Gemma turns back around in her seat. For an instant, I think she’s going to slow her balira so that we can fly along
side each other, so that she can talk to us. I open my mouth and start to tell Magiano to pull aside and give her room.
Then she turns back to face us—and a crossbow is in her hand. She lifts it and fires.
I’m too shocked to dodge.
“Move!” Magiano snaps at me. He shoves me hard, and the arrow sings past my neck. I fall flat against our balira’s back. My ears ring.
Gemma fires a second arrow, this time toward Magiano, but Magiano ducks low and pulls our balira sharply left. The arrow shoots past us and disappears into the darkness.
Magiano grits his teeth and urges our balira to speed up. “We need to work on your reflexes, my love!” he shouts.
My fear changes to bewilderment, then betrayal, then anger. White-hot, searing anger, burning the whispers in my head and forcing them out of their cages. They flitter around my mind like a cloud of furious bats until I can barely see.
You would have gladly seen me dead, Gemma.
A part of me tries to urge that, no, perhaps Gemma had only fired a warning shot, had purposely missed us—but the whispers in my mind shove this thought away. My teeth clench, and my fists tighten so hard against the reins that the rough ropes cut my palms.
How could you? I spared your life in that alleyway. Don’t you know?
I should have killed you.
I can hardly breathe. I don’t even care if what I’m
thinking is fair. I should have killed her right there, it would have been so much easier. It would have sped up our goals. Why didn’t I? My power churns with my fury, and I push myself back upright on the balira’s back. I lean toward Magiano.
“Chase her
up
,” I shout. Perhaps it is a whisper in my voice that shouts, because in this instant, I no longer have a voice of my own.
Magiano pushes against the balira’s back. The creature lets out a haunting cry that shudders through our bodies. Then it dives. It dives so sharply that I have to steady myself against the saddle so that I don’t slide off completely. Almost immediately, Magiano pulls it back up, and the balira jerks its head up toward where Gemma flies.
She senses us. Suddenly our balira shudders off course—she is trying to manipulate our ride’s mind. Magiano grits his teeth. He pushes back. Our balira steadies. Magiano pulls it until its head is turned back up, and then he whispers something to it.
Gemma sees what we’re about to do, because she pulls hers up too. We charge forward, hurtling higher, leaving the warring bay below us. Rain flies in my face and I feel that old panic again, the fear of not being able to see, and I hastily wipe the water away. Gemma’s balira swings its tail in an arc. Its needle-like endpoint swipes at us, threatening to cut us—Magiano pulls us away at the last second. He forces us to move slower, out of the tail’s reach.
I grit my teeth and reach out with my energy. The threads shoot toward her, wrap around her like a cocoon, and then, as I concentrate,
tighten
. I feel her shrink away, her terror jump. From her point of view, it seems as if the world had suddenly rushed up to her, the sky become the sea, and she is upside-down, hurtling into the ocean and submerged in water. She can’t breathe. From where we are, I see her hunch over in her saddle in panic. Her balira veers sharply off course as she tries to turn them around in their illusion of an ocean.
I grit my teeth and tie my strings tighter and tighter around her. Gemma twitches violently again as she feels like her lungs are filling with water. She’s drowning, and she claws at the air, trying to swim.
“Adelina.” Magiano’s voice cuts through my concentration like a knife. My illusion wavers, and for a moment, Gemma can see. “We have to pull back!” he shouts. “We’re too close to the storm!”
I hadn’t even noticed. The black clouds loom far too close, an endless blanket of black that stretches in every direction—and we are about to plunge right into it. I blink, breaking out of my anger. Above us, Gemma shakes her head and realizes the same thing. But her concentration has been thrown off, and her balira struggles against her, refusing to listen. Magiano pulls our own balira so that its nose points down again. The black clouds leave our view, and I find myself staring once more at the bay dotted with fire and warships. We start to dive back down.
I look, once, over my shoulder, to see Gemma still struggling with her balira. It lets out a shriek of protest.
Then the dark world lights up, and we all go blind.
A bolt of lightning—a crack of thunder that splits the sky. The sound explodes all around us. Heat sears us from above. Magiano and I both throw ourselves against our balira’s back as it continues to plummet down. I can’t see anything but light. Something burns. My eye tears up. Magiano somehow manages to pull our balira up as we near the bay—I feel my weight drop down against the creature’s back. I’m trembling uncontrollably. All I can do is turn my face to one side, and through the blur, a streak of light shoots past us.
