A scuffle breaks out behind Eero. Drystan and Bram are struggling against their captors, but it won’t make a difference.
“Dear heart,” Titania murmurs, fighting tears. “Breathe. Close your eyes and think of your mates.”
“Fuck that,” Maeve snarls. “Kick him in the balls so he has something to remember you by.”
“Dodge!” Mab yells.
I dodge to the left, crying out as Eero drives the blade home. I don’t know why I bothered. He’s hundreds of years old. A warrior. He won’t miss.
A blur of movement and a brush of fur is all the warning I get before a black fox dives between us. Bram shifts, his body slamming into me, driving me back as the knife comes down.
The strike reverberates through his body and into mine like a punch as I’m shoved into the window with enough force that the glass shatters.
I barely have time to process the sight of my brother staggering, then falling to his knees. Beyond him, Eero’s satisfied expression morphs into one of pure rage as I topple backwards in a shower of colourful shards.
Into empty air.
Forty-Five
Rhoswyn
“Spread your wings!” Mab cries.
Fuck, I’m trying, but the wind is buffeting me. It steals my screams as they escape. The fabric of my dress is tangling everywhere, and the glass from the window is falling with me, scratching everywhere it touches.
The sea is getting closer.
Spread, damn you, spread!
Finally, they snap open, and I flap them desperately. Tense and release. Come on. Come on, come on, come on.
Am I slowing down? Is it even enough to stop the sea from shattering every bone in my body?
The sea spray hits my face, and I close my eyes, determined to keep focusing on the rhythmic pattern of tense and release.
“Hey,” Maeve calls. “You’re not dead, but you might want to rotate those wings, throw up a glamour, and get the fuck out of here before someone else realises it.”
Snapping open my eyelids, I almost lose control at the sight of the water roiling a mere foot below my face. I take a shaky breath, then force myself to do as she says.
“What about Bram?” I demand, then curse as talking saps concentration, and I wobble in the air. It takes a minute of focus before I try again. “I could go back—”
There’s a heartbeat of silence. A grim look shared between the three of them that speaks of a truth I’m not ready to accept.
“You don’t know where the others are being kept,” Mab reasons, flying closer so I can hear her. “Maybe, with Danu’s help, you might be able to free the redcap and the huntsman, but if anyone escapes…”
Wraith, Kitarni, and Dare will be dead before I can find them.
“You need to get off your wings before you strain them from doing too much flying too soon,” Titania encourages. “Get to the beach.”
“Landing will probably be rough,” Mab warns me. “And the iron in your system isn’t going to make it any easier.”
“Sand is soft.” Maeve brushes both of them off. “Come on, angle your body like this and rotate your wings like—yeah. That.”
I’m moving. I’m actually flying. It aches like hell, and Goddess, I’m tired already, but I’m actually flying.
If not for the horror of the last hour, I could cry out with joy.
Instead, I let out a sad little half-sob.
