Chapter 20 · Untitled Chapter

"Your heart's trying to escape," Lyra shouted over the thunder.

"It has poor judgment."

"That makes two of us."

Rowan tightened his arm around her waist as Pip tore upward through the storm. Lightning crawled over the beast's antlers, blue-white and hungry. Below them, the farm floated inside a trembling halo of wind. Broken terraces smoked. Uprooted trees spun through the air before the emergency moorings dragged them back.

Lyra was strapped against his chest, one arm locked around him. Blood had soaked through the bandage beneath her ribs and stained his shirt black.

Her cheek pressed against his shoulder. He felt the heat of her through the cold and the shallow hitch of every breath. The memory kept flashing through his head—her body twisting between him and the leyline cannon, the blast striking her instead.

"You're not dying," he said.

"I wasn't planning to."

"Good. Keep it that way."

"Rowan." Her voice dropped, nearly swallowed by the wind. "You said something before the island stopped falling."

His throat tightened.

Pip bellowed and banked hard around the fortress. The sound rolled across the clouds like a challenge.

The leyline fortress hung beneath the capital.