Holden looked up at Fang, waiting for his cue. His eyes were wide with anticipation, but he remained loyal. He had Fang’s back.
Was he going to attack? For one of the very few times in his life, Fang had no idea what to do. Should he scream, walk away, or finish them completely? The unasked question hung in the air between them, the tension building. Fang’s face twitched. He was furious, but mostly he just felt disappointed.
Only one other situation made him this stressed, this confused… this freaking emotional. He looked around. Where was she?
Where was Maya?
And Ari?
“Fang!” Holden grabbed his sleeve. “Up there!” He pointed at the sky.
Fang looked up and felt his heart stop.
Maya and Ari. Five hundred feet up.
Battling to the death.
18
THEY HEARD HER scream pierce the air even from the ground, saw the bright arc of blood splash across the sky. And then she was falling.
Fang felt dazed as he watched her floating down, a long sigh stretching out between them, arms and legs reaching lazily upward, feather-light, body pulling down.
Go, Fang’s instincts shrieked at him, but time had stopped. He was frozen to the spot, and so was she.
Suspended. A picture snapped, a painting hung against the endless wall of sky. Still life of a tragedy, Fang thought. He felt a bright wave of distress, his heart thundering out of his chest, but he couldn’t connect the feeling to the image in front of him.
Her wings were silhouetted against the brilliant flame of sunlight. Fang knew the exact color of those wings, their span, their texture against his cheek. Hawk’s wings, to m
atch her sharp instincts, her hard looks.
She looked soft now—softer than the air and the clouds around her. Tender. Cradled in blue.
Fang was holding his breath.
He could see her face now, her mouth open in a perfect O, caught in mid-sentence, drawing in.
To tell him everything that had never been said. That she’d still be there for him, like she always had. That he shouldn’t have left her and the flock.
That she loved him.
Fang felt his will seeping out of him, crushed beneath the weight of this knowledge. The fall would kill them both.
He blinked and she was moving again, her arms like a marionette’s, in unlikely poses, twisting. A delicate dance, a swaying to music he could not hear.
Down… and down.
Her features came sharply into focus and Fang saw the fear there, her mouth protesting in a silent scream, the ragged ripple of wing tearing behind her, ruined.
The blood in her hair, cut short. So it wouldn’t get tangled in the wind.
The sound caught up to Fang’s ears, the shriek vibrating louder and louder, closer and closer as the ground rushed upward and all the light fell away from her and she was plummeting, as dark and heavy as a stone.
Max—no, Maya—was falling to her death.
Fang surged upward. Racing gravity, he stretched out his arms toward Maya’s free-falling body. He just barely managed to catch her, then sagged as her deadweight dragged him down.
Hovering with Maya clutched in his arms, Fang felt his jaw tighten as he saw that her neck was covered in blood, which was streaming down her skin and onto her shirt. No, no, no, his brain protested with growing distress. Ari’s claws had sliced her up like deli meat.