The terror of the Bahal attack, the shock of my father rescuing me, the healing from Raidyn … those had all succeeded in distracting me from the horror of what had occurred in the citadel for a moment, but the gateway refusing to open, the horde of rakasa rushing toward us and forcing us to flee, the narrow escape had quickly brought it all back. We were safely airborne now—thankfully none of the rakasa had been the flying type—but my relative safety meant nothing. Though I clenched my eyes shut and buried my face in my father’s back, nothing could stop the tightness in my lungs—the racing of my heart.
I’d failed her. The shaking grew even worse. I was gasping, desperately unable to suck in enough air.
A lifetime spent protecting my sister wiped away in one horrible moment.
I’d failed her.
I’d failed.
“Zuhra!”
Dimly, my father’s shout penetrated the dizzying rush of blood in my head. His hands had enclosed mine, which were only loosely draped across his stomach now.
“Zuhra, you have to hold on!”
I heard his warning, despite the roar of the wind in my ears, and some small part of me knew he was right, but all I could see was Inara lying bloodied and broken on the ground of the Hall of Miracles, all I could focus on was an echo of the screams that must have reverberated from those walls, all I could do was curl in on myself as sobs of pure desolation wrenched me apart.
I’d failed her.
An especially strong flap of Taavi’s wings was all it took. I wasn’t prepared and the force of the gryphon’s body moving to keep us airborne sent me tumbling off his left side. A sudden wrench on my arm—nearly ripping it from my body—and then I was dangling in the air, with only my father’s hand around my wrist keeping me from plummeting to the earth below.
“Zuhra!”
My legs swung beneath me, my mouth opened in a scream that sheer terror and the wind ripped away before it fully formed. Taavi’s wings beat valiantly, but his feathered flanks tilted, the weight of my body dangling below him too much to combat entirely. My father cried out, his grip slipping as he tried to keep himself seated on the struggling gryphon.
I reached for him with my free hand, attempting to grab on to his sleeve, but my hands were slicked by sweat and my fingers slid off. The extra movement made my body jerk and my father’s grip slipped a little more. The veins in his arms and face stood out as he strained to hold on.
I tried one last time, lurching my body upward—toward him, toward safety and life and not falling to my death—but I wasn’t strong enough and the wild twisting of my body was too much—my father’s fingers turned to claws, but he couldn’t do anything as my wrist slid through his hand and then—
I fell.
I’d spent so many hours imagining myself standing at the windows in the Hall of Miracles from that painting, staring down at the unfathomable drop to the earth far, far below, simultaneously thrilled and terrified at the thought of the glass shattering beneath my hands and plummeting through all that air to my death on the rocks at the base of the cliff. But no amount of fearing or dreaming of such a fall could have prepared me for the actual sensation of dropping from the sky, my arms and legs flailing, begging for purchase, for something—anything—to grab onto and finding nothing but wind and cloud and earth rushing up to meet me far too quickly. Though some small part of me knew it did nothing to help, I couldn’t keep from screaming until my voice gave out.
How much would it hurt?
Would I lie there broken but alive as the life seeped out of my crushed body—or would it be instantaneous?
Should I keep my eyes open to catch my first and last glimpse of the world I’d longed to see and know when my time was up or squeeze them shut?
Hot tears were slashed off my face as soon as they formed by the punishing wind.
And then a large shadow whistled past, wings tucked and rider flattened against the feathered neck. The gryphon continued its nosedive for several seconds before opening its wings and catching the updraft, leveling out directly below me, obscuring my view of my oncoming death. I barely had time to register what was happening before the rider—a flash of sunshine hair and brilliant blue eyes—managed to throw himself at me without losing his legs’ grip on the saddle, and literally snatched me out of the air, knocking the wind from my lungs, bruising my ribs, and somehow dragging me in front of him to land safely on his gryphon’s back.
The reality that I was safe—that I was no longer plummeting to my imminent death—took several frantic thumps of my beleaguered heart to sink in. The Paladin’s arms were like a vice around my waist, trapping me against his body so ferociously I could barely draw breath. But I was glad for it. I had no strength of my own to hold on to either him or the gryphon; my trembling was so violent I would have been humiliated had I not been so steeped in desperate relief. A little bruising and rough handling was a far better alternative to what I’d been prepared for when I’d reached the earth again.
“What happened?”
I knew that voice—I knew my rescuer now.
Before I could respond, another shout came from above and Taavi swooped beside us, beating his wings just enough to tread air the way some animals tread water. “Zuhra!” My father’s face was ashen, his knuckles white on his gryphon’s reins.
More of the battalion quickly encircled us, all the different gryphons flapping their wings similarly to remain airborne but no longer moving forward.
“I-I’m s-sorry…” My teeth clacked together, making the words nearly unintelligible.
“Do you have her?” My father’s eyes moved past me to the Paladin whose arms still squeezed my ribs tight enough to hurt—and I found that I didn’t care. In fact, I relished the discomfort, as long as it meant I wouldn’t fall from the flying beast again.
“Yes, sir.”
