The sky above the Sunken Straits was not blue.
At five thousand feet, above the treacherous cloud ceiling where common birds suffocated on thin, freezing air, the heavens were bruised—a churning, violet-black canopy split by continuous sheets of silent, heatless lightning.
Cinder cut through the gale with the effortless, ancient arrogance of an apex predator.
The colossal war-drake’s sixty-foot wingspan barely flapped; he caught the subterranean thermal updrafts boiling out of the deep-sea volcanic rifts below, gliding across the ocean at a terrifying, silent speed that left the sound of his flight three leagues behind him.
Strapped into the heavy, boiled-leather war-saddle upon Cinder’s shoulders, Lyra leaned forward against the scaly crest of the beast’s neck.
The wind shrieked through the needle-iron pins woven into her dark braids, tearing tears from her eyes that froze before they could roll down her cheeks. She was wrapped in thick, seal-fur road leathers, her star-iron crown tucked safely within her inner breast pocket, the simple antler-handled knife resting against her right thigh.
Behind her, locked into the same saddle-brace, Gideon’s massive chest was an unyielding wall of furnace heat pressed against her spine.
His colossal arms circled her waist, holding the thick iron-ringed guide reins with effortless, relaxed authority. Even through the howling storm, his scent—burning cedar, crushed iron, and sweet mountain frost—was an intoxicating, impenetrable shield that kept the biting ocean frost from touching her lungs.
Tucked into secondary gliding harnesses secured along Cinder’s armored flanks were Varis, Talia, and six elite Void-dancers of the Ember guard, their bodies wrapped in oiled black silk, their executioner's blades bound tight against their shins to prevent the steel from humming in the wind.
"Three hundred leagues out!" Talia shouted over the roar of the slipstream, her single flint eye squinting through an iron navigation spyglass. "The continental shelf dropped off half an hour ago! We're over theLeviathan Trench!"
Lyra closed her eyes and inhaled through her teeth.
The scent of the world below shifted violently.
Gone was the crisp, clean salt of the northern coastline. Down in the fathomless black water below, the ocean smelled of rotten kelp, pulverized coral, and that thick, synthetic stench of burning copper and alchemical gold that she had first tasted on Malakor’s parchment.
And then, her ability caught the pulse.
It hit her like a sonic boom detonating beneath the water's surface: a rhythmic, deep-sea vibration that shook the marrow of her ribs.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
It wasn't an engine. It was an artificial heartbeat—a colossal, subterranean blood-ward anchored to the ocean floor, radiating a five-mile-wide perimeter of invisible, golden sonar that swept through the black depths every ten seconds.
"Hold the drake!" Lyra gasped, her hand slamming down onto Gideon’s armored forearm.
Gideon didn't question her. With a sharp, practiced twitch of his wrists, he hauled back on the heavy iron reins.
Cinder let out a low, disgruntled hiss, banking hard to the west, his massive leathery wings catching a lateral headwind to stall their forward momentum. The great reptile hovered in place among the thick storm clouds, his sulfuric eyes narrowing as his scaly crest bristled with sudden, feral agitation.
"What do you smell, little bird?" Gideon growled against her ear, his lips brushing the curve of her jaw, his body instantly shifting into coiled, lethal readiness.
"A perimeter," Lyra whispered, her violet eye igniting with ethereal starlight behind her goggles. "The Dominion doesn't leave the Straits unguarded. Below the clouds... two miles ahead. There is an imperial listening post."
Varis unhooked her safety strap, crawling along the saddle rail until her face was level with Lyra’s knee. "An outpost in the open ocean? The trench here has no islands, my Queen. The water is two miles deep."
"It's not an island," Lyra replied, her voice tightening as she parsed the complex web of cords pulsing beneath the fog. "It's a floating citadel. An anchored iron atoll."
"Take us through the cloud break," Gideon commanded the drake, his low bass rumbling into Cinder’s scales.
Cinder tilted his wings, dropping through the dense, gray belly of the storm clouds like a falling boulder.
The mist tore open, revealing the churning, slate-gray expanse of the southern ocean.
Lyra’s breath caught in her throat.
Rising out of the white-capped swells two miles south was a colossal, octagonal fortress forged entirely from gold-plated iron and black sea-granite. It was anchored to the sea floor by eight massive, dripping iron chains, each link thick enough to support a fortress gate.
Spanning a quarter-mile wide, the floating outpost—the Gilded Eye—bristled with thirty-two heavy sun-stone ballistas and two rotating, domed towers that housed massive alchemical searchlights.
The searchlights swept across the dark water in broad, blinding arcs, illuminating the churning waves with sickly, neon-golden light.
And resting within the central lagoon of the floating fortress was a single, sleek, predatory vessel: an Imperial Sun-Clipper, its gilded hull glowing with volatile energy, its three gold-leaf sails emblazoned with the weeping solar crest of Grand Inquisitor Malakor.
"The Inquisitor made it back," Talia muttered, adjusting her spyglass. "His ship is taking on fuel from the fortress reservoirs. They’re transferring liquid sun-stone into his keel."
Lyra stared at the glowing golden conduit pumping the alchemical fire into the clipper's hull.
To her mundane vision, it was an engineering marvel.
To her ability, the Gilded Eye was an abomination of cosmic proportions.
Feeding the central refinery of the fortress were eight thick, translucent cables running straight down into the black water of the trench below.
And trapped within the depths, chained to the seabed two miles below the surface, was the source of their fuel: a colossal, ancient, subterranean beast whose life-force was being continuously drained through the cables into the refinery vats.
Lyra’s heart hammered against her ribs.
A Sun Wyrm.
She could smell the beast's agony across two miles of open air: a blinding, tragic scent of molten honey, crushed amber, and suffocating, dying starlight. A creature of ancient, divine fire, turned into a fuel tank for tyrants who were rotting from the inside out.
"They aren't just fueling a ship," Lyra whispered, her voice trembling with sudden, ancient rage. "They're torturing a god."
Gideon looked down at the floating golden fortress, then into the fierce, violet fire burning in his mate's eyes.
He didn't ask if they should bypass it. He didn't suggest flying around the perimeter.
A slow, terrifying, savage grin carved across his scarred face.
He drew his left claymore, resting the flat of the star-iron blade across Cinder’s armored saddle-horn.
"How many cords are holding that beast to the sea-floor, little bird?" Gideon rumbled, the darkness in his voice promising absolute ruin to the gold-plated empire below.
Lyra reached down, her small hand gripping the hilt of her antler knife.
"Eight," she whispered, her fangs lengthening against her tongue. "Eight chains of cold gold."
Gideon leaned forward, his massive chest pressing against her back, his breath hot, ragged, and thick with that intoxicating scent of burning cedar and iron.
"Then let's go break some chains," he growled.
And with a deafening roar that tore through the storm clouds, Cinder folded his wings and plummeted straight toward the Gilded Eye.