21. Leah
Leah
My armor is heavy and stiff as I hurry to the rift point, making me feel sluggish despite my fear. I’m not used to moving like this. When I was scavenging, the goal was to be as light and agile as possible—the fastest people got the best spoils. But the only prize for me today will be surviving.
The stone arch on the academy’s fields cuts an impressive shape, rising above the fledglings arranging themselves into neat lines in front of it.
I find Rowan, pushing in behind him. “Good,” he says, glancing over his shoulder at me. “You made it. I was worried for a second there.”
He seems—not calm exactly, but not afraid. There’s a determined set to his mouth and a light in his eyes when he looks at me. I think maybe he’s a little excited.
Little soldier boy’s been dreaming of this his whole life, I imagine Syrus saying, and I can’t deny that it’s true.
But it also means Rowan’s a great ally to have right now.
“What do I need to know about how this is going to go?” I ask as the last few fledglings arrange themselves by the rift.
I thank the ancestors for ephilium directness. It means Rowan immediately locks in, information falling from his lips in quick, clipped tones.
“Right. The battle’s been going on for nearly two hours now.
They’re opening this separate entry point for us.
Fledglings only. Our rift will open along the Brigade’s western flank.
Our job is to help protect it. There will already be a battalion there led by General Sawler. We’re to follow her orders.”
I swallow, my mouth dry as I picture what lies ahead. Of course, I’ve watched battles from afar, and our lessons on battle strategy at the academy proved I’d actually picked up a lot by observation. But my fellow fledglings have a bank of knowledge built up over decades that I lack.
“There aren’t going to be any instructors?” I ask, startled by the idea that we’re going to be left to our own devices. The general overseeing us will no doubt be more focused on her actual troops.
“It’s a trial, not a training exercise,” Rowan shrugs. “We’re on our own.”
Again, there’s a glimmer of excitement in his voice.
He’s chomping at the bit, whereas I might just grind through my own teeth with anxiety.
I spot several other drawn expressions in the crowd, but there’s plenty like Rowan too.
Keros bounces impatiently on the balls of his feet, all but radiating bloodthirst.
I glimpse the crown of Filippa’s hair a ways behind me, but I can’t see her face. We haven’t really spoken since that day we argued while running flight drills, and now, of course, I feel shitty about it. What if that was the last time I spoke to her?
But before I can do anything about it, there’s a call from somewhere at the front. A figure in gold uniform starts quickly inscribing runes across the frame. A few minutes later, they’re lighting a match and holding it to the runes, setting them alight.
I’m trying very hard not to think about the interaction I just had with Syrus, but as the rift starts to sear open—edges splitting and peeling apart to wrap around the sides of the frame—I remember all the times we traveled through rifts like this together.
And because my mind is a treacherous thing, that throws wide the doorway to other memories of him.
Details of our last conversation stick like burrs to my thoughts—the desperation in his voice as he begged me not to go and the steel mask I had to put on to make myself strong enough to say no.
“Wings out!” Baxir, to the left of the arch, bellows. “There’ll be a drop on the other side.”
“May the ancestors smile on you,” Hasteed, on the right, calls just like with the first trial.
I survived that, back when I had no idea what to expect and didn’t even have a feather to my name. But I have my wings now; my power’s been honed. I can survive this, I tell myself.
“For the glory,” she finishes, saluting the first fledglings disappearing through the rift.
“For the glory,” we all call back. I don’t particularly want glory, but it feels surprisingly good to share something together. Even with our differences, right now I’m one of them. We’re all facing the same danger, with the same goal, and I want to have these people’s backs.
Then I’m being squeezed through the aether and spat out under the Stratan sun.
The drop Baxir spoke about is a good fifty feet, and my wings instinctively bank as the air opens up below me.
I follow the line of fledglings ahead of me, climbing back up into the sky, gaining altitude.
Most of them are banking toward the crowd of white feathers and glinting armor to our left.
We’re a bit behind the front line, which is what stops us being slaughtered upon arrival.
The battles always looked brutal from the city walls, but this close, it’s a waking nightmare.
The sound and smells hit me first: the equine screams and shouted orders punctuated by the crack and clang of lightning meeting shadow and metal hitting metal.
