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I awake to a fierce pressure in my chest, like I’m buried under a mound of rocks, and I’ve been set on fire. It takes me a moment to process that pain, because I can’t think. I can’t hear.

Or rather, I’m hearing too much. As terror and pain split and meld together and split again, I gradually understand that I’m surrounded by a howl so horrifying, my bones and guts practically melt.

We’re not soaring through the sky anymore, we’re plunging without ceasing, and not over the placid waters of some serene, otherworldly lake, but into the teeth of a storm.

Gent’s claws remain wrapped around Miriam and me, but I can’t tell if that’s out of a sense of preserving us or merely because my giant Divh has frozen to death.

Cold , we’re so cold, and Gent’s thoughts are shut off from me.

When I try to reach out to him, I see only an endless vista of stars and sparking lights, as if his very mind has broken away from his body and is soaring up while we are soaring down.

A squawk to my right barely penetrates my pounding fear, and then we slam into something hard that I somehow realize is not the ground, mainly because it strikes us from the right, sending Gent cartwheeling through the air and destroying any sense of equilibrium I thought I had.

My stomach churns, my heart pounds, and I’m smashed back against the wall of his hand, shoving into another huddled form there, who doesn’t move. Miriam !

Then even that thought is ripped away from me, as another collision strikes Gent, this time from the other side.

We tumble into another direction, and my mighty protector’s hand loosens its grip.

I fall into open sky, Miriam’s huddled mass of robes seeming to spread out and catch the wind before she’s carried away from me on another gust. I spin, flailing helplessly, and see Gent below me, already impossibly far away, the ground rushing up to us both.

For a second, I want to call for someone—anyone.

Fortiss, with his impossible calm. Tennet, with his recklessness.

But no one can help me here. I’m alone, and I’m falling.

For one choked breath then another, I see the wild world beneath me, the wonder of the western border of the Blessed Plane.

It’s a nightmare come to life.

Where Gent’s home was nothing but rolling hillsides, flowers, and the wide, wide lake, this section of the Divhs’ territory is harsh and unforgiving.

Jagged peaks descend into rocky shale, fire leaps from great open maws in the earth, and the once-serene waters of the lake now churn up from unseen forces—as if a gale erupted in the middle of the water and rushed inward toward the shore, only to crash back out again.

This is the last thing I’ll see before I die.

My short cloak flares behind me, but it does nothing to break my fall, and I search the horizon with streaming eyes, seeing nothing but Gent’s descending body, then open sky, then a mass of tears.

I reach out to Gent, but there’s nothing there, and though I want to close my eyes, they’re peeled open by the force of the wind that rips my breath from my throat and sends me spinning, spinning— Wham!

I’m yanked up so violently, I feel like my head may be ripped clean off.

The pressure at my neck is excruciating, and I clap my hands to my collar, my fingers struggling to release my cloak as my legs kick violently out and back.

The world spins away in another direction, but I’m too crazed to think, too desperate to do anything by claw at my collar.

I drag it away and manage a breath then strain to wrench it free?—

Talia ! I hear the shout inside my mind but also mixed into the wind, and my hysteria clears just enough for me to realize I’m dangling—dangling! From something enormous above me and I’m no longer spinning, flailing, dropping through the air.

I can’t breathe!

My sight narrows down to a pinpoint and is on the verge of winking out when the pressure abruptly cuts away from my throat.

Crazed with the need to survive, I hook my hands into the neckline of my cloak only to sustain a violent jerk to my shoulder, harsh enough my right arm almost has to be dislocated?—

Then that pressure switches as well, and my cape is once more snagged. My hands are shoved beneath the neckline now, scraping it away, and I’m deliriously struggling to draw breath as I’m dropped again?—

Landing easily in the outstretched palm of my Divh.

Gent .

I’m so disoriented, I can do nothing more than flop into the base of his palm to where his pulse thunders in jack-rabbiting rhythm, my own mind slurring around in confusion as he convulses.

He’s alive, but I can’t connect to his thoughts.

I can’t seem to do much of anything other than push air in and out of my own lungs and stem the surge of nausea that?—

“Oof,” I manage, and with an effort of shoving a mountain uphill, I struggle over to the side of Gent’s palm and crane my head as far as I can before another brutal wave of nausea overtakes me.

