Chapter Nine #2
“No,” he tells me before I’ve even had a chance to say it. I swear he’s learned to read my feelings just as well as I can read his after all these years. “Don’t even ask it. You can leave me at the camp. Drop me beyond it if you think you can get her. But I’m not letting you go by yourself.”
“Taran—”
“No. If I must, I’ll go without you, but I will not let you do this.” His blue eyes are like ice, cold and unmoving.
I could pull rank here, but out of my love for him, I don’t. I know he just wants what’s best for me. “Fine,” I say. “I doubt we’ll have the chance to get her tonight anyway. This is just a scouting mission.”
He nods, but he does not believe me, and he’s right to doubt me.
Because if I see even the slightest chance, I’ll take it, and we both know it.
The palace recedes behind us as we tear through the night sky. The air is cold and thin as we break through the clouds, but we both learned our lesson last night and dressed in the warmer woolen layers we keep for Faros’s bitter desert winters.
My eyes water from the wind, and my legs cramp from the strange sitting position I have to keep to remain within the straps on Kira’s back, but every flap of her great eagle wings brings me closer to Sylvie.
Her feelings grow stronger with every passing town, every line of enemy tents that we leave behind.
It’s such a relief to feel the full force and complexity of her emotions once more that I barely notice when we’ve arrived at the last of their encampments, the last legions before the toxic Machair Wastes begin.
I tilt Kira beneath the clouds to take a better look.
This camp is far larger than the forward legions that are currently besieging Faros.
Thousands, tens of thousands of men and women are below.
Practically everyone with settled magic in Nithyria must be here, and though I can’t confirm it, I suspect some of Selara has come to join their cause.
“Anything?” says Taran, his voice strained with discomfort and the fear that he just can’t overcome, no matter how long we spend in the air.
I look to the last group of tents before the Wastes. “She’s there in the center. The largest tent.” A prison tent? No, I realize as we get closer. It’s far too nice. Though I can’t make out the decorations from this height, the fact that is has them lets me know exactly whose tent this is.
Seth. He has her in his own tent.
Well, it’s better than a dog kennel, at least.
We’re too far in the air for me to be able to feel if he’s in there with her or how many people guard her. Some limited patrols are navigating the edges of the camp, but we should be able to overtake them as long as we do it quietly so they don’t let anyone else know we’re here.
“We land in the Wastes,” I say. “Just over that ridge. Then we sneak down, take out their patrol if we have to, and make for the tent.”
“What if Seth’s there? What if she doesn’t want you to kill him?”
What if she doesn’t want to go with me? That’s the question he really wants to ask. But I won’t answer it because I know he’s wrong.
“Then we’ll leave him there and make a break for it.
Kira can take the two of you back. I’ll wait within the Wastes for her to return.
I doubt many will try to pursue me there.
” With good reason. The Wastes are poisoned, tainted by magic.
There are many superstitions about what will happen to you if you travel there, but the reality is much less exciting than the rumors suggest. As long as I don’t eat anything there, I’ll be fine.
“I’ll wait within the Wastes,” he says. “You take her back.”
“Godsdammit, can you just do what I ask of you one time?”
“No, sir. I cannot. That’s why you always take me with you.”
And fuck, I hate it, but he’s right. He’s saved my ass far more times than I can count, almost always from myself.
“I don’t want to leave you there. That’s why I didn’t want you to come.”
“We don’t have to do this tonight. You can feel her—is she in pain? Is Seth harming her? Is she afraid?”
Not really. There’s some fear there, but it’s not her most pressing feeling. Her most powerful feelings right now are boredom. Boredom and loneliness, the same loneliness I felt from her when we first met. She’s alone there, wondering if I’m going to come for her.
And she misses me. I feel the familiar feelings of love and longing and affection that she feels when she thinks of me. But they’re tinged with fear and loss, and a terrible intuition that we won’t see each other again.
“She needs me, Taran. And I need her.”
“Then you’ll leave me in the Wastes once we get her back. You know I can keep away from them. I’ll lead them all the way back to Nithyria if I have to.”
Nithyria is Taran’s home too. He knew those fields once, back when they were farmland and prairie rather than blight. And he’s my stealthiest guard. I know he’s right, and I know he wouldn’t have come with me if he wasn’t willing to do this.
“Very well,” I say, nudging Kira to dive lower.
We keep over the river and its floodplain as she descends.
She glides down slowly for our sake only, so that we can keep our seats on her back instead of losing them like I did in my first ride with Sylvie.
As we approach the camp, she banks out towards the Wastes.
We’re so close to Sylvie now, I can feel her every thought.
Anger. Fear. Longing.
Her feelings flood my senses. I’d forgotten in two days of absence how consuming it is to be near her, how overwhelming it feels to be in her presence, to feel her like she’s in my own mind. Like I’m in her body, back where I’m meant to be.
I don’t feel the patrol until the arrow is already in the air. I don’t sense them below, watching us, until I hear the shout.
I don’t notice that Taran has unbuckled his straps in anticipation of landing until I feel him slip.
I don’t see the arrow coming until it digs into Kira’s side, sending her into a screeching dive.
By the time I reach out to grab Taran, by the time I reach out to heal Kira, it’s too late.
We’re falling, careening towards the earth, and this time, there’s nothing there to save us.