Jonah vaulted from the boat to the pier railing at her first step away from him and hauled himself over with one wrench of his arm. Nothing compared to her leap, of course. Adding the teshuva’s strength to her own daredevil insanity, she flung herself up into the open layer of night between the ferales roiling across the pier and the flaming cloud of salambes. For an endless beat that threatened to drag his heart from his chest, she lingered at the top of the arc, a silhouette against the inferno. The lamppost had no pole-vault flexion, only the demon’s power to get her past the tenebrae ring. It wouldn’t be enough. The sea of tenebrae was already turning to follow her flight, drawn unerringly to her. Not that he blamed them. He crashed into their rear guard, the sword a blur even to his teshuva vision. A head, a claw, a wing, a tail yielded to his blows. Ichor flowed below his boots, thin and viscous in the rain. She was gone. Lost on the other side of the darkness. And everything that remained of the man he’d been—no, of the man he wanted to be—was gone with her.
