Chapter Twenty-Seven
Aviary slid helplessly down the tiled floor toward the yawning drop below.
‘Aviary!’ Nasira yelled.
She lay across a pillar, reaching out with Aviary’s ruck, its shoulder straps hanging almost within her grasp.
Aviary reached for them. She snatched at one and held, hoping she wouldn’t pull Nasira off the pillar. The sudden deceleration snapped her into the pillar, the force ripping the strap from her fingers.
She fell, slid, then her back hit something hard, jarring her body and knocking the air from her lungs. Pain paralyzed her.
She’d landed on the last intact pillar before the vertiginous fall beyond.
Nasira peeked over her pillar, a Separatist carbine dangling from a sling. ‘Stay there,’ she said, lowering herself and dropping into a controlled slide to land
