Chapter Twenty Nine #2
He lifted a brow at my gaping, and I shut my mouth. I frowned at the drop ahead. “Again?” I grumbled.
A soft laugh. “We can find a lower ledge to jump from, if you want.”
I cringed. “You said this was low.”
Azriel leaned back on his hands and waited. Patient, cool.
But I felt the bark tear into my palms, the thud of my knees into its rough side—
“You are immortal,” he said quietly. “You are very hard to break.” A pause. “That’s what I told myself.”
“Hard to break,” I said glumly, “but it still hurts.”
“Tell that to the tree.”
I huffed a laugh. “I know the drop isn’t far, and I know it won’t kill me. Can’t you just … push me?”
For it was that initial leap of utter faith, that initial lurch into motion that had my limbs locking up.
“No.” A simple answer.
I still hesitated.
Useless—this fear. I had faced down the Attor, falling through the sky for a thousand feet.
And the rage at its memory, at what it had done with its miserable life, what more like it might do again, had me gritting my teeth and sprinting off the boulder.
I snapped my wings out wide, my back protesting as they caught the wind, but my lower half began to drop, my legs a dead weight as my core yielded—
The infernal tree rose up before me, and I swerved hard to the right.
Right into another tree.
Wings first.
The sound of bone and sinew on wood, then earth, hit me before the pain did. So did Azriel’s soft curse.
A small noise came out of me. The stinging of my palms registered first—then in my knees.
Then my back—
“Shit,” was all I could say as Azriel knelt before me.
“You’re all right. Just stunned.”
The world was still reordering itself.
“You banked well,” he offered.
“Into another tree.”
“Being aware of your surroundings is half of flying.”
“You said that already,” I snapped. He had. A dozen times just this morning.
Azriel only sat on his heels and offered me a hand up. My flesh burned as I gripped his fingers, a mortifying number of pine needles and splinters tumbling off me. My back throbbed enough that I lowered my wings, not caring if they dragged in the dirt as Azriel led me toward the lake edge.
In the blinding sun off the turquoise water, his shadows were gone, his face stark and clear. More … human than I had ever seen him.
“There’s no chance that I’ll be able to fly in the legions, is there?” I asked, kneeling beside him as he tended to my skinned palms with expert care and gentleness. The sun was brutal against his scars, hiding not one twisted, rippling splotch.
“Likely not,” he said. My chest hollowed out at that. “But it doesn’t hurt to practice until the last possible moment. You never know when any measure of training may be useful.”
I winced as he fished out a large splinter from my palm, then washed it clean.
“It was very hard for me to learn how to fly,” he said. I didn’t dare respond. “Most Illyrians learn as toddlers. But … I assume Rhysand told you the particulars of my early childhood.”
I nodded. He finished the one hand and started on the other.
“Because I was so old, I had a fear of flying—and did not trust my instincts. It was an … embarrassment to be taught so late. Not just to me, but to all in the war-camp once I arrived. But I learned, often going off by myself. Cassian, of course, found me first. Mocked me, beat me to hell, then offered to train me. Rhys was there the next day. They taught me to fly.”
He finished my other hand, and sat on the shore, the stones murmuring as they shifted beneath him. I sat beside him, bracing my sore palms faceup on my knees, letting my wings sag behind me.
“Because it was such an effort … A few years after the War, Rhys brought me back a story. It was a gift—the story. For me. He—he went to see Miryam and Drakon in their new home, the visit so secret even we hadn’t known it was happening until he returned.
We knew their people hadn’t drowned in the sea, as everyone believed, as they wanted people to believe.
You see, when Miryam freed her people from the queen of the Black Land, she led all of them—nearly fifty thousand of them—across the desert, all the way to the shores of the Erythrian Sea, Drakon’s aerial legion providing cover.
But they got to the sea and found the ships they’d arranged to transport them over the narrow channel to the next kingdom had been destroyed.
Destroyed by the queen herself, who sent her lingering armies to drag her former slaves back.
“Drakon’s people—the Seraphim—are winged.
Like us, but their wings are feathered. And unlike us, their army and society allow women to lead, to fight, to rule.
All of them are gifted with mighty magic of wind and air.
