Total pages in book: 247
Estimated words: 235897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1179(@200wpm)___ 944(@250wpm)___ 786(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 235897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1179(@200wpm)___ 944(@250wpm)___ 786(@300wpm)
My eyes prickle. “Please.”
Sloane’s fearful gaze snaps to mine.
“Mira?” Dain runs, then drops to a knee beside me. “Oh shit.”
“Please,” I blatantly, shamelessly beg Sloane. “Brennan needs more power, and we’re going to lose her.”
She takes one tentative step, then another as Brennan trembles, his hands on Mira’s neck. “I don’t know how. When your m—” She stops herself. “Transferring is different than imbuing. I know that much.”
“Whatever you’re going to do, you’d better do it fast,” Bodhi warns, drawing a sword and standing guard, his eyes on the sky.
“Try,” Dain urges, shoving the sleeve of his uniform up his forearm. “It’s dangerous to use your own power if you haven’t trained, so take mine. I’m the only one here who doesn’t have to wield today. Just try.”
A wyvern snarls behind me, and a distinctive snap follows.
Sloane lowers herself between Dain and Brennan as Mira’s blood soaks into my leathers.
“One hand on my wrist,” Dain says gently, like he’s talking to a skittish horse.
She stares at the gray handprint that scars his forearm. “I don’t want to do that. Become that.”
“You won’t.” He lifts his brows. “You can hate me later, but trust me now or she dies.”
Sloane wraps her fingers around Dain’s wrist. Her eyes flare, and she swallows. “Someone like you shouldn’t have this much power.”
“Good thing for Mira I do. Put the other hand anywhere his skin is exposed,” he orders.
Sloane drops her little package and lifts her hand to the back of Brennan’s neck.
I brush Mira’s hair off her forehead, leaving a bloody smear behind. She’s so damned pale. I should have told her about Xaden. She should have told me about my dedication. We’ve wasted so much time keeping things from each other, when Dad warned me to only trust her. If I had, would this still have happened?
“Do not blame yourself for wounds you do not inflict,” Tairn lectures.
“Eyes here,” Dain says, and Sloane looks his way. “Pull from the excess you feel in me, and push to the deficit in him. You’re not a weapon of destruction. You’re not venin. You’re the artery power chooses to flow through. You’re life.”
Her brow knits, and Dain flinches. “I’m going to hurt you.”
“Gods, don’t I know it.” He nods. “But you’re not going to kill me, no matter how badly you want to. Now do it.”
Her mouth tightens, and Dain grits his teeth.
Precious, long seconds pass before Brennan breathes deeply and color flushes his cheeks. I glance back to Mira, expecting the worst, but her chest still rises and falls. Blood ceases to drip, color returning to her cheeks.
“Brennan?” I whisper, too scared to even hope.
“It’s messy, but she’s alive.” My brother sits back, his frame drooping as he drags the back of his arm over his sweaty brow. “Thank you, Mairi.”
She lets go of both men, then lifts her gaze to mine. “She’ll be all right?”
“Thanks to you,” I say to Sloane.
She blows out a swift sigh of relief as Brennan reaches for the waterskin clipped at his hip. He quickly uncorks the top, then pours the water over Mira’s neck. A thick, angry pink scar straddles her throat.
I push her hair off her forehead again and give myself exactly three seconds to feel everything. My chest threatens to explode.
One. She’s alive.
Two. I won’t have to navigate a world where she doesn’t exist.
Three. Brennan is a fucking miracle worker.
“We have to get Mira out of here,” I say to my brother as the snarls and sounds of tearing flesh diminish behind me. A shape comes flying overhead but is yanked back by a rope of shadow. Pretty sure it was a talon.
“Agreed.” Brennan looks toward Draithus, where an outright battle has begun. Dragons and gryphons hover above the city walls as enormous cross-bolts fire into the cloud of approaching wyvern. “You all right, Aetos?”
Dain twists his hand around his wrist. “I’m good.”
My stomach clenches. The hardest part of this will be trusting everyone to do their jobs, and the city isn’t mine to hold. I glance at Xaden, then Dain. “You both have to go. They’ll be out of cross-bolts soon.”
Dain rises to stand and offers his hand to Sloane.
“Fuck off, Aetos.” She rocks forward and up to her feet.
He pauses like he’s counting to three. “Get back across the wards, Mairi, and stay there.”
She turns on her heel and stalks toward Thoirt, lifting a middle finger.
Bodhi snorts.
“Fucking first-years,” Dain mutters as she mounts. “Riorson, I’ll meet you down there.” He heads toward Cath’s foreleg.
“Dain!” I shout, and he looks back over his shoulder. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. Just tell me later how the fuck Garrick and Chradh disappeared into thin air.” He takes off at a run, and within a matter of seconds, both Thoirt and Cath fly in separate directions.
Bodhi helps Brennan to his feet.