Caliane’s body appeared in the distance, her wings spread, Tasha behind her.
Waiting for them to pass, Raphael swept along behind them. As he’d predicted, they overtook Elena within minutes, his hunter’s young immortal body unable to reach anything like the punishing speed Tasha was maintaining. Caliane had slowed to match her escort, now said, Raphael—
I will bring her home, Mother. She is mine to protect. Even as he spoke, he dropped down to below Elena. Guild Hunter, collapse your wings.
That she didn’t even hesitate at what could be a deadly order undid him.
Moving with the wind when it pushed her falling body to the left, he caught her in his arms and swept up in the same motion in an effort to get above the cloud layer, while Elena wrapped her arms around his neck as the rising wind whipped strands of hair that had come loose from the twist in which she wore it, across her face.
“I hate being a damsel in distress!” she yelled in a distinctly disgruntled tone.
He grinned because that description would never fit his warrior. “I can feel your crossbow digging into my arm. Be ready to shoot if anything comes at us.”
Laughing with a fierce wildness that spoke to the same in him, she tucked her face against his neck, pulling her body in even further to lower the wind resistance. He took a moment to glance behind them, saw the storm was licking at their heels. When he looked forward, he saw only a single pair of wings in flight. Mother, where is Tasha?
Flying low. She’s searching for a natural lee where we can shelter should we have need.
Raphael looked down, couldn’t spot Tasha through the darkness. Tasha, it’s too exposed for this lightning. Head to Lumia. They’d pass the barracks on their way, but those barracks weren’t as well constructed as Lumia. The angelic guards should be fine—but they wouldn’t be if Raphael and Caliane joined them and the lightning followed.
The rain became a torrential downpour an instant later, punching a heavy weight on his wings. Having reached Caliane, he saw Tasha come up on her other side, her wings almost crumpling under the combined pressure of the rain and the wind. “Sire!” she yelled to his mother. “Go! I will be behind you!”
Caliane didn’t answer, but neither did she put on archangelic speed. Like Raphael, his mother would never leave one of her people behind. Tasha didn’t waste her breath asking again, just flew on, though it was clear she was having trouble maintaining her place in the sky. Elena, meanwhile, shifted up carefully so she could look over his shoulder, leaving him free to keep his attention forward.
“How bad?” he asked, the two of them close enough that they could hear each other over the noise of the storm without having to shout.
“The lightning goes on as far as I can see, but it looks like the town’s only being hit by scattered strikes. The heaviest mass is chasing us—or it’s being dragged toward Lumia.” She continued to look. “You think since there’re more archangels there to draw the storm, that you and Caliane could land and have the lightning pass over you?”
“We can’t risk it.” Neither Elena nor Tasha would survive even a single strike.
Using one hand to wipe the wet strands of hair off her face, then his in turn, she said, “Then we need a plan B. Because we’re not going to outrun it.” Her tone was practical, not panicked. “Not at this speed.”
Mother, you need to fly Tasha. Caliane appeared slender, but she was an archangel, had power humming through her every cell.
She will never agree.
Raphael spoke directly to Tasha, told her what he’d suggested. This needs archangelic speed, Tasha. Don’t be proud and get us all lightning-struck. If Elena can do it, so can you.
I can’t believe you are comparing me to a once-mortal, was Tasha’s bitter response, but Caliane dropped below her seconds later and Tasha collapsed her wings so Caliane could capture her. Not in her arms, but in a net of sparkling white power.
Then he and Caliane flew.
A lightning strike singed the very tip of his left wing just as he landed at Lumia, Caliane having landed right before him. Ignoring the burn until they were under the shelter of the nearest external hallway, he placed Elena on her feet while his mother released Tasha from the net of power. Tasha’s hair was an electric halo around her head, cracking with echoes of that power; her body shook a little, the tremors apparently uncontrollable.
“My lady,” she said, sounding as if she was having to form her words with utmost care, “I think I am drunk.”
“It will pass,” Caliane promised, pushing back her wet hair from her face.
Elena, meanwhile, had turned her attention directly to Raphael’s wing, kneeling down so she could look closely at the injury. “Damage is deep.”
He glanced down, saw what she meant. The lightning strike had sheared off the very tip of his wing. He needed those feathers to maneuver, couldn’t risk being without them—they’d heal, of course, but not at high speed. Wings never did.
The idea of being grounded in Lumia, even for a day or two, was intolerable but his Cascade-born healing strength, at least the amount he could access at will, hadn’t yet regenerated after he’d used it to ease Elena’s wings.
She looked up right then, her eyes shining silver. Take it from me. The words were an order. The wildfire is all about life, right? Test it, see if it’ll fix your wing.
It was a good point—he was used to seeing it as a weapon against Lijuan, but it did taste violently of the energy of life . . . and of his hunter’s mortal heart. Let me attempt to direct the wildfire that lives in me.