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A T THE BACK of the cave, Daal helped Nyx into Bashaliia’s saddle. With her damaged hand, she needed his aid.

Despite the hardness she had shown earlier, her body trembled under his palms. He was careful to keep his hands on her riding leathers, to avoid touching her skin—especially as Nyx still shone with a deep font of bridle-song, what she had not spent to build her fiery beacon in the grotto.

Once settled, Nyx leaned down and ran her uninjured fingers through Bashaliia’s fur. Her face fought to hold its steeliness, but Daal read the fear shining in her eyes. Not for her safety. But for her winged brother, for the sacrifice she must ask of him.

He also noted a paleness to her face that had nothing to do with the loss of blood. While determined on this course, she clearly had doubts. He remembered her despair after the attack, after her finger was ripped away, the anguished words she had lamented.

I’ve failed… failed us all.

He recognized the burden upon her. He reached and touched her knee, ran his hand up her thigh. He flashed to doing the same when there was nothing but bare skin between them. In this moment, he wanted to give all of himself to her, all his strength, the very last bits of gold still warming behind his breastbone. But he knew any traces of memory buried there, a reminder of how much had been lost to madness, would break her.

She needed to be strong.

Stronger than bronze.

She believed she could be. He had seen that resolve, the hard unbending core she hid from all, forged from pain and loss. It had shocked him at first, even dismayed him, but that was a part of who she was.

There could be no brightness without shadows.

She stared down at him and hovered her bandaged hand over his bare skin.

“You can do this, Nyx,” he whispered.

Blood seeped and dripped onto the back of his hand. Each drop burned with the fire inside her. He turned his palm up, accepting this, accepting all of her.

If you’ll let me…

She lowered her hand to his. Though still separated by leather and bandage, the two fleetingly became one. He felt the rough saddle between his own thighs. The agony shooting up a limb. He also read the doubt trying to break stone. Rather than deny that hardness in her, he stared at it unflinchingly. He bolstered it with each breath.

Do what you must, and I’ll still be beside you.

She squeezed his hand harder, burning blood into him, as if swearing him to this oath. It was a feverish heat such as he had never felt before, a fire that reached his very bones.

Still, he did not waver.

I won’t forsake you.

She finally let go, throwing his hand aside, not in denial, only firming herself for what she must do alone.

But not entirely alone.

She stared down at the great beast under her. The pain remained, the guilt, too, but also a hardening resolve.

She glanced to Daal. “Be ready. Once any path is clear, you take off with Pyllar. But stay well away. Where I must go, you cannot follow.”

He knew she didn’t just mean a path through the sky.

He nodded and stepped clear. He rubbed the hand that still burned from her blood, as if his promise had been branded into him.

Nyx stared ahead into the raging emerald fire, into the wyldstrom she must rein to her heart. Then, without looking back, she set off.

Bashaliia shoved away with his powerful legs and danced on the knuckles of his outstretched wings. Once near the cave mouth, he burst out into the grotto.

He challenged that madness with a savage cry.

Then vanished into the storm.

N YX CLUTCHED LOW in the saddle, keeping her head down, as Bashaliia crashed through the fringes of the whirlwind. The flock—startled by the massive bat’s sudden appearance—scattered apart with a flurry of wings, shredding away like fiery flakes.

For protection, she sang a shining nimbus around herself, tapping into what strength she had left. Terror clutched her throat, threatening her hold on her shield.

Nyx willed her brother toward her beacon. It had nearly frayed away and struggled to hold aloft the emerald pyre. Bashaliia reached it. With sharpening turns, he climbed higher in swift sweeps.

All around, the wyldstrom raged, reflecting off the glass, making it look as if it stretched off into eternity. The wraiths recovered and lunged at them. They battered at her song’s shield with screams, with wings, with lashing claws.

Nyx sought the only shelter and drove Bashaliia toward it.

They climbed to the beacon’s top and dove into the emerald pyre—the corrupted and poisoned heart of the colony. The flames blinded her, trapping her in a tempest of fire. Her shield could not hold, not under such a fierce assault. She drew that golden corona closer, stoking it brighter as it shrank around her.

