered them toward oiled wicks.

Nyx had no more time.

Like those crewmen, she brought her fiery strand of bridle-song to the wick inside her, the sigil branded into her by the horde-mind of the raash’ke.

The symbol exploded at her touch—at the same time the cannons blasted.

From the sigil, arcane encodings beyond her comprehension burst forth. Ancient words, written in fire, spilled from her lips. She swung her arms high and clapped her hands—the first note of a dreadful chorus.

She opened herself, releasing a song of fury, encompassing all she had to endure until this moment. As she did, the sigil turned power into purpose.

She cast out her energy, all that Daal had given to her. As before, her spirit was carried with the tide of her unleashed power.

From the corsair, twin blasts responded. Iron balls exploded toward her.

She shrugged them aside as she passed, sending them arcing away. Still, this effort sapped a measure of her strength, more than she had expected. It reminded her that Daal was not a bottomless well of energies. He could offer nothing close to what she had absorbed in the Wastes. She carried only a fraction of that raging power.

Still, she concentrated, tempering the strength inside her. While she could not forge it into an icy sledgehammer like before, she pictured Heartsthorn instead—Graylin’s family sword. In her mind’s eye, she bound all her golden song, all its potent fire, imagining a single length of sharpened steel.

She rode that blade to the corsair, striking it at its weakest point. She sliced through the thick fabric of its balloon, severing cables and inner supports. She swept past the ship, leaving a ragged rip in her wake.

Horrified screams followed her passage.

With her energies spent, her golden fire snuffed out. The sword faded from her. In the darkness that followed, her spirit fell back into her own body, into Daal’s arms. Still, the darkness stayed with her. As before, gutted and hollowed, she had no strength left. Even her eyesight returned to the gloom of her childhood, reducing the world to shadows once again.

She teetered in her saddle.

Daal kept his arms around her. “I’ve got you.”

But with his wellspring drained dry, they no longer shared the intimacy of their merged bodies. This loss pained her—more so than the shadows that stole her vision.

Still, she took solace in knowing both would return with time.

She prayed for that to be true.

Below, a splintering crash reached her ears, silencing the chorus of screams from the corsair’s crew. She did not know the extent of the damage, or loss of life. In this small manner, her blindness was a blessing.

“It’s done,” Daal whispered.

She nodded and sagged into his arms. He was no longer a font of flashburn. She was no raging forge.

Only a man and a woman.

Tears rose as she wished it could always be so.

Weary, she called to Daal and Bashaliia.

“Take me home.”