“Then let me do it!”

“Dagny…” Cyprien shuffles forward, his face set in stone. “You have to go now.”

“No!”

“Dagny, please,” Malice begs. “Please… don’t fight this. We need to get you to safety. We need to get you away from here and back home.”

“I am home. With you all, I finally am,” she whispers.

Malice smiles, but it's not a happy one. “I know. And you’re mine—you are all of ours. Which is why we need to do this. Please let me do this, wildfire. Let me do this one good thing for once in my miserable fucking life.”

Dagny stares for a long minute, seeing past the mask I’ve worked so hard to build over the years. The one I didn’t realize I was wearing till I laid eyes on her.

“I’m sorry,” she says, the silver ring around her eyes spreading, consuming the color in a single blink. “But no.”

She tears away from my grip, barreling toward Kaebl’s slumped form before Malice has a chance to stop her. “Wait!” he screams. “You can’t use any more magic!”

“I know,” she says, crouching down to wrap her arms around Kaebl’s torso. “I don’t need it.”

Dagny’s skin bursts with an iridescent glow as her feathered wings spread out, fluttering violently in the roaring blizzard. Sweat beads across her brow as her flight muscles strain, attempting to lift their bodies into the air.

A burst of power explodes from Dagny’s throat, filling the air with a scream that shakes the ground and cleaves the skies. Frozen in utter disbelief, I watch my mate—the most powerful being in this world—soar above the canopy, her beautiful wings staining the dark skies with brilliant inky feathers.

Too awestruck to move, to react, I stand on the ground, my heart following my mate into the atmosphere. Malice wraps his arms around my middle, pushing off the ice with a mighty roar as Lir and Cyprien carry Roark into the air.

We fly up, up, up, chasing the shadowy streak flying across the landscape. And from down below, a furious roar thunders across the distance, filled with enough hatred and rage to bring the castle to its knees a second time.

Slaine’s bellow fades to nothing more than a whisper as we continue our climb into the upper atmosphere, then disappears entirely as we cut horizontally through the sky, heading back into Abaddon’s territory.

But the fury lingers long after it’s gone.

15. Malice

15

Malice

We fly for hours—past the point of exhaustion, longer than any living creature should be able—and then we keep going. And all the while, the blizzard roars around us, the violent gusts of wind and ice threatening to send us off course or, worse, crashing to the ground.