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Keres stands unmoving as the devastation around him increases, his crimson-cloaked warriors lost to the storm.

“Aella!” he shouts. “You are full of surprises.” He laughs, a grin splitting his face.

I stalk toward him. His guards vanish into the swirling chaos, ripped away one by one. Still, his laughter rings out, even as the force of the wind sends him to his knees.

Until a crack like the sound of glass shattering drowns him out.

Something slams into my chest.

My body hits the sand, driving the air from my lungs. Stars dance in my vision, and I blink rapidly to clear them. Instead, the stars solidify into figures.

Four winged men stare down at me, their expressions severe.

I struggle to rise as an unfamiliar constraint holds me firmly in place. Slowly, I turn my head to the side and I struggle to make sense of the opalescent silk spreading across the sand beside me. Its shimmering texture ripples, marred by sand and blood where it lies trapped under a winged man’s foot. My back twitches, and it rustles in response.

A wing. My wing.

The realization slams into me with the weight of a falling star, and a cry rips from my throat as shock and fury twist together.

“Release the wind,” one orders, his voice like frost cracking branches. His faintly glowing eyes are stern, unyielding.

“I can’t.” My fists clench, and the winds continue to writhe. “I won’t.”

Not until he’s dead.

Chapter 53

Nyssa

Blood sprays as the soldier’s scream gurgles into silence, the white-haired man’s sword slicing clean through his throat. The body crumples, lifeless.

I stumble back as he turns toward me, but then the storm steals my focus.

It rises higher, wider, until a wall of wind and sand carves itself between us and Aella, a boundary no mortal could hope to cross.

“Aella!” The name tears from me, a desperate cry that vanishes into the vortex.

The white-haired man’s grip is iron around my waist before I can take a step toward the storm.

“Gods, you’re as reckless as her,” he growls. “You’ll die if you’re caught in that.”

I push against him. “You don’t understand! She’s—”

His grip on me doesn’t falter. “I understand more than you think.”

The vortex writhes, and our feet slide through the sand as the intensity of its power pulls at us. The man curses, and a blaze of light flares from his frame. As it clears, wings spread from his back.

“What in the—” I don’t get a chance to finish before he scoops me up and lunges forward.

My breath stammers, too shocked even for fear as his wings cut through the air with precise, powerful beats. He remains low to the ground, carrying us toward a huddled group on the far end of the arena.

He sets me down, my legs barely stable beneath me before he speaks to someone behind me. “Keep her safe. I’m going for Aella.”

“Wait—” I stagger after him as his wings stretch wide again. “You can’t—”

But his focus is already on the storm. He launches himself back into the chaos, cutting through the air like an arrow. I take another unsteady step toward him, uncertainty warring with the surge of panic rising in my chest.

“Nyssa!”