When Sukhi touched down in the field next to the gryphons’ stables beside Maddok, the last thing I expected was for Louk to come to my side and help me down, or make any show of what had happened between us.
But I also hadn’t expected him to practically throw himself off his gryphon and storm back to the stable, ignoring me entirely.
Sukhi bent so I could dismount, which I did, slowly, my legs shaky and stiff, my heart only slightly less so. Something had happened between us in that clearing—something far deeper than a kiss. I knew it … and I knew he knew it. But what would he do now? Now that we were back to the reality of what lay ahead, so many unknowns, so much potential devastation and struggle—the chance to return to Sharmaine …
Sukhi stood and bumped her beak against my stomach, a soft tap, as if letting me know she understood my turmoil and was there for me. I reached up to rub her feathers, the downy softness of her neck striking me as fascinating—that a creature so giant, so powerful, so deadly, could also be so soft, so gentle, so thoughtful.
Much like Loukas, except reversed. He was all deadly, powerful, angry intent, but underneath that hardened shell, he was softer and kinder than he was ever willing to admit.
Perhaps that was why he had fled, rushing away from me as fast as he was able. The neck of my shirt was still damp from his tears, and my arms ached from holding him. I was a witness to his suffering now, a potential threat of exposure—or a potential threat of further harm.
“Come on, girl,” I murmured, leading Sukhi to the stable, unsure if I should try to find Loukas or make sure to give him enough time to flee. I was awash with indecision, embarrassment even. In the clearing I had felt so strong, so right. Being with Loukas had felt right.
But now, with him gone, doubt swooped in where there had been certainty.
Doubt … and guilt.
I’d never kissed Halvor like that, as I’d admitted to Loukas. I’d never felt like that with Halvor. He had always been sweet to me, caring and gentle and kind, and there for me. He’d never fled, had never abandoned me. And what had I done? I’d hurt him by falling for the boy who couldn’t even look at me after we kissed, after I’d held him while he cried.
That was the bigger problem, I knew. Not the kissing—not even the fact that if we made it back and they’d all survived, that I could tell Sharmaine that we’d kissed, when perhaps he wished to keep it a secret.
It was the fact that he’d broken down with me, that he’d shown me his heart.
Somehow, I knew he’d never allowed anyone else to see him so vulnerable before. And that, more than anything, was why he’d bolted.
When the storm raging within him had finally finished, leaving him shaking and drained in my arms, we hadn’t said a word. We hadn’t even kissed again. He’d merely pulled back and I’d let him go.
We’d mounted our gryphons in silence and flown back without speaking. Not even once.
It had been a mistake.
I knew that now, but I’d been nervous … and afraid. Afraid of what he’d say to me—what he thought of me. Afraid that, despite what I’d said, he probably viewed me—and what had happened—as a mistake.
I’d used up all my bravery in that moment when I’d refused to let him shut me out, leaving me gutless when I’d needed it most.
“Inara!”
We’d almost reached the stable door when the shout took me by surprise. A woman’s voice, slowly becoming familiar—though not the panic it held.
I turned to my grandmother, who wasn’t quite running across the field, but walking as fast as legs could move without running.
“Where have you been? Where is Loukas?”
“He took me flying—on Sukhi.”
“For the entire day?” She reached me and my gryphon, anger spitting from her eyes.
I flushed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know we’d be gone for so long.” There was no plausible way to explain how long we’d been absent without admitting what had happened, so I fell silent and waited.
“You have no idea where you are, so I didn’t expect you to be able to make sure you were back sooner than this. But Loukas…” She shook her head, her mouth downturned in displeasure. “There’s nothing for it now. And there’s been more news.”
My embarrassment drained into dread at the way she said “news”—the way someone might say “death” or “tragedy,” both of which were probably part of what she had come to tell us about.
“What’s happened now?”
Louk’s deep baritone from behind us made me jump. I spun around to see him leaning against the open door of the stable, hands shoved into his pockets, any lingering traces of his breakdown erased, his imperturbable mask back in place. Our eyes met and held; a tremor from the hook still wound around my heart shivered down my spine to the bottom of my belly. I refused to be the first to look away. With a slight lift of one eyebrow, he turned to Grandmother. For some reason that tiny triumph of willpower—you will not ignore me, you will not push me away—felt like victory enmeshed with failure. As if his willingness to give up so easily was his way of saying I don’t care.