It is Gemma, burning, falling to the ocean. Her balira’s enormous, lifeless body hurtles beside her. Struck by lightning.
I watch her. She falls forever, the shooting-star thief, her light fading from a streak into a dot, then into nothing, then, finally, into the sea with her balira. From the ocean’s surface, I know the impact must look like a tidal wave, pushing all the ships around it outward in a ring. But from up here, it looks like an insignificant splash, like she was here and then she was gone.
And the world continues as if she had never existed.
My heart twists, but we have no time to dwell on it. Even as we sit, stunned and suspended in midair, Magiano turns his head toward where a cluster of ships have gathered around a single one. Baliras dotted with white-cloaked figures head toward it. Immediately, I know this must be Queen Maeve’s
Beldish ship. Magiano shouts something at me. I nod in a daze. Below us, an anguished scream comes from a voice I recognize all too well as Lucent’s. She is screaming Gemma’s name.
Magiano turns our balira away, even though all I want to do is stare at the spot where Gemma had hit the water, where ripples have covered her flaming light.
Mankind has been fascinated with baliras for thousands of years. Countless stories have been written about them, and yet we are still no closer to understanding the secrets of their flight, kin, and life in the deep.
—
A Study of Baliras and Their Closest Cousins
, by Baron Faucher
Adelina Amouteru
We are close enough now to the ocean that the cannon fire sounds deafening. Rain whips sideways against us. Some of the Kenettran warships nearest the royal Beldish ship blow sharply off course, and I realize that Lucent must be somewhere nearby, pulling and pushing at the winds to throw the Kenettran army into turmoil. Others fire at the Beldish ships—only to see their cannons unwound right on the decks of their ships or their cannonballs vanish in midair. Michel at work. I keep expecting to see Gemma reappear on the back of one of the baliras zooming through the skies, but she doesn’t. The rain streaks lines on my face. I remind myself that we were enemies.
There are so many Beldish ships. One quick glance is all it takes for me to see that this isn’t a battle the Kenettran navy can win. How can we ever push them back? I look down to
where the royal ship sails. It is surrounded on almost all sides by reinforcements, and the Kenettran navy is throwing itself forward in vain. Baliras in armored plates soar around the ship, protecting it from the air. Other Elites ride on some of them—one is wearing the royal gold of Beldain. Perhaps he is one of Queen Maeve’s brothers. As I look on, he makes a sharp gesture with his arm toward a Kenettran soldier. The enemy rider rocks wildly backward, as if hit hard, and falls from his balira.
“Get closer,” I call to Magiano, pointing to a clearing in the sky.
“If you have any clever ideas for how to do this without killing ourselves, I’m happy to listen,” Magiano shouts back.
I look harder at the Beldish formation.
The royal ship is protected on almost all sides.
A half circle of warships. Beyond them is another ring, and then another, until all of the ships look like a honeycomb.
“Look out!”
I throw myself flat against the balira at Magiano’s warning call. A cannonball explodes near us, sending a surge of sea spray high up in the air. I duck. Our balira jerks sideways with a roar, one of its wings singed. I catch a brief glimpse of the Beldish warship that fired at us. My energy churns madly within me, feeding off the fury and fear from the thousands of soldiers in the bay. It builds and builds, until the flesh right underneath my skin tingles from it, as if it might rip me completely apart.
The tether between Enzo and me trembles. I look around
instinctively. My heartbeat races.
He’s here.
The bond trembles violently—as if he has realized I am near too—and an instant later, I see him. He is on the back of a balira, and a stream of fire bursts from his hands, aimed down at the Inquisition ships below. Inquisitors follow closely on his tail. A Beldish rider near Enzo screams as he weaves fire right out of the air and hurtles it toward the soldier. Fire consumes the soldier—he falls from his balira’s back, and the balira, now without a rider, dives toward the water.
Enzo,
I call through our bond. He turns to face me. His energy hits me hard, right as I try to exert my own power. Magiano shoots me a look and tightens his grip on me. For a moment, Enzo meets my gaze, and his stare is hard and dark. I know right away that the Daggers have told him everything.
