Chapter 13 #2
She jerked away. The space between them doubled.
His hand fell to his side.
A void carved itself between her ribs—not because he’d beaten her, not because he’d stopped her, but because she finally understood what this was.
He had saved her from The Institute.
Saved her from Fane.
Saved her from Thorn’s knife and chains.
Just to put her somewhere else where she couldn’t choose.
The thought lodged like glass in her lungs.
She didn’t say it out loud.
Didn’t accuse him.
Didn’t scream.
Didn’t beg.
She simply turned away, each step stiff and controlled as she headed back toward her hut. She didn’t look over her shoulder, but she sensed the pressure of his gaze following her.
This place was not a sanctuary.
It was a cage made of patience, good intentions and sacred rules she had never agreed to.
∞∞∞
The days after the fight blurred together.
Elora did not seek Viliam out again, and he did not come to her. The trust that had existed between them lay broken and unspoken, heavy as a bruise neither of them touched.
The first time she had fully shifted—when she attacked him—the beast had not felt like a loss of control.
It felt like an embrace.
An ancient presence coiled within her, solid and vast. Something that belonged to her and protected her in the same breath. The instincts were feral, yes—sharp, demanding—but beneath the adrenaline there had been a strange stillness. It wasn’t peace, or forgiveness, or healing. But it was enough.
Enough to sleep.
That night with her wings wrapped around her, she didn’t wake gasping for air.
Didn’t jolt from dreams of the arena, of roots crushing her ribs, of Thorn’s shadow stretching across Tehvan’s body.
She slept straight through until morning, heavy and dreamless, the way she hadn’t since before The Institute.
After that, she shifted often.
Always alone.
Always in the hut.
She would stand before the narrow mirror, watch her reflection change—skin dissolving into fur, bones lengthening smoothly now, her eyes burning gold as fangs slid into place. She studied herself like a stranger she was learning to trust.
Those eyes stared back at her: steady, alert, unafraid.
She practiced opening her wings in the cramped space, lifting them only as far as the walls allowed, rolling her shoulders to find the muscles that controlled them.
The movements were awkward at first, but repetition carved familiarity into her bones.
Even confined, she could feel how they wanted to open.
How easily they would carry her once given room.
At night, she slept shifted.
A massive, winged shape curled awkwardly atop a bed built for a single human body, wings tucked tight, tail coiled protectively around her. The hut felt too small, but she felt… contained.
Held together.
During the day she searched. For exits. For leverage. For a way to take back what had been stripped from her without asking.
Elora stopped arguing.
At least, that was how it looked.
She let Kaela lead her through the motions. Let Viliam believe the worst of her rage had burned itself out in the dirt beneath the sacred pools. She listened when they spoke of patience and balance, nodded when they corrected her posture, her breathing, the way she carried her wings.
She learned quickly what they needed to see.
She trained in the open now—on platforms carved into the upper branches of the village, on wooden ledges that overlooked nothing but air and distance. Kaela showed her how to feel the wind before moving, how to angle her wings instead of forcing them, how to fall without fighting gravity.
Elora fell a lot.
The first attempts were brutal. She leapt too hard, panicked too quickly, over-corrected until her body twisted midair and she slammed into bark or dirt. Her landings were clumsy, painful, wings tangled, muscles screaming, joints aching in ways that lingered even after she shifted back.
Kaela watched closely, correcting but never coddling.
“Flight is not escape,” she told her once, after Elora barely managed to keep herself from breaking a wing. “It is surrender.”
Surrender, she learned, was another word for angle.
Once she stopped trying to climb and instead let herself drop, something clicked. The first glide was short and ugly—too steep, too fast—but she stayed upright. The wind caught her just enough to slow the fall, to carry her forward instead of straight down.
Kaela smiled that day.
After that, the village opened beneath her in layers.
She learned how far she could fall before pulling up. How to skim air currents between platforms. How to land without collapsing into a heap of wings and feathers. She reached the middle levels, then the lower terraces, her confidence growing in measured increments.
Still not graceful.
But no longer reckless.