My father’s gaze flicked back to me then away again before he jerked on Taavi’s reins, lifted a fist into the air, and spun it around once. As one, the entire battalion of gryphons fell into what was obviously a formation and within seconds we were all rushing through the air once more, presumably toward Soluselis. Only this time, my father rode in the front of what appeared to be an arrowhead shape, with the gryphon carrying me and Raidyn in the center of it, his strong arms encircling me. The entire length of my back was pressed against his chest and abdomen; each flick of his wrist on the reins inadvertently brushed his hands against my belly. It was an entirely different experience than riding behind my father.
“Was it on purpose?”
His low voice in my ear sent a warm shiver down my spine, until his accusation sank in and I stiffened so fast my head whacked his nose. He jerked back with a grunt of pain, but his arms didn’t even loosen around me—he was concerned for my safety no matter what, apparently.
“No,” I shouted to be heard over the wind. “I … panicked.” Embarrassment warmed my cold skin, turning my neck hot.
He leaned closer again, his mouth so near to my ear I could feel his warm breath on my jaw. “Many are quite nervous on their first flight after months of training.” His voice was deep, almost melodic, but it had a slight husky quality to it that sent a shiver down my neck to my belly. “There is no shame in being scared. But you must hold on.”
“I was—I am—n-nervous. But it w-wasn’t that,” I insisted, my trembling slowly ebbing away the more we spoke. His gryphon’s wings beat on either side of us, and for some reason, the steady thrumming had become somewhat comforting. “It was so much space … and so many p-people … and leaving the g-gateway … it was leaving my s-sister to her … to her death.” I could barely force the words out, but once I spoke them, it was as though I’d inhaled the frigid air straight into my abdomen, where it lodged, an icy chunk of despair twisting my insides.
It made it real.
Raidyn was quiet for a handful of wing beats, but his arms tautened almost imperceptibly around me, somehow easing my discomfort, leaving a small thrum of solace from the ti
ghtness of his hold on my body. “You are very close to your sister.”
A statement, but I nodded anyway. Taavi had dark feathers, almost the color of the night sky, but this gryphon had tawny feathers that blurred into a haze of gold as fresh tears filled my eyes.
“Did you feel her loss—truly feel it deep in your heart?” He still spoke close enough to my ear that I could easily hear him. “Has a part of you gone missing, a hole that suddenly tore open within you that could only be her spirit departing this life?”
His response took me off guard, but I found myself searching for the feelings he was describing and finding only fear and a desperate, unsure kind of grief. “I … I don’t know.”
“When someone that close to you dies, you feel it—you know it. No matter how far apart you may be.” It was difficult to know for sure with the wind battering us, but I thought I heard his voice catch briefly. “If she were truly gone, there would be no question. If you are unsure, then I believe your sister still lives.”
Like the first brush of dawn, his fervent words coaxed the tiniest ray of hope, limning the edges of my dark despair with a hint of light.
“And I promise, we will do everything we can to convince your grandmother and the council to let us go through and make certain.”
“My grandmother,” I repeated. In the rush of leaving the gateway, my father’s words hadn’t really sunk in until Raidyn repeated them.
I’d never even thought about grandparents before … let alone meeting them. They’d seemed as unreal to me as life outside the citadel. And why did she need convincing? Before I could properly formulate a question, Raidyn released me—with just one arm, but it still made my stomach lurch and I seized his one remaining arm with both hands. A vibration went through his chest that seemed suspiciously like laughter against my back.
“I’m not letting go,” his already familiar voice in my ear assured me. “Look.” He pointed and I followed with my gaze. “This is my favorite part of coming home.”
We’d been flying over rolling hills, thick with shrubbery and trees, but Raidyn had succeeded in distracting me so well I hadn’t noticed how the hills had grown bigger and taller—turning into lush mountains surging toward the sky in ever-higher crests, culminating in two massive peaks directly ahead of us. They were so close together, at first glance I thought it was one giant summit, until the gryphons in front of us—including Taavi with my father on his back—began banking, swooping a bit lower and then angling their bodies nearly sideways, their riders flattening themselves against the beasts’ necks and then disappearing between the narrow gap.
“No. No, no, no.” I shook my head, instinctually pressing backward, away from the looming towers of death, but there was nowhere to go except to push harder into Raidyn’s unmoving body.
“Good, lean back just like that.” He ignored my protests as he shortened his grip on the gryphon’s reins around me. “I will hold on to you and her and it’ll be over before you know it. I won’t drop you,” he promised and leaned forward, forcing me to do the same, until I was pressed against the gryphon’s neck and he was pressed into me. “But promise to keep your eyes open—you don’t want to miss this.”
