It’s hard with the wind, but I squint up—Windonhigh far above us. Not far enough I can’t see the green, or the bottom of it—a mass of dirt and hanging roots, and most terrifyingly of all, from the tiny glass-bottomed section that’s been peeled open, dozens of glass roots stretching out for us like tentacles. And moving fast.

Malachite looks with me. “Tenacious little bastards, aren’t they?”

“You have angered the Tree of Glass,” Evlorasin says. “Secure yourself and your comrades to my scales, with blood if you must. Quickly.”

I look at Malachite. “Stick your sword in it.”

“What?”

“The valkerax. Hold Lucien, and stick your sword in it!”

“Thought you’d never ask!” he shouts back, driving his broadsword into the scales. Evlorasin twitches but doesn’t recoil, and I bring my claws out—the smaller holes I make between its scales much less painful. Malachite wraps one arm around Lucien’s chest, dragging him close, and I do the same for Fione, making sure her book is sandwiched tightly between us.

Evlorasin starts to rumble-growl deep in its chest, the vibration shaking us as easily as marbles in a bag.

“We fly.”

The rainbow halo around its mane bursts to life, from pastel to vivid color, blazing like seven-colored fire and expanding to thrice its size. The flash sears my eyes, and I blink it away as fast as I can only to see glass roots whizzing past my ears, past Evlorasin’s tail and legs and whiskers, barely missing each time they thrust through the sky. Evlorasin twists and turns, lurching as my stomach lurches, coiling and uncoiling in split seconds, the glass roots nicking its sides, its feet. Even above the screaming wind, I can hear its excited voice like it’s right in my ear.

“Hold on!”

We dive.

The world falls away, nothing but white feathers and rainbow light and the instinct to clench, to hold, to brace for something I can’t stop. I hug Fione to me even harder, her bones pressing against my palms, and I know if I hold any tighter I’ll hurt her, but I’m terrified. Terrified she’ll fall off, human as she is. Broken bones are better than a dead friend, and I clutch, and clutch. A glass root shrieks over my head, and I press us as low and tight to Evlorasin’s body as I can.

Another one pierces the air just to my left, so forceful I can feel the vacuum in its wake. Something warm hits my face—blood. Not Fione’s throat wound. Fresh. Against the throbbing momentum, I raise my head and see Malachite’s biceps clenched around Lucien cleaved and bleeding in rhythmic spurts.

“Mal!”

“I’m fine!” he shouts. “Shut up before you bite your tongue off!”