On the seventh day, Kaela led her to the highest platform yet—a narrow stretch of bark with nothing beneath it but sky.
“Today,” Kaela said, calm as ever, “you do not jump.”
Elora shifted fully, wings spreading wide, talons scraping wood.
“You fall,” Kaela corrected.
Before Elora could ask what that meant, Kaela stepped forward and shoved her.
The world vanished.
Air ripped past her, wild and loud, instinct screaming for control she didn’t yet have. Panic flared, but this time, Elora didn’t fight it. She adjusted. Angled. Remembered how gravity worked instead of resisting it.
Her wings cracked open like thunder.
The jolt nearly wrenched her shoulders from their sockets.
Her stomach lurched upward as her descent slowed—first to a plummet, then a dive, then something else entirely.
The wind no longer screamed past her ears but sang beneath her outstretched feathers, each tiny adjustment sending her veering left or right.
She tipped forward, the ground rushing up at a sickening angle.
A frantic twist of her shoulders, a desperate kick of her legs, and her trajectory leveled just enough.
Her claws scraped dirt, skidding through fallen leaves that exploded around her in a cloud of autumn gold.
Kaela landed beside her moments later, composed as ever.
“Well done,” she said.
Elora’s lungs burned, each breath scraping her throat raw.
Her wings hung heavy at her sides, primary feathers dragging through dirt and leaves.
The muscles between her shoulder blades twitched and spasmed, but her feet remained steady on solid ground.
Not a perfect landing. Not the graceful arc Kaela made.
But she hadn’t broken anything this time, not bones nor pride.
That night, curled into her too-small bed with wings folded tight around her body, Elora stared out the window and counted the direction of the prevailing winds. Counted how far the mountains stretched, and where they thinned.
They thought she was learning to belong.
She was learning how to leave.
Two months.
Two months since she was dragged into Al’tera half-dead.
Two months since Tehvan’s blood soaked into the arena floor.
Two months Thorn had woken, eaten, breathed.
Two months, too long.
Elora didn’t wait for certainty. She waited for enough.
Enough strength in her wings, distance in her practice flights, and silence in the nights to know no one was watching her the way they once had.
She packed quickly.
A small leather satchel—worn, cracked at the seams—held the only things she could claim as hers. The clothes she’d arrived in, folded tight despite the smell of old smoke and travel. Her brown cloak, threadbare and familiar, the weight of it heavier than the leather could account for.
She hesitated with it in her hands.
She wanted to wear it. To wrap herself in something human. Something known.
But the air was thick and wet, clinging to her skin like a fever. Anything pressed against her body felt unbearable. She shoved it into the satchel instead.
There was nothing else. No keepsakes. No offerings. No apologies.
Below, the village gathered around the pools.
Voices rose together in some sort of foreign song. Torchlight flickered across bark and jungle flora, casting moving shadows that made the clearing pulse with life. Kaela had explained the tradition once. Or perhaps twice.
Elora hadn’t listened. She never listened when they talked about belonging.
She slipped out of her hut while everyone was distracted, bare feet silent against the wood. She stayed human as she climbed, moving higher and higher along the paths she knew by heart now, ladders, roots, narrow platforms spiraling around Nyt’morah’s vast trunk.
Her ears popped as she climbed. The singing faded to a murmur, then to nothing but the whisper of wind through leaves.
At the tallest platform, mist appeared in her vision.
Goosebumps prickled along her arms as sweat cooled against her skin. Far below, tiny flames dotted the darkness, no larger than fireflies caught in a child’s cupped hands. She could cover the entire village with her wingspan now, blot it out with a single shadow.
To the south, the mountains loomed dark and jagged against the night sky. Beyond them lay the Empire. Thorn. Blood. Answers.
Purpose.
She didn’t hesitate.
Bones shifted smoothly now—no tearing, no panic. Wings unfurled in a rush of air, massive and dark, catching the starlight as her body expanded into something built for the sky. She clenched the satchel’s strap between her teeth, jaw tightening until the leather creaked.
One last breath.
Then she ran.
Three steps. Four.
And she jumped.