hundreds of leagues a day.
She looked at Kyrie. He seemed to be thinking the same thing. Whenever they emerged from cloud cover, he narrowed his eyes, tightened his jaw, scanned the ground and sky, but kept flying.
I'm glad you're here with me, Kyrie, she thought. The thought surprised her. She was a loner. She needed nobody else. For years, she had prided herself on fierceness, strength, independence. Are you growing soft? she asked herself, but when she looked at Kyrie again, she understood. Kyrie is like me; young, fiery, the last youth of an endangered species.
Kyrie noticed she was staring and met her gaze. Concern filled his eyes. "Do you think there really are salvanae?" he said, the wind whipping his words. "That it's not just a legend?"
She bared her fangs. "Of course there are salvanae." She growled, blew fire, and clawed the sky, because inside her dread swirled. Ice filled her belly, and a shiver ran along her spine. If there were no salvanae, there was no hope. She would never save her parents. She would never defeat Dies Irae.
At the thought of Mother in prison, Agnus Dei felt a lump in her throat. She could imagine griffin talons scratching Mother, spears piercing her, ilbane burning her. Would Dies Irae kill her? Torture her? Agnus Dei couldn't help it—tears fled her eyes and flew back across her cheeks.
"Agnus Dei," Kyrie said, voice almost drowned under the wind. "Agnus Dei, I... I'm sorry about what happened. But Benedictus... I've seen him fight, Agnus Dei. He is amazing. I've never seen such a warrior. And he's after Dies Irae. He's flying to save Lacrimosa. If anyone in the world can do it, it's your old man."
She looked at him, tears still in her eyes. Clouds and sunbeams streamed between them. "If he's still alive."
"He is," Kyrie said, but uncertainty filled his voice.
The final clouds vanished, and they flew in clear skies. The land was wild below, covered with brambles and twisted oaks. Boulders jutted like teeth from tall grass. Rivulets glistened, and Agnus Dei saw a herd of deer raise their heads from the water, look up at them, and begin to flee. Agnus Dei was hungry, and her stomach growled, but she dared not swoop to hunt. Eating would delay her, and Agnus Dei wanted to fly, to cross thousands of leagues far into the misty realms of the west, lands beyond the maps of men and Vir Requis.
"Let's fly higher," Kyrie said. "We're too easy to spot here. If we fly high enough, we might appear as great birds."
She snorted. "You maybe, pup. I would never pass for a bird."
Still she flew upward. Kyrie flew by her, eyes narrowed, jaw clenched. They shot up in a straight line so fast, her stomach churned, her head ached, and spots danced before her eyes. But she kept flying. Soon they were so far up, she could barely breathe, and the thin air chilled her. When she looked down, the land was so distant, she could make out no trees or boulders or bushes, only patches of green and brown in all shades: bright green like fresh leaves, and deep gray-green like old forests, and brown like the barks of oaks, and pale green like the leaves of birches back in Requiem. The streams and rivers were but strands of silver, glinting. She had never flown so high.
Kyrie slapped her with his tail. "Fly straight," he called over the roaring wind, "and breathe well. If your head spins, or your eyes go dark, we'll go lower."
She growled at him. "I don't need flying lessons from a pup. Come on. See if you can catch up."
Agnus Dei flew as fast as she could, like she would as a girl when fleeing her scolding parents. As a child, none could keep up with her, not even the bigger kids, but Kyrie flew beside her the whole time. She tried to fly faster, to beat him, but could not. Hot shot, she thought with a snort. Hot pup.
Osanna moved beneath them, endless lands of wilderness, an empire stretching across the known world. But there is a land beyond Osanna, Agnus Dei thought. There had to be more lands. Had to! The world could not be just Osanna, just the realms of Dies Irae and his griffins. Once there had been other lands—Gilnor in the south, snowy Fidelium the north, and Leonis across the sea. Once there had been a land called Requiem, too, a land