Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Alden used to marvel at flying creatures. He would often stop his work—be it hauling water, plowing, sowing, threshing—and stare up at the sky as a flock of birds winged high overhead or a butterfly danced on the breeze. To Alden, flying was the epitome of freedom.
What he wouldn’t give to be here now with a faravar, a beast of myth and legend, about to launch into the sky.
Grief settles deep in my chest, and Ryot whips his gaze around from where he’s readying his small pack of supplies.
He raises an eyebrow in question, but I resolutely ignore him, refusing to meet his eyes.
Despite what he may think, he’s not entitled to a single piece of me.
Not my past, not my present, not my future.
He may sense my grief, but he doesn’t get to know why.
He turns his attention back to his pack. He straps it to his back with brisk efficiency, and then he secures my scythe to it, too. Interesting that he doesn’t attach either to the massive faravar, though I should have realized Einarr is not a beast of burden. He doesn’t even bear a saddle or reins.
“How do we hold on?” I turn back to Ryot, and his mocking smirk rankles. My hands ball into fists, and his eyes dart down to catch the motion. His smile only widens, and I force every muscle in my body to relax. He gets too much enjoyment out of my frustration.
Ignoring my question, he jerks his head toward his beast. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Where am I to sit, exactly?”
Pure amusement spreads across his face, and he barks out a laugh. I fight not to growl.
“On my lap, rebel girl. You’ll sit on my lap,” he says, finally answering my question.
But his eyes are gleaming, as if he’s waiting for me to fight him and, moreover, looking forward to it.
I’ll sit in his lap without a word, if for no other reason than to defy his expectations.
Well, that and having no clue how to ride a horse, much less fly one.
I turn until I’m mostly facing Einarr. I get perverse satisfaction from seeing Ryot’s surprised eyebrow lift from my periphery.
I wait for him to mount Einarr, a feat I’m actually very interested to watch.
I’m sure it’s a move he’s completed countless times, but Einarr still whinnies and dances to the side, shaking out his wings as he moves to adjust to Ryot’s weight astride him.
The earth quakes beneath my feet from the pounding of Einarr’s hooves, and the slight flutter of his wings creates a wind that wasn’t there before.
The trees sway and bend from the force of it.
I’m grounded to the spot by sheer terror and quaking legs.
We forgot to imagine this part, Alden and I, when we dreamed of flying.
We didn’t consider that humans aren’t meant to fly, that our feet aren’t made to leave the ground.
There’s something supernatural, something fundamentally inhuman, about taking flight. It has me paralyzed. I’m dizzy.
I’ve forgotten to breathe.
Ryot urges Einarr forward, until his black leather boots fill my view.
I can’t do this.
I raise my gaze to Ryot’s, expecting that same taunting look he’s shot me all evening.
Instead, there’s a keen understanding reflected in his eyes and he opens himself up.
I feel his emotions, and they nearly mirror mine.
Mind-numbing terror. Body-racking nerves.
Fear of the unknown. Overwhelming incompetence.
But other emotions come through, too, and once I sense them from him, I recognize them in myself.
Anticipation. Exhilaration. Near-intoxication from the adrenaline.
“Before my first ride,” he says. My eyes widen as I realize what he did. He shared his emotions with me—from the past .
He shuts off the connection, and I’m left to wade through my own emotions and the remnants of his.
Then he holds out his hand, and my gaze drops.
Scars zigzag his palm. Some are white and nearly completely faded with time.
Others are much newer, almost raw. I reach out and grip his hand. The new scars are rough under my palm.
I raise my eyes back to his, and his lips slowly curl into the first real smile I’ve seen—no taunting, no smirking.
Just pure, genuine satisfaction, like he’s taking pleasure in experiencing this with me.
And that’s when I realize—Ryot is beautiful.
Not like Alden. He’s not pretty, like the sunrise.
He’s alluring and magnetic, like the stars.
Then he moves. One moment, my feet are planted solidly on the ground, and in the next I’ve been pulled into his lap.
That is all the cue Einarr needs, apparently, he’s running and launching us from the little clearing.
The world tilts wildly as we go near-vertical, clearing the tops of the trees, barely.
