“All right.” His tone immediately softens. “I’ve got you.” His hands wrap around my rib cage, and he carefully lifts me to my feet, my right arm hanging uselessly at my side.

Cibbe’s screams become a keening wail.

“Something feels wrong,” Tairn says.

“It’s all fucking wrong.”

“You dropped her!” Cat charges toward us from the other side of Cibbe, fury rightfully etched in every line of her scowl.

“I never had her.” My chest crumples under the unbearable weight of the guilt because she’s partially right. I may not have dropped her, but I didn’t save her, either.

“Cat, no.” Maren hurries around us, putting her hands out as if to block her best friend. “I saw it happen. It’s not Violet’s fault. Luella almost killed both of the riders because she couldn’t jump the trap.”

“You fucking dropped her!” Cat surges against Maren. “Cibbe saved your precious rider, and you dropped our flier! I will kill you for this!”

“Knock it off!” Maren shouts. “You kill her, you kill Riorson. Everyone knows it.”

Fuck, it always comes down to that, doesn’t it?

“I can—” Cat starts.

“Take one step toward Violet, and I’ll throw you off this fucking cliff myself,” Dain warns, his voice low and menacing. “Unlike Riorson, I don’t give a shit who your uncle is.”

“I’ll do it just for fun,” Sloane adds.

“Ridoc,” I manage to say around the pain that throbs from my shoulder then devours the rest of me.

“Alive,” he answers weakly.

“Cat, let it go. Cibbe doesn’t have long,” Maren says, her hand trembling as she reaches for the gryphon.

Cat breathes deeply, then nods, moving to the gryphon’s side.

“Gryphons die with their fliers,” Maren explains, her tone softening as she strokes the line where feathers turn to fur.

Like Tairn and me.

Cibbe lets loose a stuttered, three-beat cry, and the entire cliff, both above us and below, echoes it, as though the gryphons grieve the loss of the flier as one.

The beat of wings approaches as Dain leads me back from the edge, and I watch the mist, waiting for a flash of orange, for Marbh and Brennan to arrive.

“Put my shoulder back in.” My voice croaks as I glance at Dain.

“Shit. Are you serious?” He lifts his brows.

“Do it. Just like when I was fourteen.”

“And seventeen,” he mutters.

“Exactly. You know how to do it, and we don’t have any healers nearby.”

“You don’t want to wait for Brennan?” Dain takes hold of my arm. “Brennan will try to mend me first, and Ridoc is dying. Now do it!” I snap, bracing for the pain.

A strap of leather appears in front of my face. “Bite down,” Maren orders over Cibbe’s cries.

I can’t look at him, can’t watch his healthy body die just like Liam’s had, so I face forward and bite.

“One.” Dain lifts my arm slightly and adjusts. “Two.” He brings my arm out to a ninety-degree angle.

My teeth mark the leather as I fight the scream working its way up my throat. Ridoc has been shot with two arrows. I can handle this.

“I’m so fucking sorry,” Dain whispers, putting his other hand between my neck and shoulder. “Three!” He rolls my arm forward and I clench my jaw, my eyes squeezing shut as white-hot pain sends stars flashing across my vision and he puts the joint back into place.

The relief from the worst of the pain is instant, and I remove the leather from between my teeth. “Thank you.”

“Never thank me for that.” He lifts my arm above my head, making sure it’s in place, rotates it back down, then bends my elbow, tucking my arm across my chest before sliding his belt off and fashioning a temporary sling. “How is he?” he asks over his shoulder.

“Losing blood,” Sloane answers as an orange claw lands on the ledge where the trap had been and Brennan executes a perfect roll-on landing.

“Are you—” He comes running at me, scanning me for blood.

“I’m fine! Save Ridoc!”

“Fuck.” Brennan levels a look at Dain’s leg. “You’re next.”

“It’s just a graze.” Dain glances down at me. “It just caught the edge of my thigh.”

Brennan crouches next to Ridoc and starts working.

“It’s all right,” Maren tells Cibbe as the gryphon collapses, his head hanging over the edge of the cliff as his cries grow softer. “You have earned an honorable death.”

Another set of wingbeats fills the air, and I face the mist, waiting for Tairn’s disapproving scowl. But I don’t feel him any closer than before.

“You did not ask me to fetch you,” he says sternly.

The mist parts like a scene from a nightmare, and gray, gaping jaws fill my vision, opening wide to reveal dripping teeth that snap closed around Cibbe’s neck, snatching the gryphon from the ledge before falling back into the mist.

My heart stops.

“What the fuck—” Sloane whispers.

“Wyvern,” I manage to whisper, my head swiveling toward Maren and Cat. They’re the only people here who’ve seen one. “Wyvern, right?”

“Wyvern,” Cat replies, her eyes wide with shock. Maren is still as a statue.

“Wyvern!” Dain bellows, and all hell breaks loose.

“We can’t see anything in the cloud cover,” Tairn growls.