Page 162 of The Last Valkyrie

Unlike Magnus’ shadow-images, these specters werereal. My mates had to fight them, swinging their weapons and Shaping their magic as the impervious summonings attacked my men—distracting them from the aerial battle going on over their heads.

Korvan smiled at his handiwork. He looked at me. “So, you’d like to see her, would you?”

“Yes! This can all end if you just—”

With another tilt of his wrist, the fabric of reality split and Korvan opened a black portal beside him in the sky. He reached in, drawing out the handle of a . . . leash.

And tied to the end of that leash, forced out of the portal, was my mother. She looked bedraggled, with listless eyes, hair a mess, face bruised, and only a potato-sack tunic on her skinny frame, hanging off one shoulder.

The black rope was looped around her neck.

My teeth ground so hard together I thought they’d crack. “You gods-damned monster. Let hergo!”

Korvan laughed darkly. “Poor choice of words, lass. As you wish.” He flew away from the portal, dragging my mother out of the blackened doorway, and Lindi plunged the length of the rope—at least ten feet down through the air.

“NO!” I cried.

Her neck didn’t snap, thank the gods, but her hands immediately went to the tight noose clamped around her neck. Her legs kicked wildly as she dangled in the air, held effortlessly by Korvan’s single hand.

My heart plummeted.

Korvan shrugged like torture was the easiest thing in the world. “I’ve grown tired of the whore anyway. It’syouwho are my future, Ravinica Lindeen.”

A sob rolled through my choked throat. “Please . . .”

He tilted his head, that sadistic smirk only growing wider at one end of his mouth. “Oops.” Lifting his hand near his head, Korvan dropped his end of the leash.

I was free-falling through the air quicker than my mind could react, instincts taking over as my wings curled around me and I dove like a falcon. My stomach launched to my throat and the ground exchanged places with the sky, rushing toward me.

Ma fell, her hands and legs pinwheeling as she cried out.

The sting of the wind blurred my vision, slashing tears away from my eyes as I set my jaw and gained on my mother.

Forty feet from the ground.

I reached out and missed her.

Twenty feet.

A roar ripped past my chapped lips. My fingers reached, fear and anger and every other emotion running rampant through me.

Ten feet—

I grabbed the leash, yanking it, hauling it toward me and shimmying along its length—

Five, four, three—

I wrapped my arms around Ma’s center, hugged her body against me—

And spun just as I crashed into the ground.

My wings folded, creating a small layer of protection as agony jolted up my spine, my back, and crunched my bones. Dust exploded as my rocket-fall landing cratered the earth.

I let out a ragged sound.

“RAVINICA!” one of my mates shouted.

Darkness dimmed my vision. Korvan took up the space in the sky above me, black wings against purple.

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