Grandmother exhaled, a push of air out her pursed lips redolent with weariness and worry. “Another patrol arrived over an hour ago. There have been more murders … and every single one of them had their throats ripped out,” she said, and all thoughts of Loukas and kisses and tiny triumphs fled. “There’s no possible way Barloc is acting alone—not with this many dead. We must assume he’s found members of the Infinitium sect and is having them steal power as well. For what purpose, we can only imagine. And with his ability to rip tears between worlds, they could leave at any moment. We no longer can hope to keep them from your world by only guarding the gateway.” Her eyes lifted to mine, an apology in their depths.
My breath came fast and hard, my blood a spinning rush in my veins. “What can we do?”
Grandmother’s eyes dropped to the earth, her hands clasped in front of her. “I know what Alkimos would have had me do.”
My grandfather. Her husband, who had died in Vamala.
When she looked back up, her eyes flared with determination. “We will take an army and go to the gateway. We’ll find Barloc and stop him and whoever else he has brought with him. No more innocent lives will be lost—not on my watch.”
I couldn’t help but stare. After everything I’d heard about her, the magnitude of such a declaration wasn’t lost on me. “When?”
“As soon as possible. We’ll fly through the night if we must.” She turned on her heel and marched back the way she’d come. “Loukas,” she called over her shoulder, “gather whatever members of my son’s battalion are here and willing to go. You will lead them until we reach Adelric.”
There was a shocked moment of silence, and then he said, “Yes, madam,” but I wasn’t sure if she even heard him—or the gratitude he couldn’t quite conceal from his voice—as she was already halfway across the field.
“We’re going back,” I said, a relieved smile lifting my lips.
“You can’t ride on Maddok with me if I’m to lead the battalion.” Loukas glared at me, as if I’d asked him and he was refusing me.
My smile turned into a scowl. “I don’t need to. I have my own gryphon now,” I reminded him.
“You think you’re qualified to ride in a battalion because you managed to endure one easy flight?” he scoffed.
I stalked forward, until I was close enough to shove a finger into his chest. “That is enough. First, you know that was not an ‘easy flight’—and I kept up with every twist and nosedive and climb you threw at me. And second, I don’t know why you’re acting like this. You can try to pretend like nothing has changed between us, but you know it has and so do I.”
The fire in Louk’s eyes flared brighter, a muscle in his jaw jumped. “I told you then and I’ll tell you now—it was a mistake. You think you know me, you think you understand me, but you’re wrong. You are too young … and naïve … and you have Halvor. I’ll agree not to tell him what happened by that river, but only if you agree to keep it to yourself as well.”
I stared at him, my lungs caving in, the hook in my heart ripping right through it. After that kiss—after the way he’d cried in my arms—the way he’d held me as if he were drowning in his own pain and I was his only chance at ever reaching the surface … this was it came down to? He wouldn’t tell Halvor if I didn’t tell anyone either?
Sukhi cawed, a sharp warning at my side. Loukas backed up a step.
“If you’re determined to ride her to the gateway, I can’t stop you. But hopefully you can survive the pass through those cliffs. I won’t be there to catch you if you fall.”
With that, he turned on his heel and strode away, leaving me standing beside Sukhi in stunned silence. Alone—and somehow furious and devastated all at once.
Grandmother was true to her word. By the time I finished finding Sukhi water and a meal—I had to ask another Paladin where they kept the stash of rodents—and went in search of food for myself, she had already gathered two dozen Paladin willing to go through the gateway, with twice that many more saying they would also come. All of them, plus the members of the council who were needed to open it, made for a much larger force than I’d even dared hope for.
I hadn’t seen Loukas again, but part of me didn’t want to. I just wanted to go home—to my sister, to Sami … even my mother and father. And Halvor. If he survived whatever lay ahead and still cared for me, I couldn’t lie to him. I would have to admit what had happened with Loukas and how it had changed me.
