I took one last look at my room, everything inside me so tight, I wondered that I could keep breathing, keep moving at all. Would I ever return—ever see this bed, these walls, that window again? I’d never felt trapped here the way Zuhra did. The citadel was a comfort to me, the familiarity of the few rooms we lived in, the hallways I walked every day of my life, the lack of hatred here—that I knew awaited me outside the hedge.
But my eyes no longer glowed, my power no longer marked me as a target. I was nothing more than a normal girl to anyone I met now.
With a long, slow breath that chafed my throat, I made myself shut the door.
“Inara, good.” A voice from down the hallway took me by surprise. “I’m glad I caught you.”
Confused, I turned to see Sachiel striding toward me. For the first time in my life, I wore breeches like hers, after Zuhra explained how uncomfortable it would be to ride a gryphon in a dress. She halted in front of me, glancing around furtively.
“Is your sister in her room?”
“I don’t think so,” I replied, baffled by the fervency on her face, the low whisper of her voice.
“We don’t have much time, so I will make this quick.” She reached out for my arm and pulled me in closer to her, her voice dropping even further. “There is a way to get your power back.”
Words could be so very powerful, and oh—the power that those words held. Everything stopped with them, even my heart stuttered to a painfully hopeful halt.
“But if they succeed in killing Barloc first, you will miss your chance.” She glanced over her shoulder one last time before whispering, “You have to steal it back from him. The way he stole it from you. If you perform the same act, you can get it back. And then you shouldn’t need to be healed anymore.”
I stared at her. “Why are you telling me this now?”
She swallowed and glanced past me, urgency in every tense line of her body and the way she gripped my arm. “I thought you were healed—I thought that was the end of it. I didn’t think it was worth the risk. But Adelric has already lost so much. And now…”
Now that we knew I would continue to need to be healed over and over, and that eventually it might not be enough to save me. Now it was worth the risk. “How do I it? Do I just have to … to drink his blood?” A shudder of ice-cold memory gripped me; Barloc crouched over me, his mouth stained crimson, my neck ripped open.
“Basically, yes.”
“But … how would I ever get close enough to him to try—let alone actually succeed? This plan—your plan—hinges on Loukas being able to control him for only a few seconds. Just long enough to … to kill him.” I couldn’t bring myself to say cut off his head. It was no more than he deserved, but too gruesome to consider.
Sachiel glanced furtively down the hallway. “Well … I do have another idea.” She beckoned me closer and began to whisper.
“I’m not sure about this.”
I stared at the massive beast, heart racing, palms slick with sweat. It ruffled its feathers, as if my nervousness were agitating it.
“You’ll be fine. Flying is the most amazing feeling in the world,” Loukas said from beside me.
I wasn’t sure what I was more scared of—getting on that thing, or having him get on behind me. I wanted to ride with my father or even Sharmaine, the other girl. But Father was taking Mother with him, Raidyn was taking Zuhra, of course, and Father said Halvor had to ride with Sharmaine to help keep the weight even.
That left Loukas for me.
I wasn’t sure why, but he scared me. He was so big—tall and muscular—and so quiet; his strange green-fire eyes took everything in, but he rarely commented on anything or got involved in any of the discussions. I much preferred Halvor, his easy conversation and his warm brown eyes. But Zuhra didn’t seem worried about me riding with Loukas, and Halvor didn’t have a gryphon, so riding with him wasn’t a choice.
I had no option except to lift my leg and let him help me swing into the saddle, the way Zuhra, Mother, and even Halvor already had, their Riders climbing on behind all of them. The breeches I wore were too revealing, too tight. Loukas grabbed my boot and easily hurtled me into the air. I had to grab onto a fistful of feathers to keep from launching right over the top of the gryphon and landing on the ground on the other side. I’d barely managed to right myself when he settled onto the saddle behind me, his arms coming round me to pick up the gryphon’s reins. I stiffened.
“I’m sorry, but there’s no other way to ride double. Maddok isn’t used to it, so I need to have both hands on his reins,” Loukas explained.
I glanced over to see Halvor scowling from where he sat in front of Sharmaine, her arms similarly wrapped around his thin waist to grip her gryphon’s reins. I tried to summon an encouraging smile but was afraid it ended up being more of a grimace.
The only good thing about being paired with Loukas was that it gave me an opportunity to talk to him without being overheard.
If I could summon the courage to do it.
The other Paladin who were staying at the citadel stood on the steps, solemnly seeing us off. Father whistled loudly and the gryphons began to move. Sachiel lifted one hand, her burning gaze on me as Loukas’s grip tightened even more and Maddok charged forward. Her words from earlier still rang in my ears as the gryphons leapt off the ground, their powerful wings spreading and catching the air, pushing us up into the sky. My stomach lurched into my throat as the ground fell away. I had to squeeze my eyes shut.
“Isn’t it amazing?” Loukas was barely audible over the wind and the beating of Maddok’s wings.
I didn’t respond, too busy keeping my eyes closed and gripping the gryphon’s feathers.
“You don’t need to rip those out. I won’t let you fall.” It sounded like he was trying not to laugh.
