ORIANA

Rana's wounds refused to close.

The sky was a pomegranate cleaved in half, blood-blister clouds massing upon a festering sun. Bannor shot past the rotten display like an arrow, through competing air currents and migratory flocks of birds. Always the straightest path, no matter the obstacle — or the danger it posed to us.

Every wingbeat threatened to unseat us. I couldn't afford to unclench a single muscle; Rana's limp form was determined to slip through my grip like an octopus squeezing through the impossible cracks of a tide-pool. Even unconscious, she couldn't sit still.

The thought might have been funny if it wasn't so terrifying. I was constantly readjusting my grip, gathering her up in my arms, trying to put pressure on her wounds and stem the bleeding all the while. My only comfort was the rock-hard chest against my back and the iron band around my waist, which was actually Sebastian's forearm. I knew he'd catch me if I fell. He always did. But it was my turn to come through for my friends, especially after all they'd sacrificed to keep me safe, so I gritted my teeth and readied myself to attempt another spell.

Please work, I thought, hugging Rana tighter as the healing magic pulsed through my skin. Please, please, please.

It skittered over her ashen skin and fizzled out, refusing to take. Again.

Anger spiked. "Come on," I snarled under my breath, sending another surge of magic through my arms. She'd given up anything to protect me, even before she learned that I'd been Blessed by the Sun Goddess — the first in over a century. I was supposed to be the answer to all her peoples' unheard prayers; the least I could do was heal her.

Sebastian's hair tickled my cheek as he leaned forward. "Breathe, Ori. You can't help her if you pass out."

I forced a breath out through my nose and sucked in new air, just to hiss: "Why isn't it working?"

I'd never had a knack for magic; not like our friend Gretchen, the Witch of the East, who'd lost patience several times while trying to teach me. There was a delicate balance between life and death, but the fire burning in my soul didn't particularly care for nuance. It only wanted to consume. Destroy.

Even when I'd learned how to heal others, it was a clumsy imitation of Gretchen's work — a crude welding of muscle fibres back together, not unlike cauterising a wound. But I couldn't even get that to work now. The gash running diagonally from Rana's left shoulder to her hip just kept gaping, flashing muscle and nerve and bone and gently pulsating organs. The sight made my own guts feel like they were on the verge of spilling out.

"How was she hurt?" Sebastian asked.

"Bradon ran her through with his sword," I said, squeezing my eyes shut against the memory. The way she'd fallen from the sky... "It was burning. The sword, I mean."

"Hate that guy," Sebastian muttered, but I could tell from his tone that he was thinking. "What colour was the fire?

"Silver."

"Moonfyre," he said grimly. "Nya whispers closely in the ears of those who wield it."

That Hunter's sword touted the flames made sense given his lineage, but for Bradon's cruelty to be vetted by the Night Goddess as well...

I don't know why you're surprised, I rebuked myself. Nya had proven evil at every turn. She'd abducted me as a child and suppressed my powers with a poisonous tonic so that I couldn't use them against her. Giving Bradon — one of my childhood bullies — moonfyre to use against me was the next logical step.

Not that it matters. He's dead now, I reminded myself, grateful to have watched that sick sadist plummet to death. The world was a tiny bit safer for that.

"Duck!" Sebastian exclaimed.

I trusted him implicitly, core aching as I flattened against Bannor's scales with Rana. A flock of birds splattered against Bannor's midnight scales, blood and bone tumbling into the void.

Sitting up again was an ordeal. It was getting harder and harder to tell where my cold sweat ended and Rana's blood began. The wind was quick to blow it dry, but warmth continued to pulse between my fingers, no matter how hard I pressed down on her wounds.

Please wake up, I thought, fighting back stinging tears. Tell me you want to kill me again. Say anything.

Nothing. Her head lolled, neck just as boneless as before.

"I used to light my arrows with Moonfyre," Sebastian continued, now that it was safe(r). "It burns cold and bites into the soul as well as flesh, interfering with the cycle of magic in the body. Great for bringing down spell casters," he mused.

No wonder I couldn't get my spells to take. It was like mixing oil and water. "How do we fix it?" I asked, but I had a sinking feeling.

Sebastian hesitated. "I don't... Everyone I shot died," he admitted. "If I had access to my Grace, I might be able to find a workaround, but..."

Using his magic would leave him open to Nya's influence. I'd already seen what happened to Gretchen when Gaia, the Earth Goddess, took over her body. Better that Sebastian left that door shut, for all our sakes.