Now it’s my turn to convulse, and I empty my stomach violently over the edge of Gent’s palm…

most of it spewing out onto the rocky ground.

Then I sag against the warm, reassuring heat of Gent’s leathery hide, mindless and numb.

Fortiss’s amused voice pierces through my fog. “Are you done? Or should I stand clear?”

Without lifting my head, I make a sharp, cutting motion with my outstretched hand, the rudest of all the gestures I learned during my time at the Tournament of Gold. His laugh does little to improve my mood, but when I don’t immediately answer his question, his next question is more urgent.

“Seriously, Talia—are you all right?” Fortiss’s quick steps skirt the sprawl of Gent’s outstretched claws, and a second later he’s vaulted himself into the monster’s palm and moves to my side, braving the possibility of another surge of bile to roll me up to my side.

Despite my best efforts, I can do little more than curl up in a half ball.

“Miriam?” I croak. “The others?”

“The others are fine,” he says quickly. There’s a sound of material sliding over skin, then he’s wiping my hair away from my brow, mopping off my face.

It must have rained at some point, I realize, because I’m sopping wet.

Though Fortiss’s cloth is dry—or was, anyway.

“Ayne caught Miriam a little easier than Szonja was able to catch you. Miriam had heavier robes and wasn’t wearing a cloak tied around her neck. ”

“Smart.” I cough, willing my right hand to lift itself to test the bruising at my throat. My right hand is having none of it, and remains flopped down beside my body, supposedly still connected to my body via the arm I can’t feel. “Cloaks are a menace.”

“Well, if you hadn’t been wearing one, you’d be in even worse shape…

” Fortiss breaks off, and I can feel him shift beside me.

“Talia, what’s wrong with…” Again his words peter out, and he says nothing as my mind shifts and eddies in a shallow pool of detachment.

Idly, I wonder if Gent minds serving as a bed… or maybe he’s more of a couch?—

A white-hot rip of agony knifes up from my right shoulder as Fortiss drives all his weight into it in a merciless shove.

“ No !” I scream, my sight going dark as nausea swamps me again, and my world spins as we’re both wrenched skyward.

Fortiss pinions me to Gent’s palm, his body spread eagled over my torso and legs, but Gent yanks his hand close.

A moment later, still weeping with pain, I blink up into my beautiful Divh’s dark, furious eye, his breath blowing hard beneath his palm.

I realize my left arm—my good arm—is wrapped around Fortiss…

probably the only thing that’s saving his life.

Hurt .

Gent’s voice blasts through my mind in a jumble of babbling words, anxious and fast. In my mind’s eye, I retrace the trip from his perspective.

The joy and anticipation, the leap of pure and utter possibility, transition into the space between plains.

This last part is awash in stars, and I vaguely remember seeing it the way he is seeing it, though there is no way in my eyes could have processed so many points of light.

Then comes a scene I don’t recognize, being whipped into a violent storm with lightning crackling all around wind and rain buffeting us.

Gent rumbles in confusion and annoyance as he realizes the truth of what happened, watching how he became momentarily paralyzed as we re-entered his plane and he fell, fell, fell…

And then Marsh appears out of nowhere and bangs into him, his small wings churning violently, his fists like battering poles.

He breaks Gent’s fall once, twice, and Gent loses his hold of his tiny cargo.

The huge eye glistens, suddenly too bright, and I clutch Fortiss tighter because there’s nothing else to hold.

“It’s all right, Gent,” I say aloud, and also in my mind. Feeling has returned to my right hand, and I spread my fingers wide on his thick palm. “Szonja caught me.”

Fortiss has levered himself off my body by now and stares from my shoulder to Gent’s anguished face. “Tell him you hurt your shoulder, and the pain you felt was me putting it back in place.”

Gent huffs, clearly able to understand Fortiss all on his own, or interpreting his words through my mind, but I keep my arm around Fortiss to make sure my angry Divh doesn’t flick him off like a fly. “You still caught me, Gent,” I whisper to him.

Fortiss moves off me completely, then helps me to a seated position.

I lift my left arm high, and Gent pulls his hand close enough that I can lay my palm against his cheek, my hand so tiny against the vast plane of his face that it might as well be a speck of dust. “You caught me. You’ll always catch me. ”