Earlier, when she had been attacked after first stumbling upon the nest, she had done the same. Back then, she had been willing to sacrifice Daal and Pyllar to keep Bashaliia safe from the ravening madness, to keep that emerald poison from igniting his golden heart. Now she had to make a harder choice.

With an agonized pang, she stripped that protection from Bashaliia and drew her shield to her skin, letting its golden shine be her armor. Below her, the emerald fire ripped through her brother’s wings, through bones and blood, and struck Bashaliia. It snuffed the golden beauty of her brother—then in another breath, it burst forth again with raging flames.

Bashaliia writhed, burning inside and out.

She caught the briefest flash as her brother was torn away: of his confusion, his fear, his guilt, as if he believed he was being punished.

But she was not done torturing him.

Not yet.

She clutched the sob in her throat, still needing her voice. Below her, the flames inside Bashaliia ignited the agony of another, the remnant of Kalyx, the monster whose body Bashaliia wore. Nyx felt the torture of copper needles drilled into Kalyx’s skull, the agony of the whip and burning iron, but worst of all, the anguish of a will broken and enslaved to another.

That pain had been etched forever into the body that Bashaliia wore—along with the monster’s fury.

It roared out of Bashaliia’s throat. But Nyx knew it wasn’t Bashaliia screaming below her—but Kalyx, a creature suffered into being. He screamed in mad fury. Claws lashed against a world that had been far too cruel.

Still, that was not who Nyx needed him to be.

She opened herself to the pyre around her and loosened the reins of the ravenous pit inside her, the hollowness that could never be sated. It exalted in this freedom and drank greedily at the font burning around her. As emerald fire flowed into her, she gripped her cruelty and sapped the flames away from that emptiness inside her. Instead, she poured it into the raging heart below, driving the fiery madness into a new home, a new vessel.

The pit inside her screamed in frustration, while continuing to draw deeply upon the emerald pyre. Still, Nyx denied that hunger, sending the flames down to the bat under her. This went on until the pyre waned, stifled as it was sapped, its energy sent below.

Under her, Kalyx burned away, replaced by another who had suffered far worse. Someone maligned over centuries, tormented over millennia. Someone who had experienced not the breaking of one will—but thousands.

That ancient fury burst out of the beast’s throat under her.

She rode atop Khagar now, who raged with the same madness that had poisoned the mankrae. Like them, he sought vengeance, for the shattering of their horde-mind, for the agony of what had been stolen.

Nyx fought to hold her saddle as the beast thrashed in frustrated fury. It gnashed at anything and everything. A wraith strayed too close. Jaws snapped and ripped its throat and spine. The broken body tumbled away, vanishing into the storm.

Khagar screamed his rage, loud enough to break glass from stone.

As that cry echoed, it was picked up by others. One throat, then another. Somewhere deep, the mankrae knew that call—and answered it. Their chorus grew, defiant and pitiless. It spread into a whirlwind, binding all together.

But this was no horde-mind forming.

It was merely vengeance given form and voice. It still needed a will—one that could wield that furious strength.

Nyx took on that mantle, shared by the king beneath her.

From her own throat, she added to the chorus and cast Khagar upward, out of the glassy vault that had trapped him for so long. He sailed upward with her, shooting swiftly, spinning straight from the grotto.

The others followed, swirling with emerald fire. The storm burst high above the cliffs and into the burning sunlight.

As it did, Nyx sang to the wyldstrom, bolstering her golden armor, riding that furious tempest. Her vision splintered as she did, seeing all. First through Khagar’s eyes, then spreading outward into hundreds, then thousands.

Her mind fought against it, struggling to hold this roiling view. Still, she managed. She discovered just enough strength in the maddening fire that burned inside her, the traces she had failed to cast below. Rather than snuff it out, she let it rage through her, to open the parts of her necessary to withstand it all.

As she rode the stormfront, blazing in golden armor, she gazed out at the world through all those eyes. Across burning black glass, she spotted an ancient enemy in the glints of bronze spread along the coast.

Khagar screamed in recognition.

As did she.

They were united in this purpose.

She tipped his wings—and raced for the distant shore.