warning. Its crew looked around the deck, bewildered. No one had given that order. No one had lowered the sails.
“There’s no wind,” Kitay murmured. “Why isn’t there a wind?”
Rin heard a whooshing noise. A blur shot past her eyes, followed by a scream that grew fainter and fainter until it abruptly cut off.
She heard a crack in the air far above her head.
Admiral Molkoi appeared suddenly on the cliff wall, his body bent at grotesque angles like a broken doll on display. He hung there for a moment before skidding down the rock face and into the lake, leaving behind a crimson streak on gray.
“Oh, fuck,” Rin muttered.
What seemed like a lifetime ago, she and Altan had freed someone very powerful and very mad from the Chuluu Korikh.
The Wind God Feylen had returned.
The Kingfisher’s deck erupted into shouts. Some soldiers ran to the mounted crossbows, aiming their bolts at nothing. Others dropped to the deck and wrapped their arms around their necks as if hiding from wild animals.
Rin finally regained her senses. She cupped her hands around her mouth. “Everybody get belowdecks!”
She grabbed Kitay’s arm and pulled him toward the closest hatch, just as a piercing gust of wind slammed into them from the side. They crumpled together against the bulkhead. His bent elbow went straight into her rib cage.
“Ow!” she cried.
Kitay picked himself off the deck. “Sorry.”
Somehow they managed to drag themselves toward the hatch and tumbled more than walked down the stairs to the hold, where the rest of the crew huddled in the pitch darkness. There passed a long silence, pregnant with terror. No one spoke a word.
Light filled the chamber. Gust after gust of wind ripped the wooden panels cleanly away from the ship as if peeling off layers of skin, exposing the cowering and vulnerable crew underneath.
The strange man perched before them on the jagged wood like a bird alighting on a branch. Rin could see his eyes clearly now—bright, gleaming, malicious dots of blue.
“What’s this?” asked Feylen. “Little rats, hiding with nowhere to go?”
Someone shot an arrow at his head. He waved a hand, annoyed. The arrow jerked to the side and came whistling back into the soldiers’ ranks. Rin heard a dull thud. Someone collapsed to the floor.
“Don’t be so rude.” Feylen’s voice was quiet, reedy and thin, but in the eerily still air they could hear every word he said. He hovered above them, effortlessly drifting above the ground, until his bright eyes landed on Rin. “There you are.”
She didn’t think. If she stopped to think, then fear would catch up. Instead she launched herself at him, screaming, trident in hand.
He sent her spinning to the planks with a flick of his fingers. She got up to rush him again but didn’t even get close. He hurled her away every time she approached him, but she kept trying, again and again. If she was going to die, then she’d do it on her feet.
But Feylen was just toying with her.
Finally he yanked her out of the ship and started tossing her around in the air like a rag doll. He could have flung her into the opposite cliff if he’d wanted to; he could have lifted her high into the air and sent her plummeting into the lake, and the only reason he hadn’t was that he wanted to play.
“Behold the great Phoenix, trapped inside a little girl,” sneered Feylen. “Where is your fire now?”
“You’re Cike,” Rin gasped. Altan had appealed to Feylen’s humanity once. It had almost worked. She had to try the same. “You’re one of us.”
“A traitor like you?” Feylen chuckled as the winds hurtled her up and down. “Hardly.”
“Why would you fight for her?” Rin demanded. “She had you imprisoned!”
“Imprisoned?” Feylen sent Rin tumbling so close to the cliff wall that her fingers brushed the surface before he jerked her back in front of him. “No, that was Trengsin. That was Trengsin and Tyr, the pair of them. They crept up on us in the middle of the night, and still it took them until midday to pin us down.”
He let her drop. She hurtled down to the lake, crashed into the water, and was certain she was about to drown just before Feylen yanked her back up by her ankle. He emitted a high-pitched cackle. “Look at you. You’re like a little cat. Drenched to the bone.”
A pair of rockets shot toward Feylen’s head. He swept them carelessly out of the air. They fell to the water