My stomach heaves and my breath catches as the ground slips away.
I’m surrounded by Ryot. His firm chest braces my back, his thighs are my seat, and his arms wrap around my body as he reaches around me to grip Einarr’s mane.
It is oddly comforting, but it’s not enough to feel secure.
I fist my own sweaty palms in Einarr’s mane, too.
In a matter of seconds, we’ve soared beyond the treetops of the Weeping Forest. Einarr’s great wings beat the air with brutal grace, each stroke a surge in my spine, in my bones, in the pit of my stomach.
Moonlight slips across his feathers. My breath catches—half scream, half laugh—and I clutch tighter to his mane.
I shut my eyes against the rush, then crack them open wide as if Alden whispered a dare into my ear.
It’s night, and the moon casts a faint silver light across the landscape.
To the east is Selencia, the land where I was born.
It’s mostly hills and farmland, cut through by rivers that reflect the moonlight in broken lines.
It’s my homeland, but it’s also not. At the core, in every way that matters, Selencia is Faraengard’s. They took it long ago.
I drag my eyes away from Selencia, from the roads I once walked barefoot and the villages I know by name, and turn west.
To face Faraengard. It’s not visible yet, but it presses closer with every beat of Einarr’s wings. Faraengard is a kingdom that rules by strength alone. Its cities are carved from stone and ruled with iron, or so we’re told by the boys who survive the mines.
To the south is another kingdom—one where it’s hot and never rains. I’ve never been there, and I don’t remember what it’s called. I just know that when the winds blow from the south, they’re dry and sharp.
To the north is nothing but ice and endless winter. I’ve heard stories about it, too, of people who somehow live under the ice, but that’s all they are. Stories.
All of it—the rolling hills of Selencia, the jagged cliffs of Faraengard, the burning south and the frozen north—makes up Aesgroth, a continent eternally on the brink of destruction thanks to the demons that haunt it.
And right now, I’m flying over it.
My back is snug against Ryot’s chest—there’s no room for any space between us—but he leans even further forward until the heat of him nearly burns and his mouth brushes against my ear.
I shiver, and it has nothing to do with fear.
No way. No. Absolutely not. I’m not attracted to my kidnapper. That would be insanity. I try to edge away from him, but there’s nowhere to go.
“Look up,” Ryot whispers.
I tear my eyes from the rapidly retreating ground as Einarr ascends even higher, and I find myself breathless due to something other than pain, fear, or anxiety.
It’s from pure reverence for the immensity of the heavens.
The stars are infinitely bright. They glimmer and shine in ways I couldn’t have imagined.
For the first time in months, I’m not overwhelmed by a barrage of sensations.
There’s soothing silence in this ethereal space between the gods’ domain and the humans’ tenement.
The one interruption—the constant beat of Einarr’s wings on the wind—is calming.
It’s meant to be here.The crisp air is invigorating and pure, and the chill of it acts like a balm against my sore and cracked skin.
Flying does not make me feel free, though, despite Alden’s imaginings.
Even here, in this indescribable space with the clouds and the stars and the wind as my neighbors, I’m nothing but a prisoner; that’s not something I can forget.
But he was on to something. Taking flight brings peace.
It’s better than anything you could find in Rene’s temple, I have no doubt.
Ryot chuckles softly behind me, and the sound is a low rumble.
“Not so bad, right?” Ryot asks.
Not so bad? It’s everything.
For now, I’m content to revel in what I know is a fleeting feeling.
I allow everything else to fall away and spend the rest of our flight basking in the immense glow of the stars.
Ryot doesn’t utter another word, even as the stars and the darkness begin to fade, overcome by the blazing oranges and yellows of the rising sun.
I bask in that sense of stolen peace, even as Einarr begins to descend back toward the earth.
Until we break through the clouds to find the landscape completely changed.
I’ve heard stories about the mountains and the ocean, of course.
They’ve been described in simple terms. Mountains are like towering hills, the few who’ve ever traveled to Edessa say, but imagine that the hills are reaching up to touch the sky.
The ocean, they tell us, smells of salt and is so vast you can’t see the end.