Page 15

15

Nothing but Air

W hen morning comes, the silence is thick between us again, tense and cold. Daenn looks distant and unapproachable—kingly—but I almost get the sense that he feels frustrated and hopeless.

Or maybe I’m projecting my own feelings onto him. What does he have to be frustrated about? He’s the one who killed my husband and stole me, though his words keep echoing back to me.

He didn’t start the fight. He only finished it.

Tolomon was a jealous man and prone to bursts of anger. There had been plenty of evidence of that throughout our marriage.

He once challenged a young lord to a duel shortly after our wedding, claiming that he was leering at me at a ball. I found it romantic that he was so determined to protect my honor, but then it happened again. And again, and again, until I was sick of it—and the subtle accusations he started throwing at me that I was luring them in somehow. And then once, he’d beat a stable hand within an inch of his life before releasing him from service, all because the man got too close to me when helping me with my horse in the stable .

Yes, I could believe Tolomon started the fight. I could believe it very, very easily.

He never liked Daenn, growing irritable any time I mentioned my childhood friend. So if he was going to start a fight with anyone, Daenn would certainly be it.

But why did Daenn kill him? Tolomon was my husband. Daenn doesn’t know what Tolomon was like. It was his right to defend me against threats, real or perceived.

Surely Daenn understands that. But it doesn’t really matter if he does—Tolomon is dead now, and good riddance to him.

The thought rouses my always-simmering guilt, so I turn my focus to breaking down camp and preparing the gryphons in silence.

It is irritating how well Daenn and I work together, despite the silence, despite the years apart, despite the anger in the air.

I don’t need to speak to him to understand what needs to be done, what he will gravitate toward or leave to me because he knows my strengths. We make an excellent team.

We get into the air soon after, Raindrop following Storm up past a little layer of clouds.

Once we’re flying, it’s easy to leave the thick anger behind. It’s easy to focus on soaring, on the wind pressing against me. It rips strands loose from my braided crown, slapping them into my face and back over and over.

I’m just getting into the rhythm of the flight when a shadow passes overhead. I frown; there’s nothing above me but sun. I turn in my saddle to look—

Something slams into Raindrop’s side, and suddenly I’m free falling .

There’s nothing to grab, nothing but air around me. I can see Raindrop above me, tangling with another gryphon. It has a rider, the detached part of my brain says.

I recognize the rider’s gear and colors, but I’m panicking too much to pin it down. My thoughts are free falling like I am.

I’m about to die. There’s no way around that. I have no way to stop my fall. No way to help Raindrop. I remember this lesson from my flying classes.

Losing your seat means losing your life.

My panic amplifies, white-hot, burning, making every moment feel so much longer.

Part of me wishes it wouldn’t. I don’t want time to catalogue where I went wrong. Holding on better to Raindrop, being more aware of my surroundings, forcing Daenn to talk to me before we left so things wouldn’t have stayed so unresolved between us.

Oh, how I wish I had talked to Daenn.

And then my body slams into something, and I’m encased.

“I’ve got you,” Daenn says into my ear. “Hold on to me.”

My mind catches up with what’s happened. Somehow, he’s caught me. Somehow, I’m not dying.

I scramble for something to grip. I get my arms around his torso, digging my fingers into the grooves of his armor, and bury my face in his chest. He helps me shift so that I can straddle Storm, but the position is awkward since I’m not sitting in the true saddle.

So I shift to wrap my legs around Daenn’s waist instead, locking my ankles together and clinging to him for dear life.

A small grunt escapes him as I secure myself, and I shift to loosen a bit.

“No,” he commands. “Don’t let go. ”

So I don’t. I trust Daenn will get us out of this. My stomach lurches as Storm beats his powerful wings. We’re heading back up.

I dare to turn my head, and I get a glimpse of our destination: the gryphon rider who attacked me. It was more than one, I realize. I count two, which means there’s probably a third. If it’s not a lone rider, then more than likely they would follow the standard battle tactics, and all the clans fight in groups that are multiples of three.