Could I build a life with Halvor—if that was even what he wanted—now that I’d had my world and heart turned upside down and torn apart by Louk?
Focus on seeing Zuhra again. Focus on finding and stopping Barloc. None of this matters unless we all survive. You have a gryphon and your power back—you can help. That’s the most important thing to remember.
Though I’d yet to figure out if my power was the same—if I was still a healer or not—somehow I knew it was even stronger than it had been before Barloc had ripped it from me. I knew I could help … one way or another.
After rushing through a small meal of fruit, some sort of roasted fowl, and fresh juice—one of the best meals I’d ever been given, but that I hardly even tasted—I hurried back out to the stables, to Sukhi. I wanted to be sure I wasn’t left behind … and I wasn’t certain I could trust Loukas to wait for me if everyone gathered and was ready to leave before I got there.
When I walked through the open door into the fading light of evening, nearly a hundred Paladin and their gryphons filled the field outside the stable.
It was stunning and overwhelming; it was hope reincarnated in the form of more than a hundred pairs of glowing Paladin eyes turning to me and then away again when they realized I wasn’t Ederra, the leader of the council and the one who had, inexplicably, had such a massive change of heart and orchestrated this mission.
To rescue the humans—who had taken so much from her, and from them—but who were, for the most part, innocent and not worthy of dying at the hands of a murderous, power-hungry sect of jaklas with the ability at last to do as they’d long dreamed—to take over the human world and become their rulers.
I looked out over the army of Paladin and my heart swelled, my eyes burning.
I was going home, and I was bringing hope and a chance at victory with me.
It only took a few minutes for me to weave through the assembled crowd, go into the stables, resaddle Sukhi, and head back out with her in tow. By the time I did, my grandmother was there, standing on the steps in front of the massive door that led into the castle.
“I know I am asking a lot of many of you. I am not the only one who has lost loved ones at the hands of humans in Vamala. But, as my late husband often pointed out”—a murmur rippled through the crowd at her words: Alkimos is gone? Alkimos died?—“most of them are innocent and afraid. And they are in need of our protection once more. The jakla who attacked me found a way back to Visimperum. He has recruited other members of the Infinitium sect to his cause—and has made them into jaklas as well, through the murder of at least fifteen Paladin that we know of so far.” Another surge of shock went through the assembled Paladin, the combined horror of such a large group palpable in the air. “So you see, this no longer only affects Vamala. If we let them go unchecked, who knows how many more Paladin will also die, feeding these true monsters their power and enabling them to grow so strong, we will have very little hope of stopping them.”
She paused, letting her words sink in. It was in that moment I realized she was speaking in Paladin—and I still understood her. Had that been part of the gift the Mother of all Paladin had given me? Before I could make sense of such a phenomenon, she continued.
“I know we are all risking our lives by following after them and trying to stop them. Especially when they are capable of absorbing our power for at least the next few days until the change is completed. But we have to try. Before they slaughter anyone else. I asked you to bring your Paladin steel because even a jakla can’t survive a beheading.”
With that last, gruesome word, Grandmother lifted her fist. “To the skies! And may the Light hold us and keep us safe in our quest!”
A responding cry went up from the crowd, echoing up to the stars that had begun to emerge as velvet night spread across the world. Then everyone climbed on their gryphons, weapons strapped onto backs and legs, faces set in determination.
My heart beat rapid-fire in my chest, part thrill and part terror. Only now did Louk’s meaning become clear, about surviving the cliffs … I’d forgotten about that tiny strip between two peaks that was the difference between life and a swift, painful death, and was also the only way in or out of the bowl of sky-high mountains surrounding Soluselis, a natural defense that had never been breached.
The mountains encircled us, distant right now, but all too close soon enough. Those jagged peaks split the night into shards of starlight and flayed my already-flagging courage.
“Having second thoughts?”
I spun at his voice, torn between snapping something ill-tempered and begging him to let me ride on Maddok in front of him—just until we made it through that thin little gap far, far above the earth. Sukhi could follow behind and I would ride her the rest of the way—in the open air.