It took conscious effort to relax my grip on Maddok, but somehow I managed to loosen my fingers—slightly.
“Don’t you at least want to take one last look at your home?”
The finality of those words—the realization that I may never see the citadel again—was what finally jarred me enough to open my eyes and turn my head. We were already far enough away that the citadel and the hedge began to blend into the cliffside where it perched, the waterfall that ran underneath it entirely visible, plummeting to the valley floor a thousand feet below it. I’d seen bits and pieces of it before, from the courtyard, from the trail when I’d ventured to Gateskeep to try to heal those wounded by the rakasa … but I’d never seen it so entirely before. Not like this.
My home was … breathtaking.
I watched until the hedge was nothing more than a thin green line, the citadel a gray speck against the massive mountain.
“There,” Loukas said when I finally twisted to face forward, “you see? It’s not so bad.”
I didn’t respond.
After a few moments of nothing but the sound of Maddok’s wings beating against the wind, I finally asked, “Where are we going?”
“I’m not sure. All I know is that we’re following the river for now, since that’s where Melia and Cyrus found him.” Loukas released the reins with one hand to point at the earth far below, to a narrow, winding band of blue amidst the thick growth of trees and bushes.
“How will we see him from way up here?”
“We’re flying this high because it’s daylight and we’re out of range of attacks up here. Once we switch to nighttime, we’ll fly lower and probably a bit slower, too, to try to track him.”
“Oh.”
We fell into silence. Though Loukas was right—it wasn’t so bad after all—I was still uncomfortable so far off the ground, being carried by the flying beast. If the Great God had intended for me to fly, he would have given me wings.
It took me quite a while to build up the courage to broach the subject Sachiel had talked to me about earlier that morning, but as the sun began slowly lowering in the sky, I realized our time without being overheard could be ending at any moment. Surely we had to stop to rest and eat at some point.
“Um, Loukas…” I began and felt him perk up immediately after the long stretch of silence. “I, um, have something to ask you.”
He waited, but when I didn’t continue, he finally prompted, “Yes?”
I cleared my throat, but no amount of effort could get my heart to go back into my chest where it belonged, instead of pounding in my throat. “After what happened last night … when Raidyn and Zuhra had to heal me again…”
“Yes?”
“Sachiel came to tell me an idea she had … a way to heal me. Permanently. So Raidyn and Zuhra don’t have to keep risking their strength.”
There was a long, weighted pause. “And what does her idea have to do with me?”
After what Sachiel had told me, I’d been even more terrified of riding with Loukas. But I didn’t feel any different … surely if he’d wanted to use his power on me, he would have convinced me I loved flying … wouldn’t he?
I swallowed. “I have to steal my power back. The way he stole it from me. But … I don’t know how I’d ever get close enough to him. Especially when the plan is to kill him first.”
He stiffened behind me, and Maddok, perhaps sensing his Rider’s discomfort, made a sharp cawing noise, attracting the attention of some of the other Riders nearby. Raidyn and Zuhra were closest to us, and she looked over with eyebrows lifted. I tried to smile reassuringly at her, but my lips trembled.
“She told you about my ability, I presume.” His voice was cold, all friendliness from earlier gone.
“Yes,” I stammered.
“And you want me to use it to help you.”
It wasn’t a question. But I still repeated, “Yes,” so softly, I didn’t even know if he could hear me. “I don’t know how else I could get close enough to him to try to get my power back.”
“Did Sachiel happen to mention what using my ability does to me? What it requires of me?”
I shook my head.
Instead of telling me, he was silent for several minutes. Though I felt fine at the moment, I knew it was only a matter of time before whatever Raidyn and Zuhra had done would begin to unravel again, the hole within me tearing open once more. If Loukas refused to help me, soon we would track Barloc down and kill him. There would be no chance of getting my power back—of healing myself for good.
“And assuming I did this for you—am I honestly to believe you are willing to do back to him what he did to you? To kill him to regain your power?”
“Kill him?” I repeated.
“You are the only known survivor of such an attack. I doubt Raidyn and Zuhra would be willing to heal him over and over again.”
“But … he didn’t have the power to begin with. He won’t have a hole inside when I take it back.”
“If he survived the change—which it sounds like he did—then his body has changed with it, to accept your power as his own. Tearing it from him will have the same effect as it would on any Paladin.”
I felt suddenly sick again, but this time it had nothing to do with flying. Was I willing to kill him? He was doomed to die either way as soon as we found him. But could I be the one to do it?
He’d stolen my power, had sentenced me to certain death that Raidyn and Zuhra could only hold off for so long … but could I truly do it back? I thought of him crouched over me, the unbearable pain of having my power ripped out of me, leaving me a husk of who I’d always been, of Grandfather’s body lying on the ground, dead, my grandmother injured on the other side of the gateway—all because of him. I thought of the triumphant joy he felt when he’d slaughtered those gryphons, that I’d experienced through the connection I had with him now, that I still hadn’t found the courage to admit to anyone. The connection I was desperate to sever.
My gift had been to heal, but he would use it to kill and kill again and again and again.
“Yes,” I finally answered, fierce and unforgiving. “I am willing to do it. And if you’ll help me, I promise you I will succeed.”