Rain fell steadily, softly, pat-tat-pat-tat, on the rocks around them as Pixit panicked in her head and Jyx panicked next to her. «Oh no, oh no, what did I do? Oh no, oh no, I’m so sorry!» And Jyx: “We’re doomed! We are so, so, so doomed! What are my parents going to say? I know what they’re going to say. They’re going to freak out. They’re just waiting for me to mess up. They already think I’m never going to be as great as they were. What are we going to do? This is terrible. This is disastrous. This is catastrophically bad! Mina, what do we do? What do we say?”

Her head throbbed. Her shoulder ached. But Mina took a breath and then exhaled. Don’t panic, she told Pixit. It wasn’t a catastrophe; it was a simple mistake. And the answer was simple: stay quiet. “We don’t say anything. We fell in the storm; that much will be obvious. We don’t say where.”

“We lie?”

Is it lying if you were silent? Yes, it is. But it wouldn’t be fair for Jyx to be punished just because Mina wasn’t a real lightning guardian.

“Okay, fine,” Jyx said. “I mean, it’s not like we meant to do this. And we could easily have fallen on the right side of the peak. Just bad luck.”

Mina heard a shuffling and grunting, and she saw the shadow that was Jyx climb onto Chauda. She felt a puff of wind and rain spatter her face as Chauda stretched her wings. Taking a deep breath, Mina pushed herself over to Pixit and crawled onto his back.

Pixit spread his wings, and then hissed. «Ow, ow, ow!»

Mina slid off his back and landed on the muddy rocks. Are you okay?

«Hurts!»

She stroked his neck soothingly. Where? It was too dark to see any injuries, and he was too wet for her to tell if she was feeling water or blood. Are you cut? Anything broken? She ruthlessly quashed any feelings of panic that bubbled up—​she couldn’t let Pixit feel her fear. He was scared enough.

Pixit let out a strangled little sob. «Left. My wing. It hurts when I move it. Think I landed on it.»

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a shadow in the rain above them. “Mina, Pixit, come on!” Jyx said. “The longer we stay here, the more likely someone will notice we’re missing.”