Chapter 21 What Survives the Fall
When I came to, the air was thick with dust. The sky above was dimming—late afternoon already. My body ached everywhere, but I was alive.
Drake lay half-buried in the dirt beside me, one wing—an actual wing—unfurled in a broken sprawl of gold and smoke.
“Drake,” I whispered.
He stirred, groaned, and turned his head toward me. His eyes opened—still gold, still burning—but dimmer now.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Define okay,” he rasped.
I let out a shaky laugh. “Still breathing. That counts.”
He smiled faintly. “Barely.”
Somewhere above us, the airships roared past, searching the wreckage.
I glanced at his wing. “So. You sprouted that again.”
“It’s temporary,” he said. “Instinct. The bond’s trying to keep us alive.”
“Well,” I said, trying to stand, “tell it to keep trying.”
He reached out, caught my wrist, and pulled me closer before I could wobble off the slope. The contact steadied me—and ignited the bond again, faint but alive.
“Christine,” he said quietly. “Next time, don’t hold back.”
“From what?”
“From us.”
The word lodged in my chest like shrapnel.
“I don’t even know what ‘us’ is,” I said, more sharply than I meant to. “Besides a magically enforced bad idea.”
His mouth twitched. “You say that like bad ideas haven’t kept you alive before.”
“I prefer my bad ideas without a mystical death pact, thanks.”
Above us, the airships roared past again, engines howling as they swept the gorge. Dust rained down from the ledge far above—what was left of the one we’d fallen from. We were lucky to be in a pocket of rock half-hidden under the overhang; from above, we were just another shadow in the rubble.
For the moment.
“Can you move?” I asked.
Drake shifted, grimacing. The partial wing that had unfurled in the fall was already fading—bone and membrane dissolving back into smoke, then into nothing, leaving only hints of gold along his shoulder blades, like someone had painted the idea of wings there and stopped halfway.
“Define ‘move,’” he said.
“If I set you on fire, will you roll away?”
“One hopes.”
I pushed myself up onto my knees, every muscle protesting. My ribs ached like I’d been used as a drum. Gravel dug into my palms. The mark on my wrist pulsed in slow, stubborn beats, matching his.
I scanned the ravine. We’d landed in a narrow cleft, flanked by jagged stone on three sides and open to the gorge on the fourth. The drop wasn’t sheer, but it was steep enough that climbing out would be hell, especially with my knee and whatever damage he was quietly not mentioning.
“We need cover,” I said. “Better than this.”
“This is cover,” he said. “For now. The scanners will sweep for live resonance. If we move too soon, they’ll track it.”
“So what, we just sit here and hope they get bored?”
His gaze swept the sky. “We wait until they think they’ve killed us. Then we move.”
I hated how much sense that made.
A fresh vibration rolled through the stone—duller this time, farther away. Another volley, higher up the ridge. Seris’s position. My stomach lurched.
“Do you think they—”
“Seris knew what she was doing,” he cut in. “You heard her oath.”
“I’ve buried a lot of people who ‘knew what they were doing,’ Varyn.”
The way his face softened when I said that made me want to bite the inside of my cheek.
“Christine,” he said quietly. “If they’d hit her position dead on, you’d have felt it.”
“The bond doesn’t connect to her.”
“No,” he agreed. “But it connects to you. And you’ve started to care whether she lives. It would’ve echoed.”
I hated that he was right. I hated even more that the idea calmed me.
“You’re very confident in your understanding of my emotional life,” I muttered.
“Your emotions scream through a very loud magical conduit,” he said. “I don’t have to be perceptive. I just have to be conscious.”
I groaned and let my head fall back against the rock. “Remind me to never bond again.”
“Usually,” he said dryly, “you only get the one.”
Silence dropped between us, heavy but not quite suffocating. The dust in the air slowly settled. Above, the airships’ passes grew wider, higher—sweeps searching for a signal they no longer had a bead on.
“How long until they give up?” I asked.
“They won’t give up,” he said. “But they’ll move the search grid outward. Once they widen the net, they’re less precise.”
“Meaning we get a small window where we’re not at the center of the bullseye.”
“Exactly.”
I blew out a breath. “Good. Because the bullseye hurts.”
I shifted onto one hip, testing my knee. The joint twinged but held. My hands were scraped raw, knuckles torn. I could feel bruises blooming everywhere the harness had bitten in when we fell. There was a sticky warmth along my hairline I didn’t want to think too hard about.
Drake watched me, gaze sharp. “You’re bleeding.”
“Probably,” I said. “It’s trendy.”
“Come here.”
“No.”
“Christine.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not,” he said. “And the bond keeps insisting I care.”
“That sounds like a you problem.”
He rolled his eyes, then did something I did not expect: he let his head thump back against the rock and closed his eyes, jaw tight.
“Do you feel it?” he asked. “The tug. Right here.” He touched the center of his chest.
My own ribs ached in response. “Yeah,” I admitted. “What is that?”
“The bond trying to equalize damage,” he said. “Your pain, my pain. It wants balance.”
“That sounds… awful.”
“It is,” he said. “And useful. It means if you’re hurt and hiding it, I’ll know.”
“You don’t need more leverage,” I muttered.
“This isn’t leverage, Knight,” he said lightly. “It’s insurance.”
I glared at him. “You’re impossible.”
“And you’re still bleeding,” he said. “Let me see.”
“Stop asking to touch me like it’s the most reasonable thing in the world.”
“It is,” he said. “In this context.”
Heat crept up my neck. “We’re in a pile of rocks, hiding from death scanners.”
“And you’re deflecting.”
“I’m surviving,” I shot back.
His eyes opened. “There’s room for both.”
He pushed himself upright, slower than usual. I could see the tremor in his arms now, the slight hitch in his breath. The fall had cost him more than he was showing. Smoke still curled faintly from his skin, like embers under ash.
I sighed, the fight going out of my shoulders. “Fine. Quick. If I pass out, I’m haunting you.”
“That’s redundant,” he said softly. “You already do.”
I scooted closer, careful not to jostle his ribs. He reached up, fingers surprisingly gentle as they brushed along my hairline. When his thumb came away, it was streaked with red.
“Head wound,” he said. “Small.”
“Figures.” I wrinkled my nose. “Feels bigger.”
“Scalp bleeds do,” he said. “You’ll live.”
“Oh good. More opportunities to be shot at.”
He shifted his hand, his palm brushing my temple. The bond flared—a low, warm thrum instead of a wildfire this time. Heat seeped through the pounding ache behind my eye, smoothing it, dulling the sharp edges into something bearable.
I sucked in a breath. “That’s cheating.”
“Efficient,” he corrected. “You need your wits.”
“You sure you want me at full capacity?” I said. “I ask uncomfortable questions.”
“I’ve noticed.”
The warmth lingered even after he dropped his hand. The pain didn’t vanish, but it receded far enough that I could think without feeling like my skull was trying to crack in half.
His own breath stuttered once. I realized, with a jolt, that the bond had just balanced that too—moving some of my pain into him.
“That’s unfair,” I said.
“What is?”
“You taking that hit.”
“Consider it rent,” he said.
“For what?”
“For living in my head.”
The words were casual. The look he gave me wasn’t.
I looked away first.