Natalie shot away, hot tears coursing down her cheeks. She did not see Jarin flying in pursuit. She climbed through the canopy and out into the brilliant day. The sunlight blinded her and dried her tears. Up here the wind whipped across the treetops, and Natalie had to fight to hold herself upright. She dropped slightly and clung to a spindly Sycamore branch, the silver bark whistling in the wind.

Taymyr was wrong. He had to be wrong. All fairies could heal. He lied. He hated her. He wasn’t an Answerer at all. Natalie begged her heart to believe her but she felt the gaping wound, the hole where her hope had been. How could she live like this? A fairy who cannot heal is not truly a fairy.

A roar from far below interrupted her thoughts. Gar’s roar. Natalie leapt into the wind and plunged though the canopy, darting between the branches, bursting through leaves. A falcon streaked ahead of her, the limp form of Jarin clutched in its talons. Natalie turned her path, arching to intercept the raptor, a blaze of scarlet trailing from her wings. The falcon saw her and accelerated; in the trees, Natalie held the advantage, but, in the open, nothing could match the falcons speed. The distance closed, closer, closer. Natalie concentrated. She was within feet. A little closer. A few more inches. They wove between branches, first the falcon and then Natalie clipping twigs that slowed their progress.

She had him.

A jet of fire shot from Natalie’s fingers just as the falcon burst from the canopy. Feathers scorched, it screeched, fluttered and dropped a few feet. Natalie aimed another blast and the bird shook Jarin loose and shot away.

Natalie snagged Jarin’s ankle and guided his fall, slowing it just before he hit the ground. Gar stood near, saliva dripping from his maw, but his eyes were blank, eyes that reflecting Natalie’s blasted expression back at her. She held her palm quivering against Jarin’s chest where his life blood pumped steadily out to pool in the hollow of his solar plexus and then dribble into the detritus of the forest floor.