Warriors of Wing and Flame

by Sara B. Larson

Three remained, two men and a woman, and Barloc.

  But I could only stare at Sami as her convulsing slowed and then stilled.

  My screams turned into sobs.

  “No more,” I choked out, half-blinded by tears, but fate-altering wrath igniting in my belly and spreading, a fire of fury. “We end this now! Loukas—stop them! Sharmaine—shield us if he fails! Father, kill them and give us access to Barloc! Inara, be ready to heal us if we need it!”

  I barked out the commands as if I had any clue what I was doing and shockingly, everyone obeyed.

  For the first time, when his eyes met mine, I saw true fear flicker across Barloc’s face. He quickly smothered it, shouting out commands at his jaklas. “Attack them! Now!” he bellowed.

  But they didn’t respond. They couldn’t.

  Loukas’s hands were lifted, his veins glowing.

  Father and Sharmaine sent blasts of Paladin fire at the jaklas, killing one and injuring the other two as they stood frozen by Loukas’s power, only their eyes giving away their terror in the instant before the fire blasted into their bodies, knocking them to the ground, leaving Barloc unprotected for the first time.

  His hands were lifted, but Sharmaine had already thrown out her shield as Loukas reeled back his power. The blast Barloc sent at us was so intense, so massive, that when it hit her shield, it exploded, sending our gryphons reeling backward. Shar jolted as if she’d been struck, barely managing to stay seated.

  Raidyn and I were already prepared, my hands clamped into his arms, his veins lit with power, fire racing through us both, building, fueled by rage and grief and a fierce determination. My power surged out of me into him and then the stream of flames blasted out of his hands, exploding into Barloc.

  Whenever we’d done this before, our enemy had been incinerated, turning to ash within seconds, even the Chimera.

  But Barloc didn’t.

  Smoke filled the air as his hair and clothes burned away, but somehow he remained standing, his arms splayed open, his eyes turning from blue to brightest, glowing red, like the heart of a fire. Even the blue glow of his veins changed, cutting through his flesh like red rivers of blood turned to true flame, rather than Paladin flame.

  Impossibly—terrifyingly—he was surviving our onslaught—absorbing our power and becoming something else entirely. Not human, not Paladin, not jakla, but something other. He took a step forward, into the stream of flames, the ground trembling beneath that one step, and then the next. And still we blasted him, though Raidyn’s arms shook beneath my hands and I could feel myself draining.

  We would never prevail against him. We were all going to die, just as he’d promised.

  Our last chance. This is our last chance. I willed myself to stay conscious, to pull the last dregs of power I possessed out of every cell of my body, even if it killed me, even if—

  A hand closed over mine, cool and soft, and the relief was instantaneous. It took every ounce of strength I managed to summon to turn my face to my sister, on her gryphon beside us. Her arms were stretched out to both sides, one hand on mine and the other on Loukas’s where he hovered on the other side of her. Her veins were brilliant with power, brighter than all the stars in the sky, brighter than the moon; Paladin fire without end, power without limits.

  The night Inara was born, they said the stars died and were reborn in her eyes.

  In that moment, Inara was a star. She was light made into flesh.

  That power entered my body, and with it came energy and healing and more fire. My heart calmed, and my mind cleared. Raidyn’s arms quit shaking, his body settling deeper into the saddle. The stream of fire cut off, but only momentarily.

  I looked to Barloc—or to the horrific creature that used to be Barloc. The movement was free of strain now, even though I felt more power coursing through me than I’d ever experienced. His flesh began to blacken, but his destroyed face cracked into a triumphant sneer, his teeth glared white against his charred skin. His hands lifted, his entire body flared with crimson fire, his red irises flashed—

  Then he froze, his face contorted.

  Loukas, I knew with calm security. Able to easily control him with Inara’s help.

  When the stream of flames exploded out of Raidyn’s hands this time, it was so strong, it nearly knocked both of us off of Naiki. I was dimly aware of my fingers digging into Raidyn’s arms and his legs tightening around Naiki, barely holding us in place as the continuous fire slammed into Barloc.

