Summoning every bit of the strength he possessed, he leapt into the air mere feet before the crowds of frightened people at the festival, spun mid-jump, and opened his arms at his sides like wings. A great, invisible shield, stronger than any mortal metal, pulsed into place. A wall made of will and fortified by magic. The kind of magic the Dark Lord strived to control.
The tidal wave of fire rushed forward—and broke against Killian’s shield just as he hit the ground in a defensive crouch. Behind him, people screamed. He held still, fists clenched against the parched earth, waiting as heat threatened to sear through his very being. A pair of great, leathery wings, tinged with fire, spread open on either side of him.
Dragon’s wings.
Holding fast to the Shield that kept both himself and his people from burning to ash, he threw his power up to the heavens, to the sky that instantly began to churn with his command.
Rainclouds swarmed, traveling on a swift phantom wind. Thunder split his eardrums, and the city trembled.
The fire grew stronger; flames singed his clothes.
With a battle cry that could be heard throughout the city, and a prayer in the back of his mind, Killian commanded the clouds with a rush of godly power.
Water cascaded from the sky in a blinding, torrential flood, nearly knocking Killian flat to the ground. It felt like a bolt of lightning had struck his core as magic erupted inside him. He kept his Shield intact, now sheltering his people not just from the fire, but also from water. Not just from burning—but also from drowning.
These were his people. And under his watch, no harm would befall them.
49
Breaking free of the mask was like being born again. Time seemed to slow as Sable plummeted through the fiery air, through smoke that settled heavily upon her tongue. It tasted like the ashes of a past life, a life that had been scorched to an unrecognizable state.
Even after all her years of training at the House of Ice before the king had invaded the realm, Sable’s fear of heights remained strong and unconquerable. She had never stopped being afraid of falling, afraid of what the ground would feel like once she hit it.
Now, for the first time in many years, she could honestly say that she wasn’t afraid. After everything she’d been through, she was still—impossibly—standing. She had her body back, her rosy-gold hair tangling about her head, her limbs as strong and capable as before she was trapped inside the mask. Even the Dark Lord couldn’t kill her.
But it wasn’t just this newfound knowledge that erased her fear as she fell through the air.
It was the golden wings that had sprouted from behind her shoulder blades the moment she’d burst out of the mask. Wind roared in her ears as she spiraled through the air, her arms outstretched toward Avalon—her friend and savior—who was falling just out of her reach.
Avalon had saved her life. She had freed her from a curse blacker than the night, from a cold prison where her memories had gone to shrivel and rot. Sable now owed her the kind of debt she could never repay. But she would spend the rest of her life trying, and she would start with catching her.
A flash of quicksilver in the indigo night, a twisting star shooting through the heavens, Sable spun. And then she became.
She became the wind. She became the shadows. She became the earth far below.
The night around her was dark, lit only by the lanterns down in the city and the brilliance of the stars above that forever shone, even in the face of destruction.
It hit her then: when one place burned, another blossomed. There was a spring at the end of even the harshest winter.
The past ten years had been a nightmare incarnate, a demon from the darkest part of her mind. And this sliver of joy—this heartbeat of sheer impossibility—was enough to reawaken the fire inside her that had diminished to a weak spark. The fire that had nearly gone out.
It gave her hope.
Her heart was pounding in her chest, but she took a deep breath and instructed the wings to be beat harder. Faster.
“I am your master,” she told them. “I am the master of wind and flight.”
The wings tucked at her sides, bending at her will as she dove lower, breaking through a fleece of smoke. Neither she nor Avalon would die tonight. It was her turn to be the angel.
For once in ten years, there was no room for fear. Up here, there was no room for anything except exhilaration. She had the sense that if she wanted to break the world in half, she could do it, she was that powerful. She was the reincarnation of Hilandria herself—the Goddess of Fire.
The universe was vast and frightening, but for the first time in her life, she felt as though she understood it. The ground ceased to exist. The sky ceased to exist.
Fear ceased to exist.
And so, she flew.
~
