Instinct told her to squeeze her eyes shut; self-preservation kept them open. The Eridysi was going to crash into the Solfatarra. Acid and heat would boil Safi alive—and there was nothing she could do about it except watch death zoom closer.
Then a jolt battered through her. The Eridysi changed course, pitched a different way. Someone screamed; it might have been her.
Safi clung more frantically to the balustrade. As tightly as her arms would allow, though gravity clawed.
Fog streamed past. A living, moving thing. But no longer was the Eridysi aimed for it. The machine was swerving sideways now, and the Solfatarra’s end was so near. If they could just reach the forest beyond before they crashed. Please, she prayed. Noden, Hagfishes, the Twelve—please, let us reach the other side.
Then the machine was past. The last tendrils of fog whispered out of sight, and Safi spotted individual branches on individual trees. For some inexplicable reason, her brain identified every one rushing her way. There was a silver fir. A spruce over there. And straight ahead, where the Eridysi was going to land any moment, was a barren hornbeam.
Perhaps jumping overboard would be the safer option. Better to hit branches than to get tangled in a flying machine—
“Do not let go!” Leopold roared over the winds.
So Safi did not let go, and a fraction of a heartbeat later, the Eridysi swung in a new direction. Then back again. Swing, swoop, spin, swing. A sinking ship with too much speed. Bile rose in Safi’s throat. Her vision crossed.
They hit the tree.
Shock rammed through her. Wood crunched and hornbeam snapped, so loud that Safi lost all sense of sight or sound. Pain blasted through her. Blood welled on her tongue—and elsewhere too, deep scrapes on her left forearm, her right calf, the whole back side of her head …
As fast as they had hit, the crashing stopped. The Eridysi was no longer falling and the wood no longer cracking in two.
“Safiya.” Caden’s voice fuzzed into her awareness. He was dragging her. Wood scraped under her boots. Splinters snagged on her clothes. She thought she heard something creaking, but her ears weren’t working as they ought to be.
“Climb,” she heard, and with a confused blink, she realized a rope ladder now hung beneath her. It extended toward a hard earth, half hidden by shadows that would not stay still. Thick branches scraped and spun.
The creaking groaned louder.
“Climb,” Caden repeated, and suddenly he was on the ladder and trying to pull Safi onto it.
Gods below, why was the earth moving so much? And what was that creaking?
Somehow, she got her feet beneath her and her arms onto the rope. Somehow, she descended. Every fiber scraped fresh pain into her left palm. Her right leg trembled and burned. Bare branches scratched at her cheeks, streaked in her vision. Yet Safi moved, slowly, slowly, toward the ground.
Until suddenly the creaking turned to crashing. Until suddenly Caden bellowed, “Jump!,” and Safi realized the Eridysi was coming down on top of her.
She jumped. A clumsy, painful move from a ladder that offered no traction, no force. Air whizzed past. She was still so high …
Her feet hit the ground. Instinct took hold, and she transferred into a roll. Two rolls. Maybe three. Then she landed on her back as the last of the branches holding the Eridysi broke in two.
Safi curled into a ball, head protected.
The Eridysi hit the ground. The earth trembled. Splinters flew. Then it was over. She was alive and she was safe.
For several moments, Safi stayed tucked in her ball. She waited for the cracking sounds to dissipate from her hearing, for the ground to stop its trembling. When eventually she felt safe enough to breathe and look around, she unfurled. Then patted her pockets: the Threadstones were still safe.
Caden lay sprawled nearby, but no one else. No Lev, no Zander, no Leopold. She jolted upright, gaze spinning. The flying machine was a wreck of wood and branches and shredded sail. “Lev?” she called, towing in her feet. “Zander? Polly?”
“They … fell.”
Safi spun toward Caden. He looked as bad as Safi felt—a deep gash across his cheek. Twigs and dirt in his hair. “They fell,” he repeated.
“No,” Safi breathed. “How far back?”
“I don’t know, but we’ll go after them. We have to go after them.” All clear, all clear.
“Yes,” Safi agreed. She moved to help him rise … only to get a full view of Caden’s leg. Blood oozed outward from his calf, and his pants were stained through. “Can you stand?”
Before he could say this, though—before Safi could get him up to test the leg—footsteps thumped out in the forest. Hope surged in her chest. She spun about, ready to welcome Lev and Zander and Leopold. Ready to laugh and hug them close.
But it was not her friends who charged out from the underbrush. It was two Windwitches, each with Cartorran armor and air spinning around them.
“Surrender,” barked the nearest, “or die.” Then he and his partner lifted two pistols and aimed them at Safi’s and Caden’s hearts.
* * *
Iseult shambled through the fog. Without sight, she was aimless. Without breath, she was fading fast. And without touch, she was nothing but her insides. Her soul. Her emotions gushing outward: hate, love, frustration.
And regret. So, so much regret. I will fix this. I will fix this. She had to fix this. Her face seared, her eyes streamed, but at least she sensed no Threads tracking behind.
Except now that she was reaching and stretching, no other senses to interfere, there was something new within her magic. Unfamiliar, tinted yellow, and sparkling with air. Windwitchery. It was the power she’d leeched, but with no ghost attached, no voice to shout at her and drag her into nightmares. Just a tiny well, finite and waiting.
Esme squeaked into her ear. Use it, use it now. And Iseult didn’t need any more prodding. She had stolen that power, but now it would be her salvation.
Go, she told the magic. Fly.
The wind burst free. A punch of air that lashed around her, just as it had lashed around the Windwitch. Up it flew, a single magic assigned a single task. Iseult’s feet left the earth, and with each inch she lifted—faster, faster—the more true air slipped into her lungs and acid flames pulled away. Her stomach dropped. Her ears and brain swelled, then popped, and Esme clung so tightly her claws pierced skin.
Until at last they were above the fog, above the Solfatarra. Wind thundered, a roar of sound and cold and blessed purity. It was not the first time Iseult had flown, but it was the first time she had been the one to control it.
To the west, the moon hung low upon the sky. Full, glowing, silvery against a still-darkened sky. To the east, sunrise peeked out with golden light.
Mother. Iseult directed the winds south, toward the forest and the camp. She would find Gretchya, fly her away on these winds she should have discovered—would have discovered if she weren’t always such a fool.
But instead of forest and snow, instead of Purists and tents and ruins forgotten, there were only Threads to the south. A hurricane, swirling and gathering, engorging and darkening as one by one, more Threads were sucked in.
Corlant was coming.
Lightning cracked. A black cloud abruptly formed, and winds that were not Iseult’s clawed against her. Powerful enough to tow her down, cold enough to freeze her where she flew.