  For the space of two terrified heartbeats, I thought it wasn’t going to work. He still stood in the stream of flames, his body mutating even more, every bit of his flesh turning red, like the glowing embers at the base of a flame, the hottest part of a fire.

  But Inara’s hand tightened over mine, and with a cry that started with me and ended with Raidyn, reverberating off the walls of the citadel and the mountains that surrounded us, our Paladin fire intensified beyond all comprehension.

  Barloc’s eyes widened, that one tiny movement all he could muster under Loukas’s control, as finally, finally, the flames consumed him.

  The thing that had once been Barloc crumpled to the earth. When his body hit the ground, it turned to ash.

  I nearly collapsed when Raidyn cut the stream of flames off, but Inara kept her hand on mine; her healing presence restoring not only my strength and my power, but Raidyn’s as well, through me. The wind howled around us, blowing the ashes off the earth, lifting Barloc’s remains and taking them away. The storm was nearly upon the citadel. The first few raindrops began to fall when Inara finally released my hand.

  We’d done it. Somehow, together, we’d really, truly done it.

  I turned to my sister, a heady mix of triumph and relief making me dizzy.

  But she wasn’t looking at me. Or Loukas. Or Father or Sharmaine, who were racing back to where we all hovered. She stared down at her hands, her veins flickering blue and then white and then blue again.

  “Inara?”

  She tried to look up then, when I spoke her name, but the effort—the visible strain—hit me like a punch in the gut. Her eyes, when they finally met mine, were dull and glazed. And then they rolled back in her head and she crumpled, falling off the side of her gryphon, plummeting through the ash-strewn wind to the earth below.

  FORTY-FIVE

  ZUHRA

  An hour could pass like a dream, speeding by, blurry and unreal. And a minute could stretch for an hour, chokingly slow, painful in its passing. I’d experienced both in my life. Hours with Inara when she was lucid racing by as though someone were pushing the hands of a clock faster and faster, until the hour was gone and so was she. Or the minutes in the drawing room when I wanted to be anywhere but there, plying needles, dreaming of the freedom of birds, minutes creeping by like those same hands of a clock trying to sludge through a mud bog, weighted down and impossibly slow.

  But as my sister’s body dropped, as her gryphon and Loukas’s and my father’s all dove after her, as her hair pooled out around her head, and her arms waved as though she were floating in water and not falling through air and sky, my heart slowed, my breathing stopped, and seconds turned into hours that passed like a lifetime of nightmares.

  I saw Sharmaine try and fail to create a shield, too drained—and the only one who Inara hadn’t healed.

  I saw Loukas stretch for her, his fingers almost brushing hers, but missing.

  I saw my father’s mouth open in a scream, but Loukas had edged him out and he couldn’t reach her.

  I saw where she would land, on what remained of her gardens, her plants charred and trampled.

  I saw her gryphon pin her wings to her sides, zooming for the ground so quickly, there was no way she would be able to catch Inara and break her own headlong descent in time to keep from breaking her neck.

  Those seconds drew out, as death closed in, and my heartbeats were an eternity.

  Then, somehow, impossibly, as impossible as so many other things that had happened—miracles and tragedi
es, both—her gryphon opened her wings, mere feet before Inara slammed into the raised garden beds, before the gryphon herself would have broken herself on the ground, and caught an updraft, her talons extending out and—

  Snatched my sister out of the jaws of death, inches before her head would have cracked open on the wooden edge of the only place that had ever brought her joy for the first fifteen years of her life.

  In the seconds it took for that gryphon to carry my sister back up, away from the earth, away from death, time raced forward again, along with my heart.

  After she’d saved all of us—over and over again—the gryphon had saved her.

  I sagged forward into Raidyn, let my eyes close, and sobbed.

  FORTY-SIX

  INARA

  Darkness.

  Light.

  Both had their places in life and both had worked their way through me.

  I lay there, at the crossroads of both, struggling to find my direction—my way home.

