Chapter 43
Szhe’ka
Her wings are getting bigger.
I see it first in the mornings. When the light spills over the lake and she stretches, the blue-green feathers catch the sun in wider arcs than the day before. The red underneath deepens, richer now, more flame than ember. They no longer look fragile. They look… eager.
She stands at the edge of the rocky shore and flexes them, testing.
The first few days, she could do little more than lift herself off the ground for a breath and drop again. Now she can glide. Not gracefully. But she can.
“Watch,” she calls, glancing back at me with that bright, reckless grin. She climbs onto a low boulder, spreads her wings, and leaps.
She catches air for three heartbeats before tilting wrong and landing in a graceless skid across the sand.
Kira bursts into laughter. “You fly like a chicken!”
I do not understand the insult, but I understand the tone.
Ani stiffens as she rises from her fall. Her back straightens. Her head tilts just so. I recognize the shift in her posture. Like a bird fluffing before a fight. There it is. The sharpness gathering at the edge of her mouth.
She turns.
“For your information—” she starts, then falters.
A few stumbled curses in her own language spill out, tangled and unconvincing.
Kira is still laughing.
Ani opens her mouth again.
I brace myself.
But instead of striking, she… stops. Her lips twitch. And then she laughs. Not forced. Not brittle. Real.
“Okay,” she says, brushing sand off her legs. “That one was fair.”
Kira wipes tears from her eyes. “I’ve seen better flight from ground birds.”
Ani gasps dramatically. “You wound me. You do better, then, Proto Wings.”
More laughter.
I watch the tension leave Ani’s shoulders.
I know that look she had. I have seen her draw blood with words. I have seen her lash out when she feels cornered. Today, she does not. She shed that impulse like old plumage.
New feathers.
I feel a swell of pride so sharp it almost hurts.
She climbs back onto the boulder, determination replacing offense. “Again,” she mutters.
She jumps. This time, she angles better. She glides farther—awkward, but controlled—and lands on her feet.
She beams at me.
I cannot stop the song of joy from leaving my chest.
Later, when the others disperse and the light softens, she comes to sit beside me beneath the trees.
Her wings brush the stumps of where mine used to be. Almost like a caress.
She doesn’t look at me when she sings. “Feel terrible.”
I tilt my head. “For what?”
“For this.” She gestures to her wings. “Growing. Can almost fly.”
She swallows. “You can’t. I can.”
There it is. Guilt.
I huff softly. “Ani—”
“No,” she insists. “Lost yours. I get? Not right.”
She looks at me now, black eye and blue-green eye fierce and wounded. “Not fair.”
Fair.
Such a strange human concept. I switch to her language so we can speak of it. “My wings were taken,” I say evenly. “Yours were given.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“It does not make it worse,” I counter.
She shakes her head. “I don’t want something you don’t have.”
The statement is so utterly Ani, and nothing like her old feathers, that I almost laugh, but I know she wouldn’t understand why and it would wound her, so I take a long breath before continuing.
“You think I cannot take joy in seeing you fly? That I would take your joy because I cannot?” I ask gently.
“No,” she says, drawing out the word.
I shift my body so I can run a hand down the strong lines of her wings. “Then do not steal joy from yourself.”
She frowns, considering.
Before she can argue further, Thivoll approaches, heavy steps deliberate on the packed ground.
He has been listening.
He always is.
“You brood too much,” he rumbles.
Ani glares at him. “We’re having a moment.”
“Yes. It is very dramatic.”
She almost snaps at him… almost… but then she smirks.
“Jealous you don’t get your own moment? Ree too busy to keep focused on Mr. Kitty?”
He chuffs. “I do not require drama. But pets are never turned down, of course.”
Thivoll turns to me.
“You know,” he says thoughtfully, “with proper resources, there is no reason you could not have wings again.”
I blink.
“What?” Ani blurts out.
He shrugs one massive shoulder to Ani, the human expression looking odd moving along his fur, but still addresses me. “Your primary flight muscles are in your back. They are intact. Strong. The Genali cut the bone and feather, not the foundation.”
My breath catches.
“Prosthetics,” he continues. “Artificial wings. Reinforced frame. Mechanized extension. It would be a simple fabrication after a few minutes with the right technology.”
I stare at him.
“That is… possible?”
He nods once. “With the right resources. Yes.”
The world narrows. The air tastes different.
For a heartbeat, I am back in the sky. The rush of wind beneath me. The burn in my shoulders as I climb thermals. The scream of joy as I dive.
I have trained myself not to dwell there. Not to hope.
Hope is dangerous.
But now—
“You could fly again,” Ani breathes.
Her voice is trembling.
I look down at my hands, one set reaching back to feel the scars along my shoulders.
“You are certain?” I ask Thivoll.
“As certain as I am of gravity,” he says in his pleased rumble.
A laugh breaks out of me before I can stop it.
Disbelief, along with something fragile and bright.
“You mean I would not be grounded forever?”
“Not if we find the right resources,” Thivoll repeats.
A soft voice breaks in and we all turn to see the purple furred Rannek is hovering near the edge of the trees, nervous limbs twitching. “I already made a design.”
Ani’s smile turns soft in the way she only reserves for the gentle male. “Of course you did, Rannek. I am sure they will be the most beautiful wings in the universe. Even better than what the Genali took.”
His legs shift more, just like they always do when he has caught the group’s attention, but he keeps himself from running, the temptation to talk about a new project enough to keep him in place. “Olivia has helped make the design more… deadly.”
The last he says with a hint of disapproval and Ani chuckles.”It will be perfect.”
“My thanks, Rannek,” I tell him. “I don’t have words to describe how much joy it gives me that you thought of me.”
After a few more shuffles and his mouth opening and closing, his shoulders curve even further into his stomach and he flees. Thivoll purrs and Ani beams as we watch him retreat.
Ani’s hands are on my face suddenly.
“Do you hear that?” she demands, eyes shining. “You could fly again.”
I cannot speak. The idea is too large. Too wild.
“I thought—” I start, and stop.
I thought my sky was gone. I thought my life would be measured in what I lost.
Ani presses her forehead to mine. “You don’t get to give up,” she says softly. “Not when there’s even a chance.”
I close my eyes. From the moment I awoke in this terrible place, I have measured myself by absence. By what was taken.
Now, for the first time since the hunters carved my wings away, I feel something else.
Possibility.
“I would need to train again,” I say slowly.
“You would,” Thivoll agrees.
“I would likely fall.”
Ani grins. “You already do that.”
I nudge her lightly with an upper arm. She laughs.
The sound is light. Free.
I look at her wings—wide now, strong, catching the last light of day.
“I am proud of you,” I tell her.
She rolls her eyes, but she smiles.
“For flying like a chicken?”
“For growing.”
She goes still at that.
I let my gaze sweep over our aerie.
Broken wings. New wings. None of us fully airborne.
And yet—
“We will all fly,” I say quietly. “In our own ways.”
Ani squeezes my hand. “Together.”
For the first time in a long while, the sky does not feel lost.
It feels… waiting.