"Wait. That's it! I exclaimed, clawing at the black pearl clasp at my throat. "Like can heal like, right?" Rana could be healed; I was just using the wrong kind of magic!

After wriggling my way free of the silver cloak, I bundled it up and pressed it against Rana's wound. Spun from the soul bond I once shared with Hunter, it was a physical manifestation of Nya's Grace, cut free from the source. I'd used the magic in the cloak to shape-shift into a wyvern during the battle with teh Kirin and the Nightfall Legion. It also allowed me to share thoughts with Hunter and put an enemy wyvern to sleep, securing us the win. Surely I could use it to heal, too?

I was surprised to see Hunter featured in one of the panels, a hammer in hand, before the picture was scrunched up by my white-knuckled grip. "Please," I whispered, willing it to work.

It glowed, just barely. Yes! Yes!

The light sputtered out and the cloak turned grey, as if a cloud had passed over the moon.

Somebody was screaming. Me, I realised, coming out of the daze of my rage. My cheeks were wet with tears, burning cold in the air currents, but my hair was ablaze and smoke poured from my nostrils. Sebastian's arm stayed where it was but I felt him shift behind me, pulling his face away from the fire.

It wasn't fair. Rana needed me and I couldn't save her.

"Let me try," Sebastian said gruffly, letting go of the spike behind him in a stomach-twisting moment.

I knew what it cost him to try. The fear that no doubt ran him through like a Moonfyre blade as he reached for the magic in the cloak, trusting my claim that it wasn't linked to the Goddess that had enslaved him in the past.

The cloak hummed softly beneath his snow-white fingers. The sound subsided as he pulled away.

"It's like a vessel," he noted, but I could hear the frown in his voice. "An empty vessel. Maybe we can find some way to fill it back up?"

I had no idea how to do that without exposing him to Nya's influence again. Despair rolled through me. "Thanks for trying," I choked out.

We were back to square one: hoping that Rana would survive the journey. That her people could do what we couldn't.

I would have prayed for her salvation if I thought anyone would listen.

The wind howled in my ears, harmonising with my anguish as I hugged Rana tight. She was so pale and lifeless. Not a trace of the life I'd come to love.

"Listen," Sebastian said, holding still.

I cocked my head. The wind slid in and out of different pitches, like somebody humming under their breath. I thought I caught a hint of something sweet and high, too — bells, perhaps chimes — but it was gone before I could pinpoint the source.

"There it is!" Sebastian cried, his arm tightening around my waist as we passed through a cloud of vapour into a blinding ray of light. I blinked and it morphed into a castle nestled on a ridge between two mountains, flashing like metal in the sun.

No, not metal. It glittered more than shone, now that I thought about it, because it was grown from quartz.

"The Sun Temple!" I exclaimed. "Oh, and there are the Singing Caves, too!"

It looked more like a palace than a place of worship, replete with gates and ramparts and all the safeguards of a kingdom. Grey and milky at the base, the crystal gradually lightened and became dazzlingly clear at the points, casting pretty rainbows over the snow. The taller mountain to its left was shrouded in clouds, but the stouter mountain was riddled with holes, like an ant colony. Painted wood-chimes hung from the openings of each cave, complimenting the eerily beautiful tunes the caves produced with every gust of wind. If memory served correctly, that was where the majority of Rana's people resided, their city protected from the elements.

There was more plant life than I would have expected at this altitude. More warmth, too; snow struggled to cling to both mountains, and I realised the mist lingering in the air was actually steam; it poured off the taller mountain in great waves, as if somebody had lit a fire in its belly.

It was the temple Bannor angled for, but we'd been spotted, too. Three bird-sized flecks peeled away from the outer turret, speeding towards us. It didn't take long for them to grow into fully-fledged wyverns, enormous compared to the scant few I'd seen in my time, including Bannor.

Two of them flanked us. The other shot up and flew directly overhead, the bony ridges of its chest — the same blue as the sky — swooping dangerously low, almost clipping our heads. Bannor snarled his displeasure, flying lower to spare us.

"They're trying to ground us!" Sebastian shouted.

My stomach dropped as Bannor lost even more sky. "We don't have time for that!" I shouted back, my voice snatched away by the wind. Rana needed a healer urgently, and something told me these wyverns were more practiced in fighting than the mystic arts.

Daggers for teeth. Clubs for tails. Rubies, emeralds and opals for scales, linked tighter than any chainmail. We were going to die smothered in treasure if I couldn't find a way out of this mess.

Why couldn't anything be easy?