A clump of ash landed on the torn knee of her leggings.

Her hands began to shake. It wasn’t a piece of ash.

It was a gray feather.

Bryce twisted to look behind herself. Her head emptied out. A scream broke from her, rising from so deep that she wondered if it was the sound of the world shredding apart.

Hunt lay sprawled on the ground, his back a bloodied, burned mess, and his legs …

There was nothing left of them but ribbons. Nothing left of his right arm but splattered blood on pavement. And through his back, where his wings had been—

That was a bloody, gaping hole.

She moved on instinct, scrambling over concrete and metal and blood.

He’d shielded her against the brimstone. Had somehow escaped Sandriel and come here. To save her.

“Pleasepleasepleaseplease”

She turned him over, searching for any hint of life, of breathing—

His mouth moved. Just slightly.

Bryce sobbed, pulling his head into her lap. “Help!” she called. No answer beyond an unearthly baying in the fire-licked darkness. “Help!” she yelled again, but her voice was so hoarse it barely carried across the square. Randall had told her about the terrible power of the Asterian Guard’s brimstone missiles. How the spells woven into the condensed angelic magic slowed healing in Vanir long enough for them to bleed out. To die.

Blood coated so much of Hunt’s face that she could barely see the skin beneath. Only the faint flutter of his throat told her he still lived.

And the wounds that should have been healing … they leaked and gushed blood. Arteries had been severed. Vital arteries—

“HELP!” she screamed.

But no one answered.

The brimstone’s blasts had downed the helicopter.

Only Fury’s skill kept them alive, though they’d still crashed, flipping twice, before landing somewhere in Moonwood.

Tharion bled from his head, Fury had a gash in her leg, Flynn and Amelie both bore broken bones, and Ruhn … He didn’t bother to think about his own wounds. Not as the smoke-filled, burning night became laced with approaching snarls. But the brimstone had halted—at least they had that. He prayed the Asterian Guard would need a good while before they could muster the power to form more of them.

Ruhn forced himself into movement by sheer will.

Two of the duffels of weapons had come free of their bindings and been lost in the crash. Flynn and Fury began divvying out the remaining guns and knives, working quickly while Ruhn assessed the state of the one intact machine gun he’d ripped from the chopper’s floor.

Hypaxia’s voice cracked over the miraculously undamaged radio, “We have eyes on the Old Square Gate,” she said. Ruhn paused, waiting for the news. Not daring to hope.