The iron scent of spilled blood is so thick I can almost taste it, mingling with the acrid smoke of lightning strikes and burned flesh.
It’s everything I experienced on the plains made ten times worse, and for a moment, I’m overwhelmed.
I focus on following the fledglings up ahead.
Drifts of mist left over from demon shadow attacks cast the whole area in a dark haze, so that when patches of it are lit up by the flash of lightning strikes, the shapes of winged soldiers and soaring kelaryn steeds are silhouetted against the sky.
I hang back a little, still a safe distance from the action, trying to spot the general Rowan mentioned. The fledglings are already spreading out a little randomly, some throwing themselves straight toward the action, others hesitating, clearly unsure where to position themselves.
I pull my bow from my back and draw an arrow.
A prickle runs up my spine as Syrus enters my mind. I feel the urgency in his presence before he’s said a word.
“Let me at least help you,” he says.
But I’m already bricking up my walls. It’s easier now that I’ve been close to him recently. I’m not so starved for him that I sabotage myself by leaving an opening for him to wriggle through. If I pushed him away now, I know I could keep him gone for a while.
“Syrus, I’m going to be fighting demons out here.
Possibly Malice soldiers you’ve sworn to protect.
” I keep my voice calm and certain. He’s not thinking clearly, so I have to do that for us both.
“You can’t help with this, and I wouldn’t ask you to.
I won’t make you choose between protecting me or your subjects. ”
He doesn’t have an immediate response to that. While he scrambles for an answer, I thrust my walls up higher.
He tries again, his voice fainter in my mind. “If you’d let me stay—”
“I won’t make you watch this, Syrus,” I say sternly. “Go. I’ll see you after.” And then, because I can feel how scared he is too, I soften my voice. “I promise. I’ll come back.”
The unspoken “to you” at the end of that sentence hangs between us. And while we both know I can’t promise anything, it’s the best peace offering I have to give before I slam up my walls and block him out entirely.
The emptiness of being alone in my mind aches, but I try to use it, letting it sharpen me to a point like the arrow in my hand.
I nock it and draw the string of my bow, scanning for a target.
I will probably have to kill today. It’s a reality I accepted the moment I heard what the second trial was.
That doesn’t mean I won’t try my best to limit the cost.
I spy a pair of ephilium in bronze armor about forty yards away.
Two overeager fledglings who’ve ignored the instructions to await General Sawler’s orders and have flown straight into the fray.
A bone-white demon with a chain mace steeped in choking shadow is beelining toward them, easily dodging the unwieldy stalks of lightning they’re trying to cast his way.
I take aim, imbuing a little lightning of my own through the tip of the arrowhead, then release my bowstring.
My aim is true. The arrow whips through the taut membrane of the demon’s wing, ripping a hole in it and searing the edges with the white-hot energy of my magic. The demon screams as he quickly loses altitude, unable to adjust to the sudden drop in air resistance.
The irony doesn’t escape me that it was the Lord of Malice who taught me how to do this—to fight for myself fiercely and without remorse.
But there’s no time to celebrate my twisted victory, because there’s a sudden breach in the ephilium front line a hundred yards away.
Even though a surge of golden warriors from the other side of the battle rush to defend it, the edges of the battle balloon outward, breaking containment.
We fledglings are now in the very heart of the fight, as Brigade and demon soldiers come crashing toward us, volleying shadows and lightning between them. I stuff my bow back between the straps on my shoulders and draw my sword.
“Fledglings!” a woman bellows as she rises above the fray. The impressive plume on her helmet tells me she’s probably General Sawler. “Watch the rear!”
There’s no keeping my distance now.
I join the other fledglings in encircling the ephilium side of the battle, giving the Brigade security from the back to focus on the demons coming at them from a small break in the eastern flank’s line.
I find a free spot and drop down into it, hovering within a few yards of some other fledglings I recognize.
The nearest, a woman with dark hair named Mila, gives me a nod.
My wings are already starting to ache a little.
I’m not used to keeping myself off the ground for so long.
“On your right!” I hear Rowan shout from somewhere ahead of me. I turn, as do the nearest twenty fledglings, setting eyes on a small rabble of demons soaring toward us.