All I ended up saying was, “No.”
In the sea of blue-fire eyes, mine included, his green ones flashed like a beacon, announcing to everyone that he was different. Even there, in that field crowded with Paladin and gryphons, they gave him as wide a berth as possible. I wondered how many members of my father’s battalion were there—if any had refused to fly under Loukas’s leadership, out of misplaced fear.
We stood there, several feet apart, surrounded by organized chaos, for the span of three heartbeats that somehow felt like thirty and none all at once—time slowing and speeding past, in a tangle of emotion and regret and fear and longing. I looked up into his shadowed face, his dark hair falling forward into his brilliant emerald eyes—jewellike, stunning … and sad.
It finally struck me—never once had he said: We shouldn’t have done that. It was only ever: I shouldn’t have done that.
I stared at him, my heart thudding against my ribs. “Do you think you somehow influenced me? Do you think it was your doing—what happened by the stream?”
Louk stiffened, his lips thinning, but he didn’t deny it.
“That had nothing to do with you. Well, it did,” I amended when his eyebrows lifted, “but not because of that. Not because of your … ability. I chose to kiss you, because I wanted to.”
“You can’t know that for sure.” His voice was low and a little hoarse. “Sometimes … if I’m feeling something very strongly, it happens when I don’t intend to use it. It’s more subtle, but it’s still there—it’s still me. Not them … Not you.”
I stepped toward him, but Louk backed up, a warning flashing across his eyes. There was no time—or space—to push him. Not right now. So I stopped, miserable and frustrated, that hook around my heart pulling me to him no matter how much he resisted. Was that his power? Or was it my own true feelings?
“You’re too young and naïve to know your own mind and heart enough to decipher the difference.”
My cheeks burned; I could only hope the darkness hid my embarrassment. “I don’t know if you keep saying that to convince me or yourself.”
He had the decency to flinch.
“And yes, thanks to the roar that consumed me for most of my life, I suppose I am naïve. And yes, I’m younger than you, it’s true. But I am not that young—and I am fully capable of knowing my own heart and mind. In fact,” I continued in a rush, knowing the signal to take off would be given any minute, with neither of us on our gryphons yet, “if anything, I know my own heart and mind even better because of it. When I recognize something real—something true and powerful—I embrace it fully because I have no idea how long I will be allowed to experience it.” I blinked hard a few times to force the sting in my eyes to go away—at least until I was safely away from his burning gaze, which raked over my face with such intensity, it chased away the chill of night and sent my breath crashing through my lungs. “The truth is that the only person who doesn’t know their own heart or mind is you.”
Louk’s mouth opened and then shut, his eyes flaring in the darkness.
Before he could respond, I turned away, to Sukhi, who immediately knelt on her front knees to let me climb on her back.
“Inara.”
I refused to look down, though his voice came from right beside where my left leg hung at her side.
“Inara, please.”
When his hand came to rest on my calf, still noticeable even through the supple leather of the boots my grandmother had found for me, a shiver slipped up my leg, and I relented, looking down at him. He was tall enough that his face was level with my hip, even on the back of a gryphon. His fingers tightened on my leg when our gazes met.
“I’m sorry,” he said, so softly, I might not have believed I’d heard him correctly, except I’d seen his lips form those two words that made all the difference. “I’ve never…” He trailed off and shook his head. His shoulders tensed and his gaze dropped.
Before he could say anything else, there was a piercing whistle from the steps. Silence fell over the crowd of assembled warriors—which had grown even larger—so immediate and absolute it was a little chilling.
Loukas squeezed my leg again and then let go, shooting one last haunted glance up at me, before turning and rushing to Maddok and swinging himself onto his gryphon’s back.
Within seconds, the first group of Paladin Riders had taken to the skies, with the next group right behind them. Loukas’s battalion—my father’s battalion—were second to last, but it only took another minute or so before it was our turn. I tightened Sukhi’s reins, squeezed my already-fatigued legs against her sides, and prayed that I would somehow find the energy to stay on her back—especially through those cliffs—and make it back to my sister.
Then finish the conversation with Loukas.
Preferably before I came face to face with Halvor again.