It only gives me the smallest twinge of satisfaction.
I glare at them all, and they fucking know. The next time I see them, I’ll kill them.
The kid is still lying on the floor, but as I watch, he gasps and coughs, the first signs of him waking, and as soon as he does, his barrier begins to ripple, like a blanket being shaken out in the wind.
“Time to go,” Ryatt urges. Turning away, he tosses my arm over his shoulders and all but drags me toward a timberwing. “Can you ride on your own? We’ll go faster if you can ride in your own seat.”
“I can ride.”
“You sure?” he asks dubiously.
“I said I can ride,” I grit out.
“Okay, okay, asshole. Let’s go.”
“How are you here?” I ask as I stumble to the beast. I hate to admit that I wouldn’t have been able to walk this short distance if it weren’t for Ryatt holding me up. “Whose timberwing is this? Where’s Argo?”
“Our soldiers caught up to me—just like I told you they would when I found you in that desert. Argo’s on his way back to Fourth as we speak,” he tells me. “Probably already on a ship. He’s in good hands, I promise. One of them is an animal mender.”
Relief fills my chest.
In a forceful move, Ryatt shoves me up onto the saddle of the squatting timberwing and starts to quickly buckle me in. “We can catch up to the others, ride the same ship. I doubt any of these fuckers will try a damn thing once we’re behind our borders.”
But I shake my head, my hand snapping out to grip his wrist. “I’m not going to Fourth.”
Ryatt pauses, jerking to look behind us at the shield as it starts to snap and fray. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I’m going to Deadwell.”
He frowns, opens his mouth to say something, but then realization dawns. “You’re going to the rip.”
I nod. “I have to find her, and I’m not going to have the strength to use any more raw power. I can’t open another rip right now.”
Ryatt shakes his head. “Deadwell is a long ways from here. We’ll have to change out the timberwings.”
“You’re coming with me?” I ask, surprised.
“I’m your brother. Of course I’m fucking coming with you.”
I study his face, see the determination and fierce loyalty radiating through him. And I nod. Because at the end of the day, no matter how hard things are between us, no matter how many arguments we get into, we’re brothers. He has my back, and I have his, and that’s all there is to it.
“Now don’t fall,” he orders before he runs and jumps on his own timberwing—his own beast that he lent to me so I could fly here.
If he and his group hadn’t found me in the desert, if I hadn’t shown up here when I did, Auren would be dead. Just thinking about how close she was makes my blood feel like ice.
With a slight tap of our heels, the beasts jump into the air in tandem, just as the barrier falls away like a shirt yanked from a clothespin, caught in the wind and disappearing from view. The other monarchs are watching my ascent and scattering like ants, afraid I’m going to fly back down and catch them.
They should be scared. I hope they jump at every shadow. Twitch at every dark line that creeps into their peripheral vision. I hope they keep looking over their shoulders, watching, waiting for me to be there, hunting them.
The timberwing I’m riding lets out a roar, and the monarchs flinch, making a cruel smile twist my lips. Then we’re up in the clouds, and they’re out of view.
And we start our race toward Deadwell.
The journey is long, and I feel every moment keenly, just like I did when I raced from Fourth to reach Auren. Luckily, I was able to stay on the saddle, though I certainly wasn’t conscious for most of the ride that first day and night. I was too weak to do much of anything, so Ryatt led the way and made the plans and kept us moving.
I slept when it was time to land, I ate when he shoved food in my hand, and held onto the reins with a strained grip, while my sapped strength slowly returned.
But something was different.
I was able to use my normal magic again on the third day, making the grass wilt and rot beneath my feet. However, two days after that, when my rot was back to normal, I tried to see if I could use raw power, tried to test if I could possibly open another rip without having to use the one in Deadwell.
I couldn’t.
It wasn’t as if I could dredge it up but only a splutter of it came out. No, I couldn’t call on my raw magic at all. There’s a pit deep in my center where the well of raw power used to be, and it’s just empty.