Taking Wing
The killer fights to save a life. The hero could lose it all.
Colin’s battle with Eric has left his friends dead, his face scarred, and his allies turning to hunt him down. All that sustains him are his skein armor and his sister, and Eric will ravage the town to imprison her again, all for a hope of healing her.
Two secrets change everything.
One is the truth about the skein magic, that could give Colin the strength to match his unstoppable foe – if he can keep Eric from seizing that too. The other could shatter everything he’s fought for even if he wins.
Now Colin gathers his last allies and all the courage he can find, to face a threat that no armor can shield him from.
Who can stop a killer, if the hero’s not enough?
Taking Wing is the final book of the Dragonsigns urban fantasy series.
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Sample
“Everyone here is nervous.” Zara bowed her head sadly. “We do make it difficult. First all our police protection before, and Eric still getting in, now Nurse Setter’s missing, and then this.”
“This might not be Eric. But if it is, he has the skein now, and he let his prisoners live. That could mean there’s nothing left to bring him here except—”
Except us. Terri.
To smooth what he’d almost said, Colin turned to his sister. Her face didn’t react—had his blurred head hidden his flinch?
“Terri? You, well, you said Eric wouldn’t risk grabbing you in your condition. He thinks that enough skein would make you better… you think that’s what he was waiting for? Or could he have given up on you?”
Terri’s eyes closed.
Then she opened them. “Can I have some water?”
He reached over to the side table, where a cup of water stood ready. He tipped it up to Terri’s lips—she could have done this herself before Eric took her skein!—and waited as she sipped, swallowed, small repeated motions until the cup was drained.
Colin sank back to the ground as she spoke, her voice soft against the tangle of sounds pressing in from beyond their room.
“When I first woke up like this? He said he’d tell you I was alive.”
“Eric said that?” Zara scowled.
“Soon, he said. And then… he said, he would when he was sure I’d survive.”
“Oh God.” Zara caught her breath. “How could he, how could anyone just say that to, to anyone?”
Colin’s fingers shifted on the paper cup, still in his hand. “Was it to… to make you fight to get better? That sounds like his kind of trick. Probably one of the ways he thinks he saved your life.” Maybe it did.
“So I lived.” Terri’s words were fainter now. “And he said he’d tell you when… he could trust you.”
Zara snapped “When he could trust us? That’s simply insane.”
Terri added “Trust you, to let him heal me.”
“As if he was the only one in the world who could.” Zara turned her head to look around the room, the whole hospital surrounding them. “Obviously wrong.”
“Then, he said he was deciding how to break the news to you.”
Zara’s eyes narrowed and glittered cold—he’d never seen that kind of anger in her. “Break it to us? He said, he dared to say, that we couldn’t stand the shock of knowing my little girl was alive?”
“Then…” Terri added, “he said he told you, and you didn’t believe him.”
“I bet he said that.” Colin twisted on the hard floor. “And said it was our fault you ran into the building at all, right? And how the whole town’s part of that too, and he’s going to—”
He cut off. The paper cup felt frail in his tight-knotted fingers.
“Look, I’m sorry,” he tried. “I know you cared for him, but… we know what Eric is now. I guess anyone trying to comfort someone who’s always hated his life here, it can only go so far.”
“I was leaving too, remember?” Terri’s gaze locked on him, and her voice scratched as she went on. “I said it wasn’t worth changing how they saw him.”
How we saw him. As an undersized kid, as a failed shopkeeper’s son… We tried to protect him.
Terri said “We wanted to leave together. Then I got caught in the quake and I couldn’t move at all.”
“It’s not your fault—”
“He said, I could leave if I healed more. Or if he found more skein for me. He didn’t find it… then he said he needed it to get more… always, needed more…”
Her voice faded in a croak and she gasped for breath.
Always under his control. Every step, Eric tried to fool her more. Or fool himself that only he could help her or see what was wrong with the world.
For two years.
Crunch. The paper cup crumbled in his grip.
“And he never listened,” Zara said.
“I… never… talked,” Terri forced out. “Once I could, I… knew not to.”