Page 257 of The Cradle of Ice

Just me …

His palms grew warmer, drawing his gaze. From her chest, golden tendrils rose, frilling into a mist. It settled over his hands, holding him a moment. Her song flowed up to him, reassuring, sharing what she thought of him.

You’re always enough …

Her bronze warmed outward from his palms, from the well of power he had stirred. Her tremors and shakes smoothed to calm bronze. Fire restoked her eyes to an azure fire.

“We must hurry,” Krysh urged.

Shiya sat up, first tentatively, then more swiftly. She cast her gaze about: at the smoky fighting, at the war of wings, at the violence of a storm trapped in crystal.

She stood and turned to the copper shield, to the crystal cocoon. She took a step, then another, no longer driven by the compulsion from earlier, only the necessity of this moment. Still, she hesitated before the last step. He read the map of apprehension in the slight squint of her eyes, the thinning of her lips.

It was not the fear of torture that held her trapped, but the same dread that had frozen him a moment ago. He answered it by taking her hand and reassuring her.

“You’re always enough, too.”

* * *

DAAL SWEPT UNDER the winged daemon in the sky. It screamed with a furious madness, entrapped in a net of emerald fire. The bat writhed and flapped and tore the air with its thrashing. Silver glinted from its skull, flashing with a dread warning.

He knew such restraint wouldn’t hold.

The bat would break free, made stronger by the wildfire.

He took stock around him. The raash’ke had fled lower, circling warily. At least the dome’s skies were otherwise empty of ships, except for the hulking lurker above the door. The other rafts and foils had either crashed or landed.

He searched below and spotted Shiya stepping into the cocoon, the chrysalis closing behind her. To the side, a battle raged near the mouth of a black tunnel, nearly lost in the smoke but revealed in flashes of steel. With his breath tight, Daal scanned until he spotted Nyx sweeping wide and saddled low. Her face was a mask of terror. Her gaze was fixed above.

He understood her worry. It pounded his heart, too. But while the monster was alarming, nearly half again the size of their mounts, it was outnumbered. A dozen raash’ke plied the air.

Still, Nyx swooped along the circling raash’ke. She lifted an arm and swept it down, over and over again, as if trying to get them to retreat from the beast above. He didn’t know why she wasn’t using the horde-mind to get them to obey.

Worried and confused, he shifted his weight and applied pressure with a knee, guiding Nyfka toward Nyx. She spotted him diving toward her and tried to wave him off, motioning frantically.

What is wrong?

Then the dome erupted with a scream that ate through his skull. He wanted to cover his ears, but he needed both hands to hold on to the saddle. The noise narrowed his vision, pounded his ears.

He recognized what he was hearing. It was similar to but different from the paralyzing keen of the raash’ke. Only this was a terror meant to stop a heart. He fought to raise his shoulders to his ears—but he was not the intended target. He was not what the monster above had been designed to attack.

It was a prey with far more sensitive ears.

Oh, no …

He urged Nyfka toward the floor, diving her steeply. He understood now, why Nyx wanted them all out of the air.

Under him, Nyfka stiffened, her neck writhing to escape that cry, but it was everywhere, rebounding off the walls and echoing from all sides. With a final strained cry of agony, she went limp under him.

Daal clutched hard to his saddle, knowing there was no waking his mount—if Nyfka wasn’t dead already. With her wings still out, fluttered up by the wind of their descent, Nyfka spiraled in a steep dive toward the floor.

Daal leaned tight, struggling to understand.

Where was the horde-mind during all of this?

* * *

NYX FOUGHT A hundred battles—and lost all of them.