We don’t even have time to blink.

The floor opens up, wind screaming, us screaming, my insides pressing up against my outsides, and all I can think about is him.

Lucien.

My eyes are watering too badly, the speed too much to keep focused on his outline for long. But I see his arms going dark, black eating gold up to the elbows, up to his bleeding neck, black below the red, and I know he’s going to lose himself. The part that deadens this time will be all of him.

fear.

Being immortal means you only have fear. But you forget what real, yawning, mortal fear feels like.

Until now.

It’s not fair. It’s not fair I can’t even shout at him to stop, the wind and pressure stealing all the words from my lungs. I can’t even reach him, the air battering my body around like a hated doll. He’s going to die. My immortality, useless. I can only watch. I can only feel my brain slipping into unconsciousness, into nothing, into death once and for all.

Black on gold on red.

And then—rainbow.

Soft fur tickling my face. Smooth scales beneath my hands. The smell of rot, faintly, quickly dispersed by the relentless whipping wind. Warmth, making its way into my body from something much larger than me, all over and under.

“Starving Wolf.” A voice rumbles in every one of my bones. “Here you are, and here I am.”

I catch my breath, my ribs aching. Fione’s hand in mine, still, her body unmoving and her other hand clutching the book. Lucien, passed out not far from her, and Malachite, struggling to sit up. All of us, on the finned white back of a valkerax.

And not any valkerax.

“Evlorasin!” I put my hand to its scales, feeling it to make sure it’s real. “H-How—”

“I told you. I will always be with you. This was not a lie.”

It’s so long, stretching out like a banner behind us in the sky, its back so wide that all of us can fit comfortably. Evlorasin’s mane flares out, all its feathers standing on end like a halo, and from that halo radiates a gentle circle of rainbow light. No wings—no wings like a flying thing should have, but lengthy whiskers beating air hard, and its lionlike paws paddling the clouds as if the stormy sky is calm water.

Words hurt, but I force them out steadily. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

“Are you talking to it?” Malachite rasps, clutching on his ribs with one hand and a huge pearlescent scale with the other. “Is this—is this the one that scared everybody in Vetris? The one we retrieved?”

“There is little time for idleness,” Evlorasin interrupts. “If you would look up, you would see a problem.”