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The as strong, buffeting the host as it fell back into formation Karou pulled her sweater closer around her and shivered The last of the host pushed through the cut, Utheo last of all Utheuishably supple, green and rippling and see race not naturally being winged, Karou had gotten creative in order to preserve his length: two sets of wings, the main pair like sails and a ss It looked pretty cool, if she did say so herself

The Wolf had bowed his head through the portal, and as soon as he was through, he sat up to take stock of his circling troops His eye cah he paused on her only briefly, she felt herself to be--knew herself to be--his first care in the world, this or any other Only when he knehere she was, and was satisfied that she ell, did he turn to the task at hand, which was to guide this army safely over the Bay of Beasts

Karou found it difficult to turn away froht find it and use it Akiva was to have scorched it closed behind theed their plan Now they would need it

To return and start the apocalypse

The Wolf once unmetal horizon and toward the Adelphas Mountains On a clear day, the peaks would have been visible fro ahead but thickening mist, which had its pluses and its ave thehted from a distance by any seraph patrols

In the --would not be sighted from a distance by the just coside Rua to check on Issa, when it happened

"Sweet girl, are you bearing up?" Issa asked

"I’m fine," Karou replied "But you need ue with that," Issa replied She was actually wearing clothes--a sweater of Karou’s, slit wide at the neck to accommodate her cobra hood--which in itself was unusual for Issa, but her lips were blue, and her shoulders were drawn up practically to her ears as she shivered The Naja race hailed from a hot climate Morocco had suited her perfectly This cold id destination even less, though at least there they would be sheltered froeothermal chambers in the lower labyrinth of the caves, if all was as it had been years ago

The Kirin caves

She had never been back to the place of her birth, home of her earliest life She had planned to return, once upon a tiin their rebellion, had the fates not had other ideas

But, no Karou didn’t believe in fate It wasn’t fate that had murdered their plan, but betrayal And it wasn’t fate re-creating it now--or at least this twisted shadow-theater version of it, fraught with suspicion and ani," she told Issa--or started to tell her But in thatcame over her

Or at her

At all of the mists, and with it a seizure of certainty Karou shrank down and threw back her head to look up And it wasn’t only her All around her in the ranks, soldiers were reacting Dropping, draeapons, spinning clear of… soh to touch It was a blank, but there was a rush in Karou’s blood and a thru, and then, sudden and loo before it a wind that flicked the soldiers aside like toys to a tide, so out the sky, fast and past, skie that Karou couldn’t ed past, it touched her, and the trail of its air-warping weight seized and spun her It was like an undertow, and the chains of her thuribles fleild, entangling her, and for that dark spinning instant she thought of the black surface of the water far below, and thuribles splashing into it--souls consuht for control of herself… and just like that was released, adrift in a weird called but nothing was lost, and all it took noas a glance to see what it hat they were, oh Oh--before the dense white day sed theest creatures in this world, save whatever secrets the sea held deep Wings that could shelter or shatter a s A pod of the great birds had just glided right over the coh to scatter the chimaera from their formation Before there was any space in Karou’s head forof the host

She found Issa clinging to Rua’s neck, shaken but otherwise fine The blacksir had dropped the bundle of weapons--all of them lost to the sea Akiva and Liraz were still in their place far ahead, and Zuzana and Mik were up ahead, too, not far, but safely clear of the whiplash frobeat They looked no worse than hly slack-jaith theoff--and the ranks were closing back in, not one of thereat shapes already vanished into the haze Everyone was fine

They’d just been buzzed by stormhunters

In her earliest life, Karou had been a child of the high world: Madrigal of the Kirin, the last tribe of the Adelphas Mountains Ah no Kirin, or anyone else that Karou had heard of, had ever seen a stormhunter so close They couldn’t be hunted; they were utterly elusive, too fast for pursuit, too canny to surprise It was believed that they could sense the ses in air and atal--Karou had had reason to believe it Seeing the sun, she would take off after thes beat her intention than theirs would answer and carry theshell, or even a carcass; if stormhunters hatched, if stormhunters died, no one knehere

Now Karou had had her closer sight, and it was thrilling

Adrenaline was coursing through her, and she couldn’t help herself She slimpse had been too brief, but she’d seen that a dense fleece covered the stor as platters and fil membrane, like Earth birds Their feathers shone iridescent, no single color but all colors, shifting with the play of light

They seeift fro in this world was defined by the everlasting war She gathered herself in the air, untangling a thurible chain frorinned at her friends, the pair of theasus," declared Zuzana, fervent and wide-eyed "I want one of those!"

8

BRUISE THE SKY

"More stor aside for Melliel