My silver spiral tingles, unnaturally warm in contrast to the biting cold of the wind driving its way into every crevice. Now that my panic is subsiding, my predominant emotion is anger as we drive hard toward the gryphon riders.

But… that makes no sense. I’m not angry; I’m relieved. Relieved down to my very bones that Daenn got to me in time.

But Daenn is angry. The coiled tension is obvious in his body under my arms and legs. I can see his deadly focus trained on the warriors ahead of us as we close the distance.

My mind snaps through the past few days, a dozen little moments where my emotions made no sense to me, how my silver mark tingled at the same time.

In an instant, I know. I can feel Daenn’s emotions over our bond.

I don’t have a chance to process that because in the next moment Daenn and the first warrior clash.

I cling to him, bury my head, and make myself small, slipping one arm at a time down to wrap around his torso instead of his neck so I’m not hindering his range of motion. It’s not comfortable, but it’s all I can do for him right now. I have no weapon. I am nothing but added weight and bulk in this fight.

The screams of the gryphons are loud enough to cut over the wind around us. I sense the moment the first man falls. Daenn’s movement shifts and Storm is no longer hovering in the air, but rather diving, no doubt to meet the second man. As we jolt, Storm swerving in what I assume is a dodge, I see the third gryphon coming in behind us.

I squeeze Daenn’s chest, but when I try to speak, my words are swallowed by the wind. Even if I could warn him properly, he has an enemy at the front.

My mind spins frantically, desperate to help. I’ve never been trained as a warrior, a killer.

A killer.

I latch on to the word. Without waiting to think it through—there is no time to think it through—I reach for my magic.

A slow sleep is better than nothing, and at these heights, it is a powerful weapon.

The magic still feels slippery, effervescent, but maybe my desperation helps, because I’m able to grasp it better than before. I imagine that I grip it in my hands. I have no idea what I’m doing, but I focus on the man behind Daenn, and I will the magic to hurtle toward him and punch him in the chest.

I gasp as something rips away from me. The magic—and my strength.

But it works. The man slumps in his saddle and his gryphon veers, confused by the sudden sagging. My body trembles, and it’s all I can do to keep my grip on Daenn.

He must sense it because one arm comes around me like a vise, pressing me to him.

We’re descending, I realize.

Daenn must have finished off the second man while I was focused on the third.

Sooner than I would expect, we reach the ground, landing with barely more than a thump. And then Daenn is pulling me against his chest as we slide from the saddle. His hands moved to my arms, and he holds me back enough to look over me. “Are you hurt?”

He’s shaking, I realize, and over the link I can tell it’s the residue of the anger, of the panic from before. From almost losing me.

I take the chance to look over him too, check him for battle wounds. But he’s whole, and that realization almost makes me collapse in relief. That relief echoes back to me from him as he pulls me in for a hug, crushing me to his chest.

“You’re okay,” he whispers, and I can tell he’s saying the words for himself more than me.

“I’m okay,” I agree, somewhat shocked that they’re true. I almost died, but he snatched me from the jaws of death. Then he took down two men while encumbered with me. He’s truly a marvel. He shifts, and then he’s pressing a kiss to my hair crown. My arms tighten around him in shock.

He must sense my surprise, maybe feel it over the link, because he freezes and pulls away, expression tight. Panic echoes over our bond.

“We need to find those bodies. Stay here. Rest.” And then he’s striding away, whistling to Storm to follow as he hurries off.

I watch him go, overly aware that I can sense his emotions even as he flees—because that is exactly what he is doing. Fleeing from his relief, from a longing as deep in his chest as it is in mine. I wish I could flee from it too. Instead, I drop to the ground and dig my fingers into the earth there, needing the solid connection, and desperately try to wrestle down my own emotions so he won’t feel them. My confusion, my own aching disappointment. My quiet longing that makes no sense whatsoever.