Here it is

Suljemen – the biggest man she’d ever met, so strong, so beautiful, so powerful…

Suljemen lay crumpled at Caden’s feet.

The lines he’d traced along her shoulder blades burned, icy-hot, and spread, numbing her heart, creeping up the back of her neck to freeze the flood of guilt-tinged sorrow. The frigid air gathered around her; a cocoon of numbness, a shield against feeling that sucked the icy wind toward her from all directions, making the tunnels howl…

The icy fingers completed their circuit through her body, and she realized that the howling was no longer the wind, but her own voice. She roared at her father, at the strangely numb pain…at her Kennari who had left her.

When the time comes to fly…

The wind burst from the place on Caden’s back that the Kennari had marked, flaring out behind her, solidifying into crystalline wings.

There was no slow spread of wonder, no warmth of gratitude within her. The numbness was all.

Dared reeled back as Caden’s wings spread and the whirlwinds of ice at her back lifted her. She glanced down at the scuffs in the dirt where her shoes had been and saw the long blonde braid snaking in the dirt.

Suljemen…

Her teacher…

Her love…

A spark of anger hidden somewhere in her frozen heart roared to blazing life. Heat scorched through her veins, hunting the cold as it fled.

Her father was moving at the periphery of her vision, and she snapped her head toward him. He swayed slightly, as if buffeted by the hatred that rolled from her in waves. Their eyes locked and, deep in her father’s eyes, Caden saw the unimaginable.

Fear.

Fear that fed the rage that consumed her.

Her wings shattered, ice crystals melting as they sprayed around her, spattering the walls like a cloudburst, as flames, born of the molten hate that flowed through her, took their place.

She dropped the little way she had risen, and stood once again in the middle of the room. Dollops of liquid flame dripped unheeded from her wings, singeing holes in the carpet. She went to her knees next to Suljemen, her tears softly hissing into puffs of steam as they landed on his face. Her fingers brushed against his arm, leaving a charred trail and the smell of burnt cloth, and she recoiled.

A deafening crack echoed down the stairway as a huge chunk of the ceiling fell and rolled past the open door – a reminder that Ebon was dying around them.