it.
It dove right then left, trying to skate between the gaps in the rope.
“It’s not going to make it,” Quinn said. “You need to pull out.”
“You can’t control the dead, and our forces aren’t strong enough to stop them,” he replied. “We have to take risks. I cannot lose—”
He didn’t get to finish the sentence before a pike with a foot-long metal arrowhead was thrown from the top of one of the mammoths. The windwyvern tried to avoid it but ended up taking it in the wing.
Quinn growled under her breath and turned to stab a man in the eye with one of her daggers before casting Lazarus a vicious look as the bird fell, and the soldiers finished it off then.
Its dying screams haunted him.
This was it. They truly had no way to reach Nero and end this.
The armies would fight until only one stood.
Fear traced through him, and not the kind that made his heart pound. This wasn’t Quinn’s fear. This was his own.
Lazarus threw himself into the fight with a sort of desperation that only a man with everything to lose could feel. He didn’t notice the skies darken as he cut down his enemies. He didn’t see the flashes of lightning that reflected off his sword.
It was only when he heard the thunder that Lazarus lifted his head.
A storm was brewing over all of Norcasta.
Over the world.
And in the center of it, a giant winged beast flew with a rider on its back.
“What is that?” Lazarus said, nodding to the sky. Quinn lifted her head and then narrowed her eyes.
“I think . . .” She focused for a moment, and then her expression smoothed. Quinn smiled at the dark skies as the first drops of rain descended onto them. “Risk has ascended.”
Chapter 48
A Changing Tide
“Anyone can be broken, but each of us must choose if we will be remade from it. We must choose what we will become.”
— Mariska “Risk” Darkova, beast tamer, Mazzulah’s heir
Wind and rain battered at Rainier’s wings. Risk lifted a claw-tipped hand and pulled her wet locks of white hair away from her face, peering down at the battlefield from the sky.
She hoped she wasn’t too late.
Judging by the sheer number of soldiers and red swatches of color that painted the field . . . she was right on time.
On wings of night, she and her familiar dropped from the skies. She projected picture after picture of Quinn, Draeven, Lorraine, and Lazarus to the night sphinx. They combed the field up and down. Fear and worry tried to eat away at her heart, but it was frozen, solid as ice in her chest, and it no longer beat. She pushed past those dark feelings and the hopelessness that tried to sink in, and she circled the battlefield once more.
“There,” Rainier said, tilting to one side to bank a hard right. Risk gripped her wet fur and squeezed her tired thighs. They’d been riding for weeks, crossing from the dark realm to the Sirian continent and then across it.
Risk didn’t sleep as she once had, and it made the journey easier. Neither hunger nor exhaustion slowed them down. Still, Rainier could not fly forever, and Risk’s body—while stronger than ever—still wasn’t used to flying. Especially without a saddle of any sort.
They’d improvised in an attempt to get to Norcasta as soon as possible.
With her ascension, her powers had been amplified to incredible heights. She sensed Neiss across the continent and followed that connection to the serpent.
She didn’t see him in battle now, but as Rainier moved closer and closer to the ground, she spotted Quinn.
She wore red and gold. Black magic drifted behind her in the wind like a dark cloak. Ashes fell from her skin with every twist and twirl of her blades. Her sister, pale with ethereal lavender hair and eyes of the lightest blue, wielded death and destruction.
But when she looked at Risk and saw her, it wasn’t the fear twister that smiled.
It was Quinn. Her Quinn. The one she’d walked into the dark realm for.
Soldiers scrambled to get out of the way as Rainier snapped her wings in and they dropped to the ground. Risk unclenched her cramped hands and stood on the back of her familiar. Rainier’s tail swished side to side in agitation at having people so close to her.
Like Risk, she preferred space, and a battlefield was anything but.
“Took you long enough,” Quinn shouted.
Risk couldn’t help but smile as she jumped down. Her boots hit the