We rounded a jagged bend where the wind howled louder, funneling between the stone like a living thing. The ridge ahead sharpened into a ledge no wider than two paces. On the left,cloudless sky dominated the horizon. On the right, a steep rise of wet rock, jagged as shattered glass.
Wyn’s steps grew increasingly hesitant. I saw it in the way her shoulders hunched inward, how her hand clutched the edge of her cloak like a lifeline. Her breath came quickly and shallow, the kind that preceded panic.
I’d seen it before in new recruits facing their first real drop. That brittle, wide-eyed silence. When their bodies betrayed the effort to seem composed.
She was trying to be brave. Pretending.
But the tremble in her fingers gave her away.
I slowed my pace as far as possible without breaking the line. I couldn’t reach her—not without endangering the others—but I turned just enough to catch her eye over my shoulder.
“Princess,” I whispered, not wanting to startle her. “Wyn. Look at me.”
She reluctantly did. Her eyes widened, caught between the terror of falling and the shame of revealing her fear.
“Tell me something,” I said. “Something you know. Something interesting. Doesn’t matter what.”
She frowned. Then, after a moment, she said, “Nightbloom asters only open when the moon is full. They close again before sunrise, no matter what.”
Her voice steadied slightly with each word, her steps evening out.
I nodded. “Good. Another.”
“Um…bees don’t like the color red. They prefer blues and purples.”
Her tone was firmer now, less breathless. And the panic had eased from her posture.
“Keep going.”
She did.
The ridge curved again, widening a bit as it arced around a jut of stone. I felt the shift in the air before I saw it, like something sucked the wind backward into the mountain’s lungs. My hand went instinctively to the hilt on my belt.
And then I heard it.
A sharp gasp.
I turned in time to see Corren, two paces behind us, frozen in place. Something was wrong. His body had gone rigid. And then I saw the shape behind him. A shadow uncoiled from the stone, tall and lean and too close.
A blade arced forward, slicing across Corren’s throat with terrifying silence. No crying, no chance to move. Just the wet gurgling snap of breath and blood. He fell to his knees first, clutching at his neck as a spray of red fanned across the stone. For a heartbeat, he knelt there, shaking, eyes wide with shock, before his body crumpled and pitched sideways off the cliff’s edge, vanishing into the mist below.
Wyn let out a terrifying gasp, a raw, involuntary sound, as if the air itself was trying to escape her lungs in sheer panic.
The shadow straightened itself.
Riven.
His silhouette emerged from the mist. Dark leather, scarred hands, a long blade still dripping red. His eyes flickered with something not wholly human, something cold and lit from within.
Lark shouted, panic flaring across his features. He rushed forward, sword raised, but he didn’t see that Riven was ready. A dagger flashed and drove deep into his abdomen with a sickening crunch. Blood poured instantly, soaking the front of his tunic in a grotesque bloom. He gasped, a high, broken sound, and staggered back a step, then another. His sword slipped from his grip. He looked down, hands trembling as they pressed uselessly to the wound. More blood welled up betweenhis fingers. Then his knees buckled, and he collapsed beside Corren’s still-warm trail, gasping like a fish on dry stone.
Gideon was already moving, blade drawn and angled low. “We’ve got company!” he barked. Alaric raised his sword.
“Hold the edge!” I shouted. “He’s driving us toward the drop.” I grasped Wyn’s hand in mine.
Riven smiled, raising one hand. “That one,” he said, eyes sliding to where Wyn had stood, who was now in front of me, “you weren’t supposed to make it this far.”
The words crawled over my spine like ice. I clenched my jaw. Of course, it would be this. I’d seen him do it before—twisting earth like it was clay. I saw the magic take hold. Veins of light, how raw and fractured it was as it crawled up his forearms, pulsing just beneath the skin. His fingers twitched, and the ground answered. He was rock-gifted, born of Tarnak’s domain. The air went tight around us, pressure rolling in like a wave.
