the one who found him when Nic needed to be found—but Aron had never imagined he would fulfill his obligation in such a dark fashion. Not like this. No, Brother save them all, it shouldn’t have been like this.
Snakekiller screamed again, and Aron wanted to fall down dead and never hear that sound ever, ever again, but half measures would do no good here. Shaking like a dantha leaf in a powerful wind, he opened his mind and moved through the Veil again, and this time, he commanded, Get up.
Moaning, huffing like beasts in labor, Snakekiller and Nic lurched to their feet. Their limbs moved like wood attached to rope.
Through waves of nausea and guilt, Aron stepped them through each motion.
Walk.
Watching them stagger, hearing them shriek in absolute anguish—Aron knew he would never rid himself of these images, of the nightmares that would come from them.
Then, with his assistance, Mount.
Wrap your hands in the gryphon’s mane.
He put Snakekiller nearest Iko’s neck, and ordered Nic to hold on to her as well as Iko’s mane.
With each movement, they roared with misery. Spittle flecked Nic’s mouth, and Snakekiller bled from her parted lips.
As Aron climbed on behind them, he felt the awful tension in Iko’s muscles and understood it, but he proceeded, because stopping now was as unthinkable as starting down this path in the first place.
As the soldiers thundered toward the clearing on foot, blades flashing in the blue-white afternoon light, Aron sent every one of the men a single command.
Sleep.
He paired it with the mental image of a few minutes passing in the movement of the sun across the sky. He knew that when they dropped their weapons and collapsed in slumber in Dyn Cobb’s meadow, they would be vulnerable to predators, but he hoped the risk would be small. They were, after all, trying to attack him, and maybe even kill the helpless quarry Aron was torturing in his attempts to return them to Triune for true aid.
“Go!” he shouted to Iko, careful to keep the force of command from his tone, holding back his graal as firmly as he gripped the groaning Nic to steady him.
Iko needed no urging to rumble forward and leap into the air, flapping powerfully once, twice, and again, then spreading his wings to soar, as if the wrenching cries of his unwilling passengers were forcing him to go more slowly, fly more steadily despite the need for haste.
Minutes passed, interminable, in the wind with the blood and screaming.
Aron’s muscles throbbed like they might tear apart, so tightly did he hold Nic, who at his command was working just as hard to steady Snakekiller. His mind seemed to unfurl behind him, scattering itself into the merciless, cloudless sky. Whatever he had been when he woke in Endurance House, that version of himself was gone forever.
What remained, he couldn’t say.
By the time Iko set them down in Triune, directly in front of the infirmary in the farming and retirement quarters, the better part of Aron hoped Lord Baldric would kill him on sight. He was only marginally aware of Stormbreaker, Windblown, Zed, Raaf, Blath, Dari, and seemingly the entire Stone Guild rushing to help as he released Nic and Snakekiller from his mental commands.
Only the wild flurry of hands reaching to bear them to the ground kept both of them from tumbling to their deaths off Iko’s tall gryphon back. Stormbreaker scooped up his sister, while Zed collected Nic, and the two of them led Raaf and the sea of gray away from Iko and Aron, leaving only Blath, Dari, and Lord Baldric in its wake.
Aron slid to the ground on his knees.
He threw up until there was nothing left inside him but emotion, nameless and endless and as terrible as Snakekiller’s screams. If he could have thrown up his very heart, he would have done it, just to be free of sensation, of memory, of responsibility, of his own dangerous, unforgivable essence.
Iko shifted quickly back to his Sabor form and walked away without a single glance in Aron’s direction. Blath followed him, silent, concern etched across her normally stern and blank blue face.
Aron couldn’t make himself get up. He couldn’t do anything but hug himself and stare at the ground in front of him.
“Aron.” Dari’s whisper was so painfully gentle it made him want to break down the center. The softness of her touch was even more unbearable. Seemingly since the day he met her, he had been waiting to hear that kind of