Emberhawk - Jamie Foley Page 0,118

suns on Kira.

“You thought this would kill me?” Zamara’s voice roiled like an acid lake. “Aeo himself could not stop me.”

Kira tuned her out as she jumped down from the launcher. She took Ryon’s knife from his belt and bolted for the elevator’s last intact rope.

Zamara charged at Kira, but Felix bit into the hawk’s leg.

Kira reached the final rope and hacked at it with the knife’s serration.

Zamara’s eyes sizzled, and a wide swath of the platform underneath Felix burst into flame. It gave way and fell to the earth below, taking him with it. Kira heard it hit the ground with a warped crash as she panted a desperate prayer.

The hawk crawled on its wings toward Kira. “I blinded him, you know. One deaf and one blind.” Savage delight danced in Zamara’s laugh and flickered in her wild eyes. “I’ll flay him because of you. You’ll watch him mate my Illiana, and perhaps one day I’ll let you die.”

Kira yanked Ryon’s serrated knife with all of her strength, snapping clean through the rope’s last strand. The elevator groaned and plunged toward the forest floor.

Zamara reared back and took a deep breath. The rope attached to the harpoon in her back snapped taut as the elevator fell, smacking her down onto the platform. Shrapnel from one of the ruined pulleys skewered her through.

The hawk gurgled as a trio of wooden spikes protruded through her chest. As the weight of the elevator pulled her further down, Zamara’s body exploded into a maelstrom of silver dust.

Kira coughed as the fine mist floated all around her, immune to gravity for a brief moment. Light shone from a point where Zamara’s core had been, then shrank and crystallized into a glistening gemstone.

Time resumed. A ruby the size of Kira’s fist clinked to the platform, and the dust settled around her like snow.

And all was still.

43

RYON

Ryon awoke from a dream of smoke and demons. He breathed deep and his lungs ached—something smelled like a campfire gone wrong.

He blinked to clear the haze from his vision, but the blur didn’t fade. Ryon raised a hand to rub his eyes and found his fingers bound in clean cloth. They were too warm. Like the fires from his dreams had burned him.

Ryon snapped up in bed. It wasn’t a dream.

He didn’t recognize the bed he lay in, or the blurry painting on the wall, or the view of the window at the foot of the bed. He squinted and rubbed his eyes again. The details of bandages on his hands were sharp and crisp, but anything further than arm’s reach faded from recognition.

What happened? His memory was scrambled like Granny Zelle’s sweet potato jumble.

Ryon threw a colorful quilt off him and swung his legs over the side of the bed. A deep, dull pain rumbled through his gut. He looked down at his bare chest and found his stomach colored with splotches of purple, blue, and angry red.

“Whoa, easy there.”

An orange cushion on a chair beneath the window moved, and Ryon recognized a white-tipped tail. “Felix?”

“Wow, you’re not blind.” The orange ball of fluff bounced from the chair to the bed, and Felix’s green eyes crystallized with clarity. “You have my own luck, human.”

Blind? Panic cracked through Ryon like a whip. “What happened? What’s wrong with my eyes? Where am I?”

“You’re in Het’saya. Calm down.” Felix opened his mouth and breathed out a cloud of silver mist. It congealed into a symbol before Ryon’s nose. “What letter is this?”

Ryon identified the first letter of the alphabet, then swatted it out of the air. “Where’s Kira?”

“She’s fine. Of course you woke up at the one time she isn’t here.” Felix tilted his head, and the floating silver flitted away to form a different letter at the end of the bed.

Ryon squinted and made the letter’s sound. “Mom and Aegwyn? And the kids?”

“They’re all right.” Felix moved the letter to the blurry door in the far wall. “Apparently that Navakovrae turncoat kept his word.”

Tekkyn kept them safe, then? Relief clashed with anxiety in his heart. No matter how he squinted, the small silver blur was unrecognizable. “I can’t tell. What about Lysander?”

“I dunno.” The silver stream shot back between Felix’s canines. “Well, you’re nearsighted. Could be worse.”

No, this can’t be permanent. Ryon stared down at the bandages around his hands. “Zamara?”

“Dead.”

Righteous vengeance washed over Ryon in a torrent. “You killed her?”

“No, Kira did.” Felix raised a russet brow. “‘Just escorting her to Jadenvive,’ huh? Any chance you could do a