Page 174 of By the Flames of Her Fury

“Tessa, you’re a Shifter. You can lift a horse.”

“Yeah, well, horses aren’t traitorous cowards.”

Beside us, the wraith surged forward, its shadows snapping against the wall as if urging us faster. The tunnel split, and Tessa looked frantically between the two. “Which way?”

I froze for a second too long. The ceiling groaned, more rocks crumbling on us. “This way!” I veered right.

That was the wrong choice. The floor down the right tunnel cracked open with a sharp snap, fracturing down the middle and exposing a pit of darkness beneath. I stumbled to a halt. “Back, back, back!”

The crack raced toward me faster than I could walk. My foot slipped, and a scream ripped from me as my stomach dropped⁠—

Shadows slammed into all three of us, wrapping around my waist and tugging us back. I hit the stone hard, and Starke and Tessa crashed down beside me. The wraith lingered above me for a heartbeat, the shadows around my waist squeezing before letting me go. I staggered to my feet and hauled the other two up. The wraith soared back the way we came, slipping into the other tunnel.

“Follow him!” I cried. Starke slowly came to, and I thrust him forward. We raced down the path. My Shifter half perked when the faint scent of fresh air whispered through the musty tunnel.

“Do you feel that?” Tessa panted, and I nodded. A breeze kissed my cheeks. Through a small opening up ahead, I saw the black Pyraethi sky, heard waves slapping against the nearby shore. The tunnel was too narrow for my wings to fit to fly us out, so I shoved Tessa and Starke forward, avoiding part of the ceiling as it came down around us.

“Faster!” I shouted. The exit loomed nearer, but so did the thunder of stone at our backs. Lungs burning, I summoned my magic and whispered one last spell. Wind rushed from outside and funneled around me, and I threw it at Starke and Tessa’s backs. They hurtled the last few yards, diving straight through the opening.

Glancing to the side, I saw the wraith’s body soaring next to me. As the floor gave way beneath my feet, I leapt.

The earth crumbled behind me. The entrance to the cave clipped my heel as I hit the ground hard, rolling in the dirt. Echoes of the tunnels collapsing rumbled through the air. I lay there, chest heaving, staring up at the sky, where pink and golden rays peeked out over the horizon.

I bolted upright. The sky…it wasn’t black anymore. Little by little, it shifted from midnight to deep indigo, then fading at the edges to bruised purple and blue. A thin line of molten gold shimmered at the horizon, pressing its way into the sky for the first time in centuries.

The sun.

“You did it,” Tessa breathed out, still lying in the dirt. “You raised a kingdom.”

I jerked my head to find the familiar swath of shadows, and I stumbled along the ground toward him. “Come back to me,” I whispered.

The first rays of sun broke the skyline and pierced his shadows like a spear. Wisps of darkness peeled away with a hiss, dissolving as the light consumed them.

I crawled to him. The sun crested the horizon, and the world burned gold, melting the last layer of shadows. I stared into gray and green eyes, then wrapped my arms around his neck and pressed my lips into every surface I could reach. His forehead, his nose, his cheeks, his lips.

“Swift,” I breathed out against him.

His answering smile melted into me. “Songbird.”

85

Everett

Passing through the streets of Pyraeth was bittersweet. The buildings were awash in a deep yellow and light pink glow as the sun fell on the land, the enchantment over the kingdom finally broken. But there was hardly anyone left to revel in it. The roads that had been seemingly filled with people on our first trek to the palace were now empty and silent. All the people who had once dreamed of seeing the sun again, sacrificed brutally for another’s thirst for power.

I put an arm around Vera’s shoulders and drew her into my side as we walked. Feeling her steady beneath me kept me grounded. Even though I’d only been in the shadow wraith’s form for a short time, the effect was…haunting. Not being able to truly touch, to see only the gloom and darkness of everything in front of me, to feel a neverending coldness where heat had once been.

I shuddered involuntarily, and Vera wrapped her arm around my waist. “You’re freezing,” she said. The air warmed as her magic seeped into me. I relaxed, not realizing my shoulders had been drawn up so tight.

“Thank you.” I buried my lips into the top of her head, brushing my fingers up and down her spine. She hadn’t left my side since I transformed back into a human, but I wasn’t complaining. We’d spent far too much time apart as it was.

“Are you okay?” she asked, peering up at me with worried eyes. “No weird shadow monsters in your head?”

I chuckled. “I’m okay. I’m just ready to be home.”

She hummed in response, leaning her head back on my shoulder as we turned into the palace courtyard. Tessa traipsed ahead of us with Captain Starke in tow. The sight of him made my jaw clench. “What are we going to do with him?” I grunted.

Vera sighed. “I don’t know, but I couldn’t leave him to die.”