And when they beheld that army charging after them, they knew their own force was too small to face them.
So they cleaved the sea itself—made a path through the water, all the way through the channel, and ordered the humans to run.
“They did, but Miryam insisted on remaining behind until every last one of her people had crossed. Not one human would she leave behind. Not one. They were about halfway through the crossing when the army reached them. The Seraphim were spent—their magic could barely hold the sea passage. And Drakon knew that if they held it any longer … that army would make it across and butcher the humans on the other side. The Seraphim fought off the vanguard on the floor of the sea, and it was bloody and brutal and chaotic … And during the melee, they didn’t see Miryam skewered by the queen herself.
Drakon didn’t see. He thought she made it out, carried by one of his soldiers.
He ordered the parted sea to come down to drown the enemy force.
“But a young Seraphim cartographer named Nephelle saw Miryam go down. Nephelle’s lover was one of Drakon’s generals, and it was she who realized Miryam and Nephelle were missing.
Drakon was frantic, but their magic was spent and no force in the world could hold back the sea as it barreled down, and no one could reach his mate in time. But Nephelle did.
“Nephelle, you see, was a cartographer because she’d been rejected from the legion’s fighting ranks.
Her wings were too small, the right one somewhat malformed.
And she was slight—short enough that she’d be a dangerous gap in the front lines when they fought shield to shield.
Drakon had let her try out for the legion as a courtesy to her lover, but Nephelle failed.
She could barely carry the Seraphim shield, and her smaller wings hadn’t been strong enough to keep up with the others.
So she had made herself invaluable as a cartographer during the War, helping Drakon and her lover find the geographical advantages in their battles.
And she became Miryam’s dearest friend during those long months as well.
“And that day on the seafloor, Nephelle remembered that her friend had been in the back of the line. She returned for her, even as all others fled for the distant shore. She found Miryam skewered on the queen’s spear, bleeding out.
The sea wall started to come down—on the opposite shore.
Killing the approaching army first—racing toward them.
“Miryam told Nephelle to save herself. But Nephelle would not abandon her friend. She picked her up and flew.”
Azriel’s voice was soft with awe.
“When Rhys spoke to Drakon about it years later, he still didn’t have words to describe what happened.
It defied all logic, all training. Nephelle, who had never been strong enough to hold a Seraphim shield, carried Miryam—triple the weight.
And more than that … She flew. The sea was crashing down upon them, but Nephelle flew like the best of Seraphim warriors.
The seafloor was a labyrinth of jagged rocks, too narrow for the Seraphim to fly through.
They’d tried during their escape and crashed into them.
But Nephelle, with her smaller wings … Had they been one inch wider, she would not have fit.
And more than that … Nephelle soared through them, Miryam dying in her arms, as fast and skilled as the greatest of Seraphim.
Nephelle, who had been passed over, who had been forgotten …
She outraced death itself. There was not a foot of room between her and the water on either side of her when she shot up from the seafloor; not half of that rising up at her feet.
And yet her too-small wingspan, that deformed wing …
they did not fail her. Not once. Not for one wing beat. ”
My eyes burned.
“She made it. Suffice to say her lover made Nephelle her wife that night, and Miryam … well, she is alive today because of Nephelle.” Azriel picked up a flat, white stone and turned it over in his hands.
“Rhys told me the story when he returned. And since then we have privately adapted the Nephelle Philosophy with our own armies.”
I raised a brow. Azriel shrugged. “We—Rhys, Cass, and I—will occasionally remind each other that what we think to be our greatest weakness can sometimes be our biggest strength. And that the most unlikely person can alter the course of history.”
“The Nephelle Philosophy.”
He nodded. “Apparently, every year in their kingdom, they have the Nephelle Run to honor her flight. On dry land, but … She and her wife crown a new victor every year in commemoration of what happened that day.” He chucked the stone back amongst its brethren on the shore, the sound clattering over the water.
“So we’ll train, Feyre, until the last possible day.
Because we never know if just one extra hour will make the difference. ”
I weighed his words, Nephelle’s story. I rose to my feet and spread my wings. “Then let’s try again.”
I groaned as I limped into our bedroom that night to find Rhys sitting at the desk, poring over more books.