I hadn’t even noticed. The black clouds loom far too close, an endless blanket of black that stretches in every direction—and we are about to plunge right into it. I blink, breaking out of my anger. Above us, Gemma shakes her head and realizes the same thing. But her concentration has been thrown off, and her balira struggles against her, refusing to listen. Magiano pulls our own balira so that its nose points down again. The black clouds leave our view, and I find myself staring once more at the bay dotted with fire and warships. We start to dive back down.
I look, once, over my shoulder, to see Gemma still struggling with her balira. It lets out a shriek of protest.
Then the dark world lights up, and we all go blind.
A bolt of lightning—a crack of thunder that splits the sky. The sound explodes all around us. Heat sears us from above. Magiano and I both throw ourselves against our balira’s back as it continues to plummet down. I can’t see anything but light. Something burns. My eye tears up. Magiano somehow manages to pull our balira up as we near the bay—I feel my weight drop down against the creature’s back. I’m trembling uncontrollably. All I can do is turn my face to one side, and through the blur, a streak of light shoots past us.
It is Gemma, burning, falling to the ocean. Her balira’s enormous, lifeless body hurtles beside her. Struck by lightning.
I watch her. She falls forever, the shooting-star thief, her light fading from a streak into a dot, then into nothing, then, finally, into the sea with her balira. From the ocean’s surface, I know the impact must look like a tidal wave, pushing all the ships around it outward in a ring. But from up here, it looks like an insignificant splash, like she was here and then she was gone.
And the world continues as if she had never existed.
My heart twists, but we have no time to dwell on it. Even as we sit, stunned and suspended in midair, Magiano turns his head toward where a cluster of ships have gathered around a single one. Baliras dotted with white-cloaked figures head toward it. Immediately, I know this must be Queen Maeve’s Beldish ship. Magiano shouts something at me. I nod in a daze. Below us, an anguished scream comes from a voice I recognize all too well as Lucent’s. She is screaming Gemma’s name.
Magiano turns our balira away, even though all I want to do is stare at the spot where Gemma had hit the water, where ripples have covered her flaming light.
Mankind has been fascinated with baliras for thousands of years. Countless stories have been written about them, and yet we are still no closer to understanding the secrets of their flight, kin, and life in the deep.
—A Study of Baliras and Their Closest Cousins, by Baron Faucher
Adelina Amouteru
We are close enough now to the ocean that the cannon fire sounds deafening. Rain whips sideways against us. Some of the Kenettran warships nearest the royal Beldish ship blow sharply off course, and I realize that Lucent must be somewhere nearby, pulling and pushing at the winds to throw the Kenettran army into turmoil. Others fire at the Beldish ships—only to see their cannons unwound right on the decks of their ships or their cannonballs vanish in midair. Michel at work. I keep expecting to see Gemma reappear on the back of one of the baliras zooming through the skies, but she doesn’t. The rain streaks lines on my face. I remind myself that we were enemies.
There are so many Beldish ships. One quick glance is all it takes for me to see that this isn’t a battle the Kenettran navy can win. How can we ever push them back? I look down to where the royal ship sails. It is surrounded on almost all sides by reinforcements, and the Kenettran navy is throwing itself forward in vain. Baliras in armored plates soar around the ship, protecting it from the air. Other Elites ride on some of them—one is wearing the royal gold of Beldain. Perhaps he is one of Queen Maeve’s brothers. As I look on, he makes a sharp gesture with his arm toward a Kenettran soldier. The enemy rider rocks wildly backward, as if hit hard, and falls from his balira.
“Get closer,” I call to Magiano, pointing to a clearing in the sky.
“If you have any clever ideas for how to do this without killing ourselves, I’m happy to listen,” Magiano shouts back.
I look harder at the Beldish formation. The royal ship is protected on almost all sides. A half circle of warships. Beyond them is another ring, and then another, until all of the ships look like a honeycomb.
“Look out!”
I throw myself flat against the balira at Magiano’s warning call. A cannonball explodes near us, sending a surge of sea spray high up in the air. I duck. Our balira jerks sideways with a roar, one of its wings singed. I catch a brief glimpse of the Beldish warship that fired at us. My energy churns madly within me, feeding off the fury and fear from the thousands of soldiers in the bay. It builds and builds, until the flesh right underneath my skin tingles from it, as if it might rip me completely apart.
The tether between Enzo and me trembles. I look around instinctively. My heartbeat races. He’s here. The bond trembles violently—as if he has realized I am near too—and an instant later, I see him. He is on the back of a balira, and a stream of fire bursts from his hands, aimed down at the Inquisition ships below. Inquisitors follow closely on his tail. A Beldish rider near Enzo screams as he weaves fire right out of the air and hurtles it toward the soldier. Fire consumes the soldier—he falls from his balira’s back, and the balira, now without a rider, dives toward the water.
Enzo, I call through our bond. He turns to face me. His energy hits me hard, right as I try to exert my own power. Magiano shoots me a look and tightens his grip on me. For a moment, Enzo meets my gaze, and his stare is hard and dark. I know right away that the Daggers have told him everything.