I was half tempted to ignore him and keep my eyes safely shut—how had he known?—but there was something in his voice that made me obey, even as the gryphon soared toward the two peaks that were almost close enough to touch now. Or splat against like a bug against a windowpane. Instead the gryphon dipped her left flank, angling her body so that her wings were parallel with the cliff face. My stomach plummeted as my heart leapt to my throat when I began to slip sideways off her back, but before the scream rushing up my throat could escape, Raidyn had wrapped both arms around the gryphon’s neck and pressed his legs over mine, effectively trapping us against the gryphon’s body as she glided through the narrow passageway. I inhaled the scent of earth and stone, tree and cloud, and felt the coolness of the rock faces we slipped between on my exposed skin, and then we were through, bursting free of what I’d been sure had been our imminent death, and—
My mouth fell open. I hardly even noticed the gryphon straightening out and gliding forward as Raidyn gently pulled me back to sitting; I could only stare. Admittedly, I had seen very little in my life—not even the town that I knew was sequestered at the base of the mountain below our citadel—but I knew that even if I had visited all the towns and cities of Vamala, I still would have been awed by the site of Soluselis.
The city gleamed white and gold, spreading in concentric rings across the valley, a sea of beauty surrounding a hill dwarfed by the cliffs that protected us on all sides, and yet my eyes were drawn to that hill, not to the peaks slashing the azure sky—to the stunning castle perched atop it. The magnificent structure blazed in the sunlight, shards of light refracting off its impossibly high walls and spires, making it appear to glitter as the gryphon soared over the roofs of the outlying buildings, heading straight for it.
“I told you it was worth it.” I could feel Raidyn’s deep chuckle where he still held me against him, even though my fear was erased by the grandeur of this city—far more stunning than any I’d seen in any book—of this world … of his home.
I merely nodded, at a complete loss for words. I couldn’t even fathom having grown up in a small village somewhere, with neighbors and friends and maybe even family other than my mother, Inara, and Sami. What would it have been like to grow up here? It was impossible to take it all in at once. I wanted the gryphon to slow down, to allow me to swivel my head and commit the details of every alabaster building and cobblestone street to memory. The closer we got, the more details flashed by us: lines strung up with brightly colored clothes fluttering in the breeze, pottery on porches filled with overflowing flowers of all sizes and colors, and the people—the Paladin, I realized suddenly, as they glanced overhead at the battalion soaring toward the castle and I glimpsed flashes of their glowing blue eyes.
An entire city of Paladin. Men, women, children.
I’d known that’s where we were going, but to see it—to see them—right there, below us, was overwhelming.
Far too soon, the entire group of gryphons had crossed over the city and begun landing in a huge field within the wall surrounding the castle—a wall made of vines and leaves, I realized with a lurch.
“The hedge,” I breathed. It was exactly like the one at home—except even bigger. If I’d thought our citadel and the gardens had been large, they were to this castle and grounds what I imagined Gateskeep was to Soluselis.
“Hold on, the landing can be a bit jarring,” Raidyn warned as our gryphon tucked her wings slightly. We coasted for the ground where the rest of the battalion waited, including my father, who stared up at us, crease marks etched into his forehead.
I squeezed my legs tighter against the gryphon’s flanks, but needn’t have worried. Compared to everything else I’d been through, the slight jolt when the creature touched down with her back paws first and then her front talons was nothing.
Raidyn hadn’t even completely released me before my father vaulted from Taavi’s back and sprinted to our side.
“Zuhra—are you—did you—I am so, so sorry—”
“Breathe, General,” Raidyn said. He easily dismounted while still keeping one hand on my hip to steady me as I tried to sort out how to unhook my leg and slide off the animal who had saved my life. “She is just fine. In fact, I daresay she has already grown a little bit fond of flying. Don’t you agree, Naiki?”
The gryphon tossed her head and made a soft hooting noise as my father grabbed me under the arms, helped me to the ground, and then turned me around and enfolded me in a hug so tight I could hardly draw breath.
“I’m all right,” I assured him.
“I’m so sorry.” Somehow, his arms tightened even more.
“You’re going to crush her, General. I’m too drained to heal her again.” Raidyn’s wry observation was finally enough inducement for my father to release me and step back�
��but he kept his hands on my shoulders.
“Are you certain you’re all right? You’re not hurt? What happened?”
“I’m not hurt. I just … I, uh…”
“General Adelric, what is the meaning of this?”
A woman’s voice rose above the din of the battalion’s voices in the field. They all fell silent simultaneously.
A muscle in my father’s jaw tightened and he exhaled. “I hoped to have more time to explain a few things to you…”
“General Adelric!”
I turned to look, but my father’s grip on my shoulders tightened, pulling my focus back to him.
“Know this—she most likely will not be as happy that you are here as I am. But don’t let her fool you. Her gruffness is all bravado.”
My confusion and alarm must have been evident because as we both turned to face the source of the shouts, Raidyn leaned over and whispered, “She’s your grandmother, Zuhra. Get ready to meet Ederra, the leader of the High Council of the Paladin.”
TWENTY-THREE
INARA
I stood immobilized as the monster tucked its wings and dove out of sight, straight for the village hidden below the mountainside full of trees. Zuhra wouldn’t just stand here … Zuhra would go help fight. But I had no weapons—no way to defend or protect—and worse … I had no courage. The miserable truth was simply that I wasn’t Zuhra. I needed Zuhra.
But she was gone and I wasn’t. A distant scream, so far away it seemed little more than a higher-pitched whistle on the breeze than normal, brought the memory of a flash of claws, bloodied fangs, and unimaginable pain … and I realized at last what I could do.
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