Chapter 38
Szhe’ka
I wake to her scream.
It tears me from sleep like a talon through flesh. Raw, jagged, wrong. Not the startled cry of a nightmare. Not the breathless sound of pleasure I have learned to coax from her body.
This is agony.
“Ani!”
I am upright before the echo dies, heart hammering, wing stumps flaring wide in instinctive alarm. She is curled on her side in the nest, fingers clawing at her shoulders, her back, her thighs. Her breath comes in broken gasps. Her eyes are wide and wild, unfocused.
“It hurts—” she chokes out, starting with my tongue and then shifting into her native one, voice shredding between languages. “Szhe’ka. Make it stop!”
I reach for her, but she thrashes violently, nearly striking my face with her elbow. The movement pulls my attention to her back—
And I freeze.
Her skin is not skin. It ripples.
Not like muscle. Something moves beneath the surface in waves—rising, pressing, forcing outward. The feathers she has grown over the last few days tremble, then split apart as new shafts spear through.
She screams again, a sound that punches the air from my lungs. This is my fault.
This is me inside her, reshaping her.
After another long scream, my drums still ringing, I snatch her into my upper arms, using my lower set to help us up, scrambling over my ridiculous legs as I stumble out of the hut, my song of alarm rising higher.
Thivoll bursts through the nearby trees and onto the rock-strewn sand, spear-tail raised, nostrils flaring. Ree follows at his flank, breathless but focused.
They take in the scene in a heartbeat.
“It’s happening,” Ree says in the tongue of her beast.
“Happening?” I snarl, barely recognizing my own voice in his harsh language. “She’s in pain. Do something.”
“I will,” Ree bites out. “Put her down.”
I hesitate, but do as she says.
Ree drops to her knees beside Ani without hesitation. “This happened to Olivia, too. Terrible and fast, but she lived.”
Ani arches upward with a violent convulsion, fingers digging into the ground. Feathers burst from her shoulder blades in a ragged line, splitting flesh that closes slowly behind it. Yellow blood beads, then flows.
“She is dying!” I roar in Thivoll’s language, the rasp of it suited to the moment.
“She is not.” Ree’s voice is firm. “Szhe’ka. Look at her.”
“I am looking!”
“No. See her.”
I force myself to breathe.
To focus.
The chaos is not random. The feathers are not erupting without pattern. They are aligning. Spacing evenly. Pushing outward in structured rows.
Like—
Molting.
Understanding slams into me so hard my knees nearly give.
When my people molt, it is a slow agony. Old plumage loosens, nerves scream, new feathers punch through tender skin. We experience it in stages as we bleed.
Except that is not quite right. She is not dying, but this is more than molting.
“She is changing,” I whisper, horror and awe tangling in my chest.
Another wave hits her. She cries out my name and claws at her sides, cutting deep furrows in her attempts to reach her back. I seize her wrists gently but firmly.
“Ani,” I murmur, pressing my forehead to hers. “It will pass. Like molting. You grow.”
Her eyes find mine through the pain. For a heartbeat, she seems to understand.
Then the transformation surges.
Feathers explode outward from her spine in a violent unfurling. The sound—wet and terrible—turns my stomach, but I do not look away. I will witness this. I will not fail her by closing my eyes.
Her body arches one final time.
And then she goes limp.
Silence crashes down.
For a heartbeat I think—
No.
“Ani?” My voice fractures.
Ree presses her ear to Ani’s chest. “She’s alive.”
My legs give out and I catch myself on my hands.
Carefully, reverently, I turn Ani onto her side.
Wings.
She has wings.
They lie folded awkwardly at first, still damp from their violent birth. I reach out with trembling fingers and brush along one, aligning them so the flight feathers don’t break, wiping off her yellow blood so I can see the gleam underneath.
On the back side, the feathers gleam bright blue-green, iridescent like river water under twin suns. When I gently lift the wing, the underside flashes deep, burning red. As much red as I would expect her to show. Strong and fierce.
They are smaller than mine once were. Sleeker. But strong. Whole.
“She matches you,” Thivoll murmurs.
My throat tightens painfully at the memory of what I have lost, but I push it aside, trying to think of her in term of what a hatchling would need.
The breeze picks up and her wet wings twitch in response. I need to get her out of the wind.
I gather Ani up, moving her through the doorway of the hut and placing her down. Ree follows and Thivoll takes up most of the entrance, no room inside for his long body.
Ree starts to speak just as Ani starts to thrash again, arms flailing as she lashes out with her talons.
I surge forward, stopping Ani before she can break skin, letting out a long breath when I see she hasn’t opened up fresh wounds.
Her wings thrash in violent, uncoordinated surges, and although I have another set of hands, they are not so easily contained.
The span is too wide for the hut. The right wing strikes the wall with a heavy thud, the odd claws at the tip gouging into the woven fiber.
Thivoll swears under his breath.
“If she wakes like this,” he says, “she’ll tear the place apart.”
“Or herself,” Ree adds quietly.
Another spasm ripples through her shoulders. The primary joint rolls at a dangerous angle.
“We need to bind them,” I say.
“Bind her wings?” Ree asks.
“Yes.”
I move closer, careful with my footing, lowering myself beside her without creating sudden air movement that might activate her reflexes. The feathers shiver again, tendons pulling too tight.
“When a fledgling burns with fever,” I say, keeping my voice steady, “the body forgets its boundaries. The flight muscles misfire. They attempt to launch from enclosed spaces.”
As if summoned by the words, her left wing lashes outward. The tip slams into a support beam with enough force to splinter the edge.
Ree flinches.
“If we allow this to continue,” I go on, “she will tear her flight feathers or dislocate the joints.”
Thivoll’s jaw tightens. “So we tie her down.”
“We stabilize her, but only wrap them to her,” I correct gently. “As we would a young one. Wings secured against the body. Joints supported. It is not restraint for control. It is protection.”
Ree studies the angle of the next convulsion, calculating.
“How long?” she asks.
“Until she wakes and… whatever is happening… recedes,” I say. “When awareness returns, coordination will follow.”
Another violent twitch runs through her. Her claws scrape against me.
Thivoll exhales sharply. “Then we do it now.”
Ree nods once and pulls items from the bulging pouches she has made on her black suit, handing them to me.
I reach for the prepared cloth strips, thick and wide enough to distribute pressure without cutting circulation.
“Go get a rope to lay over those, Thivoll,” Ree instructs and he bounds away without question.
“We bind carefully,” I say. “Not tight. Just firm enough to prevent extension.”
Thivoll is back in moments, a rough woven rope slung around his neck.
Together, the three of us move in deliberate coordination, waiting for the brief lull between spasms, guiding each wing inward, folding the feathers along their natural line.
She fights the motion reflexively, strength amplified beyond anything I would expect, movements faster than even I could attempt.
There are changes that are more than just from me, but I don’t let my mind linger on what that will mean for her.
“It’s all right,” Ree murmurs soothingly, though the unconscious cannot hear.
We secure the first wing, then the second, anchoring them against her back with layered wraps that brace the joints without crushing them.
The next spasm hits.The bindings hold, and the hut remains intact.
So does she.
“We watch her,” I say quietly.
Ree settles near her head. Thivoll positions himself at the door.
And we wait for her to return to herself as I stare intently, willing her to be well, as afraid for her as I am pleased to see such strong, albeit strange, wings on her back.
She has grown.
And whatever hunts us next will not face a broken male and a fragile female.
It will face two creatures of the sky… even if only in spirit.