  Darkness: when I had felt empty, broken, reduced to a shell of my former self.

  Light: when I had been saved, when I had saved others.

  Who was I now?

  I was Inara, Ray of Light, and I was Inara, daughter, sister, friend, healer.

  You have done well, my daughter.

  Her voice was unexpected here, at the crossroads, where the light existed, but was nowhere near as strong as the luxem magnam.

  You used your gift well, as I’d hoped. And so we will leave a piece of it with you, to keep. To heal, not only others, but yourself.

  I wanted to thank her, but somehow I knew she was already gone.

  Someday … when I went into the light for good. Then I could.

  But for now—

  * * *

  When I opened my eyes, I was lying on the ground, dark clouds roiling overhead. Raindrops fell, landing wet and cool on my face. Someone held my hand, fingers tightening around mine when I turned to meet his worried green-fire eyes.

  “She’s awake!” Louk called out, his gaze never leaving mine.

  I blinked against the rain. My body ached in a way it hadn’t since I’d emerged from the light—like I’d been drained and was still recovering. I still sensed power within me, but it felt like my old power, the one I’d been born with, not the unspeakable gift I’d been given that had saved us all.

  And, even though it had gone beyond description to wield that kind of power, I was actually glad for it to have been taken back. I’d never wanted more than I’d been born with; I’d only ever wanted what had been stolen from me.

  “Inara!” Zuhra crashed to her knees beside me, streaks running through the dirt on her face, as though she’d been crying, though her eyes were clear for the moment. “I was so scared … I thought…”

  I squeezed Louk’s hand back and then let go to push myself up until I was sitting on the dirt, tiny splotches of wet surrounding us. The rain was growing more insistent by the minute, but when I glanced around, I saw Paladin rushing across the grounds, some kneeling beside other Paladin, treating wounds or attempting to heal them, while others were digging a large pit.

  I quickly looked away from it—and the far-too-large row of bodies near it.

  “What happened after we stopped him? How did I end up here?”

  Zuhra quickly filled me in on how I’d lost consciousness and fallen from Sukhi’s back and how, though others tried, she’d managed to save me—at the last second, in the instant before we both would have died or been gravely injured.

  “Where is she?” I glanced around, but didn’t see my gryphon anywhere.

  “She hit her wing on the garden box when she caught you. One of the other Paladin took her over by the stables to tape it up for now. We have to use the healers for the Paladin.”

  I climbed shakily to my feet. “I need to go see her—and then I can help heal the injured.”

  “No, you’ve been through too much,” Louk protested. “You need to rest.”

  “I can rest later.”

  “You really shouldn’t go over there,” he insisted, sharing a dark glance with Zuhra.

  “He might be right…” she agreed hesitantly.

  But I refused to be swayed, even though the look they’d shared sent a chill skittering down my spine. “I need to see her.” Before either of them could try to convince me otherwise, I strode away, pretending to be stronger than I felt.

  Louk grumbled something under his breath in Paladin—something I apparently could no longer understand—but I ignored him, rushing toward the stables, on the other end of the grounds, all the way around the citadel.

  I sensed Louk shadowing my steps, but staying far enough back that I couldn’t hear his boots on the dirt over the other sounds that filled the air. I had to weave between Paladin and gryphons, many moaning or crying in pain. Burns, exposed bones, bloody gashes … so many wounds, so many injured. Gryphons and Paladin alike. The air was a potent mix of charred flesh and the crisp hint of evergreen carried on the wind and rain. They needed my help—and soon. There were far too many injured and only a handful of healers who already looked exhausted, on the brink of being drained.

  But Sukhi had saved my life and I needed to see her, at least for a moment.

  When I reached the stables, I saw a dozen gryphons with various injuries being treated by their Riders, but Sukhi wasn’t among them. The door was wide open, so I hurried past the unfamiliar mounts to duck inside, but stopped short. It was dim, shadowed from the clouds blocking out the sun, but it was silent—too silent—and there was a fetid stench heavy on the humid air, something I instinctually recognized as the smell of death. Though they’d assured me Sukhi had only injured her wing, fear gripped my heart, squeezing it as I rushed to the nearest stall and then slammed to a halt, my stomach lurching, caustic acid rising in my throat.

