The scream that tore from Mira’s throat was not human. It was the sound of a cathedral window shattering under the bone-shaking blast of a naval gun.
Ren dragged himself across the splintered decking of the Devil’s Pulpit, his hands clawing into the oak planks, fully blind to the open, four-thousand-foot drop spinning three feet to his left. His Exclusion Axiom screamed in his skull, the dizziness clawing at his inner ear like a poisoned hook. But he forced his knees forward until his chest struck the frost beside his sister.
“Mira!” Ren caught her left shoulder. His hands shook as he hauled her upright against the timber frame of the giant crossbow.
Her right arm was locked rigid as an iron bar. Beneath her torn linen blouse, the smoky, many-sided quartz that wrapped her right collar bone and five of her ribs was no longer glowing. It was pulsing with wild, jagged spikes of blinding silver and violet soft glow. The crystal was humming at a hum so high, so piercingly shrill, that the frost on the surrounding timber was vaporizing into thin wisps of white steam.
With every ragged breath she drew, her chest emitted a sickening, metal screech—the sound of quartz crystal-clear planes shearing against each other under impossible internal deep ring.
