Chapter 262: Myrn Chose the Wake Her Rider Cut Loose

The second bolt aimed where Myrn’s heart moved beneath Jiang.

Green light left the silver pane without sound. Rain vanished along its path, split into steam too thin to hide the point coming for the mount’s breast.

Sivra’s blade still pinned the white fibers against the harness plate.

Lifting it would free Jiang’s copied echo to reach her guild mark. Leaving it would give the bolt an open body.

Aylin made the choice smaller.

From inside her coat, Aylin drew the inert vane half and slid its black edge beneath the flat of the mothglass blade. The bitten root held no oil and answered no living pressure. As a wedge, it was still broad enough to trap the white fibers against glass.

Her damaged fingers could not judge how close the blade lay to skin. She kept them on the blunt shaft where her eyes could measure the gap and used her reliable thumb to force the vane down.

"It will slip," Sivra said.

"Then strike before it does."

Sivra lifted her weapon.

The vane flexed. White strands writhed beneath it and stopped at the dead black edge.

Mothglass met the bolt beside Myrn’s neck.

Green fire broke over Jiang’s back.

His feathers kept the heat from skin for one instant. He flattened between the breathing slits before the second wash reached him. Myrn screamed, rolled sound-side, and snapped her shell-breaking jaws at light that had already passed.

Sivra’s deflection saved the heart.

It sent the broken point through the left correction rein.

Black leather parted behind its raised glass bead. One end whipped across Sivra’s burned cheek. The other vanished beneath the saddle and pulled the white thorn deeper into Myrn’s shoulder.

The wounded wing locked.

All three humans swung beneath the rear brace.

Hest’s yoke took their combined drop and bent farther at one fork. Valea hooked an arm beneath Aylin’s ribs before the high-root line could tighten across her injured wrist.

"Still wanted to fly?" Hest asked.

Valea kicked his boot off her shoulder. "Less conversation. More not falling."

Aylin found the line with her reliable hand. Her numb fingers had closed around empty rain. She looked at them once, opened them with the other hand, and wedged the rope into the bend of her leg.

Above, Myrn tried to beat the locked wing.

The thorn answered first.

Her shoulder turned toward the red descent. The sound wing fought alone and rolled the saddle until Sivra hung from one stirrup.

Jiang slid across Myrn’s neck.

His feet could not clutch hide, but his body had spent months learning how not to topple on ice with a heavy chest and almost no ankle. He spread his toes, lowered his keel, and let his belly drag until his weight crossed the roll.

The turn slowed before the saddle rolled over.

Myrn’s black eye found him.

She opened her jaws beside his head.

Jiang shifted one feather-width farther from the wounded side.

The jaws closed on rain instead.

He accepted the correction.

Ahead, the silver road was no longer one opening. Panes had unfolded above and below it, green points growing in every third gap. The first burning bolt had carried Sivra’s banner scales into the storm, where each fragment continued glowing like a target too small to matter.

"We cannot take the marked lane," Sivra said.

"Can Myrn take anything else?" Aylin asked.

Sivra looked under the injured wing.

Farther right, below the clean silver panes, an abandoned hunt skiff tumbled through the storm. Its narrow hull had been peeled open. Half a black sail remained attached, filling and collapsing around a broken mast. Each turn churned a rough wake of air, rain, and loose moth scales.

No road pane lined that wake.

No landing waited at its end either.

"She can follow the skiff until its wake breaks," Sivra said. "Not while the steering tongue holds her wing."

The cut rein had exposed a strip of black glass beneath the saddle. It ran from the raised bead into a rigid collar around Myrn’s shoulder. The collar braced the torn wing edge whenever a rider pulled cleanly.

Now the thorn used the same brace to hold the wing shut.

Sivra reached for the release pin.

Her hand stopped over the old black joint.

The collar followed the pale line of Myrn’s earlier wing split. Worn scratches showed where years of opening strokes had pressed against its brace. Myrn knew how to fly with that resistance. Removing it in open storm meant asking a wounded wing to discover its own limit while carrying five bodies.

Sivra’s thumb found a shallow tooth mark beside the pin. Myrn had objected when the collar first went on. The rider had remembered even after the animal learned to use it.

"If I open it, the tear carries its own weight."

"If you do not," Aylin said, "the thorn carries all of her."