He turns in the direction of an Inquisition warship. He opens his hand, then closes it into a fist. The simplest, smallest movement.
A line of fire explodes across the surface of the water with a deafening roar. The flames race toward the ship at terrifying speed, then burst and curl as they strike the ship’s mighty hull. The fire swallows the wood. Flames shoot high into the sky, engulfing the entire ship. The blast blinds me. I throw an arm across my face, trying in vain to shield myself from the heat and light. My bond pulses violently, his energy feeding mine, the heat scalding the insides of my body. I tilt my head back and close my eye as anguished screams reach us from the Inquisitors on board the burning ship.
The fire hits something—the gunpowder of the cannons. A fierce explosion shudders on the ship’s deck. Burning splinters of wood fly into the air, some rocketing toward us, smashing into the water in giant plumes.
I need to control him.
Enzo’s energy is finite, and making such a big move will almost certainly take something away from him. But suddenly it is all I can think about. If I can gain control over him, then we can win this battle.
“Get us closer to Enzo,” I say.
“As you wish, my love.” Magiano pulls hard on the reins, and our balira veers off our course to fly beside Enzo. On our other side flies Sergio and Violetta. Magiano pushes us forward until we are a triangle, and then he takes us down hard.
We skim along the ocean surface. Cannon fire explodes around us, but Magiano pushes on. I feel the balira shudder underneath us. It is injured, and it will not fly us for much longer.
We sail past the burning ship, and as we do, the Beldish queen’s vessel suddenly comes into view, startlingly close. Enzo’s balira draws near, and my heart soars, our bond screaming for us to be closer.
Then, suddenly, Magiano yanks us to one side. An arrow hurtles right over our heads. I only have time to let out a startled cry before I see another balira pull up close to us. Maeve’s hard eyes bear into mine. She hoists her crossbow at us.
I fall flat against our balira’s back. Behind Maeve, Lucent
lifts an arm—a blast of wind hits Magiano and me. I squeeze my eye shut and hang on for dear life. Our balira screams in protest. It flips in midair. When I open my eye again, Maeve has pulled right next to us. She crouches against her balira and makes a flying leap toward ours.
Her sword is in her hand the instant she lands. She lunges at me. I’m so surprised that all I can do is throw my hands up in defense. My powers lash out desperately at her, seeking to wrap her in an illusion of pain. For an instant, it seems to work—Maeve shudders mid-attack, then drops to her hands and knees. Magiano whips out a blade of his own and slashes at her. But another blast of wind from Lucent forces him back. At the same time, Maeve glances up at me with clenched teeth, fighting to tell herself that the pain she’s experiencing isn’t real.
“You little
coward
,” she spits at me. Then she manages to come for me again. Her blade glitters.
Another cannon explodes near us, hitting our balira’s other wing, and it careens wildly out of control. Suddenly I feel nothing beneath me but rain and air, and all I can see is a blur of sea and sky. I reach out blindly to grab for Magiano’s hand, but I don’t know where he is.
I hit the ocean hard. The icy water knocks the breath out of me, and I open my mouth in a vain attempt to scream. My hands grapple for the surface. Cannonballs and arrows streak through the dark water, leaving trails of bubbles in their wake. The muted sound of explosions sends tremors through my bones. My lungs scream. This is the
Underworld, and I will meet the gods on this dawn. The fear trapped inside me bursts free, and my powers veer wildly out of control. For an instant, I remember what it felt like to stand within an inch of the burning wood at the stake, an inch from death. I feel my power intensify and the whispers ignite in my mind.
Then I see the flicker of fire and light overhead, and turn my face in its direction. I kick out as hard as I can. The sky draws closer.
I break through the surface of the sea. The muted sounds around me turn deafening. I turn my face up to the sky to witness the terrifying illusion I’ve painted across the stormy night—a monstrous creature made of ocean and storm grows, covering nearly the entire expanse of sky, its eyes burning crimson, its fanged mouth so wide that it stretches from one end of its face all the way to the other. It lets out an earthshaking shriek. I feel the call from deep in my bones. On board the ships closest to me, Inquisitors and Beldish soldiers alike drop to their knees, shielding their faces in horror.