  A gryphon lay in the stall, dead, a hole burned through its breast.

  “Inara—stop!”

  Loukas’s shout echoed dully through the roar in my head. I backed away and then hurried to the next stall, only to find another dead gryphon. My blood was a rush through my body; dizziness struck me and I stumbled away from the corpse.

  Strong hands closed over my shoulders, spinning me around and pulling me into a warm, strong, living body. “I tried to warn you,” Loukas murmured, but there was only sorrow in his voice, not censure.

  “Where is she? Did she really survive or are you all lying to me?” I pulled back, though part of me wanted to bury my head in his chest and let him hold me until all of this somehow went away—the death, the pain and suffering. We’d stopped Barloc, but not before he’d taken far too many lives—human, Paladin, and gryphon alike.

  “She’s alive,” he said, gently guiding me back to the doorway and out into the rain. “They must be treating her somewhere else nearby. I promise, she’s alive,” he repeated as I began to tremble, a delayed reaction to the horror we’d endured.

  “Are there more injured gryphons nearby?” Louk called out, and a couple of Paladin looked up from their work bandaging and treating their mounts.

  “There’s one or two more around the side,” one said, pointing. “We ran out of space over here.”

  Loukas nodded and turned me toward the other side of the stables, walking around the outside of it. When we turned the corner, relief coursed through me, so powerful it was heavy somehow, draining my strength so that, even though I wanted to run to her, I could barely lift my legs to walk to where Sukhi lay on her side, her leonine hind legs tucked in and her left wing extended. An unfamiliar Paladin was wrapping it, holding a thick piece of wood in place to splint her wing with a long length of bandage that looked a lot like a sheet that had been torn into strips.

  She lifted her head when I hurried to her side, and gave a soft hoot. I dropped to my knees by her beak and pulled it into my lap, stroking the soft feathers back from her eyes. She closed them with another soft noise in her throat.

  “Thank you,” I murmured. “Thank you
for saving my life.”

  “I’m almost done here,” the Paladin wrapping her wing said. “She won’t be able to fly for a few weeks, unless someone heals her before then.”

  I longed to heal her, but I knew there were other more life-threatening injuries I had to save my strength for … but soon. Once the Paladin who still lived had been healed and I’d regained my strength fully.

  “Thank you for helping her,” I said to the Paladin securing the bandage with a knot.

  He looked to me and there was something akin to awe in his expression. “Thank you for saving all of us.”

  My neck flushed. “It wasn’t just me. We all did it. Together.”

  Loukas crouched down beside me and Sukhi, and the look he gave me filled me with warmth even as the rain sluiced down my hair and face, slowly soaking my clothes. “He’s right. Without you, we would have failed.”

  Our gaze met and held, and everything else faded away. There was only Louk and the heat in his green-fire eyes, and a sudden realization that we had survived. That we were alive. So very alive. Hearts beating and lungs breathing and lips speaking. I suddenly wished we were alone so our lips could be doing something very different. His eyes dropped to my mouth, as if he knew exactly what I was thinking. Heat unfurled in my stomach, and I suddenly became very aware of my skin, of the current that rushed over it, like lightning had distilled into the rain and coated my body with sparks, just waiting for him to close the space between us and touch me, igniting the fire he’d awoken in me by the stream.

  Had that only been one day ago? How was it possible that only one night and one day had passed, when it seemed an entire lifetime had been encompassed in those hours?

  Louk’s eyes burned, his body tensed as though the pull between us was just as strong for him as it was for me. But wishes weren’t easily fulfilled; we weren’t alone and there was too much to do, too many people suffering who needed me, to indulge in something as miraculous but untimely as another kiss. And alongside the wonder of having survived was also the blistering guilt of it … because so many hadn’t. Including Halvor.