A second pane fired from above them.

Sivra leaned flat. The bolt passed over the saddle and struck the yoke behind her.

Old red metal flashed green.

Hest released one hand before the heat could take his glove. The bent fork swung loose, and his body dropped below Valea’s boots.

Valea caught his coat with the wrapped shaft of her second barb. The covered point stayed away from his throat.

"I had that," Hest said.

"You had weather. I improved it."

Jiang crawled backward along Myrn’s neck.

Sivra brought the blade between him and the release pin. "No."

He tapped the rigid collar, then Myrn’s living shoulder.

"You already proved it hurts her," Sivra said.

Jiang struck the exposed tongue with his beak.

The hard piece carried imposed pull without changing. Beside it, Myrn’s skin trembled around blood and breath. He could tell Sivra which part was not alive. Nothing in the contact promised the living wing would survive after it left.

Aylin understood his pause.

"He cannot tell you it is safe," she said. "Only what you would be cutting."

Sivra stared at the release tongue while the red lantern opened beneath Myrn’s failing wing.

"That is more honesty than my mark is giving me."

She turned the blade.

The black-glass tongue broke at its narrow joint.

The rigid collar sprang open.

Myrn’s injured wing fell loose.

Clear scales tore from the old split. Fresh blood crossed the translucent edge in branching lines. Without the brace, the wing bowed until its tip struck the rear harness.

Sivra’s breath broke on Myrn’s name. No order followed it. She pushed both forearms beneath the dropping strut and took enough weight to keep the wing from folding backward.

Sivra caught the nearest strut with both hands.

She did not pull the wing into a direction.

She held its weight long enough for Myrn to feel what remained.

The mount drew a wet breath through every neck slit.

Her sound wing opened first. The injured one followed in a shorter arc, shaking against Sivra’s grip. It could not match the clean stroke. It did not close under the thorn.

Myrn looked toward the silver lane.

Three green points waited there.

She looked toward the tumbling skiff.

Its rough wake struck from changing angles. The broken sail snapped. Loose scales spun through rain with no pattern the thorn could easily turn into a straight pull.

Sivra let go of the strut.

Both rein hands opened above the saddle.

"Choose your own wake," she said.

Myrn ignored the word.

Her body had already begun to turn.

The sound wing drove down. The injured wing caught half the air and folded at the edge. Jiang moved his belly toward the fold without touching the collar, giving the saddle less weight to roll against.

Behind him, Aylin shifted her boot loop. Hest moved the yoke across the rear brace. Valea changed crossrings only when Myrn’s shoulder began the turn, following the body rather than pulling it.

They could make themselves less harmful.

They could not choose for her.

Myrn left the silver lane.

The first clean pane fired behind them. Its bolt crossed the space their banner had occupied and vanished toward the Armada descent.

Myrn entered the skiff wake.

Turbulence hit her wings from below. The sound side lifted. The wounded side dropped. She twisted through both changes, bit at the broken sail when it slapped across her path, and tore a mouthful free without surrendering the wake.

Jiang lost one foot.

His belly slid toward the open collar. Aylin’s line came within reach, but taking it would pull all three humans across Myrn’s wounded side.

Fear lifted Aylin’s reliable hand before judgment stopped it. Her fingers remained spread close enough for Jiang to see exactly what she was refusing to do. Grabbing him would feel like rescue until their weight tore the wing underneath.

He drove his sound wing against the neck and found the other foot before the line touched him.

Aylin saw the choice and kept her hand open. Only after both feet held did she close it around her own line.

The skiff rolled ahead of them.

Its hollow hull split the next gust. Myrn followed the ugly pocket behind it, shortening the injured stroke whenever the broken sail shifted and lengthening it when rain opened clear.

No rein corrected her.

For the first time since the cradle, the red lantern stopped growing beneath them.

Sivra looked back at the shattered steering tongue.

Relief reached her face and failed to stay. The deeper guild mark remained fixed beneath the saddle, its black glass warm against Jiang’s feet.

The inert vane under the harness plate began to tremble.

White fibers slipped around its bitten edge.

They entered the line leading from the thorn into Sivra’s mark.

Jiang’s fixed first note sounded beneath Myrn’s living breath.

It crossed the rough skiff wake from pane to pane.

Every silver edge ahead turned toward them.