“No one ever said enforcing was easy, Lance.” Nor life, for that matter. “Sometimes you have to make a tough choice, knowing it might get you killed. This time, you made the wrong one.” Though, oddly enough, the result was about the same. All he’d gained was an extra week of life under Malone’s tyranny.

I’d have chosen death over that any day.

“I think we’re ready,” I said, turning to Cade. Or maybe Coyt.

The birds nodded in unison, and with powerful, nearly simultaneous flaps of their huge wings, they took to the air, nearly blowing me off my feet in the process. Lance stumbled back, and Jace shoved him forward. An instant later, one of the two unfamiliar thunderbirds snatched his arms, his wrists still taped at his back, and as soon as he dangled in the air, the second bird grabbed him by both ankles.

Lance screamed as he was lifted into the air facedown. His eyes were wide, watching the earth fly by beneath him until the wind became too much and he had to close them.

I glanced up just as Cade—or maybe Coyt—flapped his wings over me, whipping my hair into knots that might never brush out. Strands lashed my forehead and caught in my mouth, and my very breath was stolen by the rush of air over my face. But I stood still and raised my arms, ready as I’d ever be for a trip I hoped never to suffer through again, once we had Kaci.

The first bird took me just below my shoulders, his talons squeezing mercilessly. But this time, I found the painful pressure comforting; surely a lax grip would have increased my chances of falling to my death. When I hovered twenty feet in the air, the second bird swooped to grab my shins. Then, with practiced ease, the two birds synchronized the beat of their wings—amazing, considering their proximity to each other—and we rose steadily toward the nest, bobbing for a heartbeat between each powerful flap before soaring up with the next.

I risked a single glance at the ground, and through the strands of long black hair whipping around my face, I saw Marc and Jace standing watching me side by side, each with a hand shielding his eyes from the crimson glare of the setting sun. From so high up, the differences between them were almost impossible to find. They were two anonymous bodies on the ground, watching helplessly as I was flown away from them both.

Cade and Coyt dropped me on the overhanging porch with a bone-jarring thud, and I remained crouched on the floorboards—a little frightened by the cracks I saw between them upon such close inspection—until they landed on either side of me, silent but for the last beat of their wings against the air.

“What the hell?” Lance shouted, and I stood to find him standing with his back—and his bound hands—pressed against the front wall of the nest. He glared at me, arms shaking, face pale. “You could have warned me.…”