38. The Cliff #2
I stand at the edge of the turret roof, the wind tearing at my hair, the drop yawning beneath me.
Silver stands behind me, not touching but close enough that I can feel the heat of him at my back.
“Again,” he says.
The Iron Isle stretches below us and my pulse pounds. “You should wait down there, save you from catching me prematurely again.”
“It happened what, twice?”
“Three times.”
“Fine. I’ll wait down there.”
The wind howls and he steps off the roof, not spreading his wings to catch himself until he’s just a few feet from the ground.
My toes edge closer to nothing.
My body locks, but again, I can feel them. My wings are there, just beneath my skin.
I step off.
Then fear snaps through me.
Silver jumps to catch me at the last moment. “Again tomorrow.”
The next night, I jump almost immediately after climbing out of his window.
I don’t think or hesitate, I just step.
The world drops out from under me and air rushes past, violent and cold, ripping the breath from my lungs as instinct screams too late.
My wings surge, I feel them burning, tearing free.
Then arms wrap around me, strong and unyielding and familiar.
Silver.
He catches me before they fully form again. Before I can try or fail.
“You were too early,” I choke. “Again!”
“You were too slow,” he counters. “Again.”
“I had it.”
“You hesitated.”
I glare up at him. “You can't possibly know that.”
His gaze locks onto mine. “I do.”
We land and he doesn’t let go immediately.
Neither do I.
“Again tomorrow,” he eventually says.
The third night, I step off the roof like I’ve done it a hundred times, because I have.
I know exactly at which point he will catch me, as well as he knows at what point I will become paralyzed with fear.
Tonight he has promised not to be my safety net, even if it means peeling my face off the stone ground below with a shovel.
He waits further away than ever, and I worry he won’t actually make it to me in time.
This time, my wings surge faster.
I watch Silver becoming further and further away as I fall, but rather than panic, my body reacts before my mind can catch up.
Heat explodes across my back. Sharp and violent and somehow familiar.
My wings tear free. Not slow or hesitant, more like they rip into existence, power surging through me so suddenly it knocks the breath from my lungs.
Air catches beneath them, until it doesn’t.
They are gone and I’m falling. “Silver!” I scream, the wind suffocating it.
I close my eyes as the ground rushes toward me.
Then I’m jerked upward roughly. “Fucking hell, Scar. You’ll be the death of me.”
As soon as it sinks in that I’m not dead, that he made it to me on time, a smile breaks out across my face.
“Did you see them?!”
He nods and a laugh tears out of me, wild and disbelieving.
“Aren’t they beautiful?” I ask, allowing myself to finally remember how magnificent they were… no, are.
He swallows and nods, but doesn’t say anything.
The only sound is the whistling wind as his wings cut through the air and he brings us back up to the turret roof.
When he lands inside his bedroom, I can’t stop smiling.
“I did it! My wings… they aren’t gone forever. I will fly again. I know it. I just need to practice some more.”
His expression is tight with something I’ve not seen on him before. Something dangerously close to fear.
My smile falters. “What’s wrong?”
“Your wings…”
“What about them?”
“They’re… not what I expected.”
“Feathers?”
He shakes his head. “No. I expected the feathers. Pale gray feathers. But your wings are—”
Something in my chest squeezes. “You hate them?”
He shakes his head. “No. They’re beautiful, as stunning as I’ve ever seen. They are just… darker than I thought they’d be.”
I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding and a weak laugh escapes me.
“Yeah, I know. Before the demon attack, they’d been getting darker and darker every time I used them.” I take a deep breath, allowing old memories to the forefront of my mind that I’d kept squashed down for years. “I cared at first.” My voice softens. “Before…”
“Before you knew what it was like to lose them,” Silver says, brushing a strand of hair out of my face and tucking it behind my ear.
My throat tightens, but I push through it. “Then I missed them. I missed them so much I thought it would kill me, and now, now I have them back, I… I don’t care what shade they are anymore,” I admit. “Gray. Black. Whatever they want to be. They’re back and they’re mine.”
Something shifts in his expression and a smile pulls at his mouth. “Then you’ll be happy to show me them again tomorrow?”
The fourth and final night before the seventh game arrives and the air feels different, lighter, as I step onto the turret roof.
The wind greets me like an old friend or enemy, I haven’t decided which yet, and Silver steps in behind me again.
“Don’t catch me,” I say, glancing over my shoulder at him.
He nods.
I close my eyes, feeling the air, remembering the drop, the fear and the fire beneath my skin.
My wings are waiting. They’re ready.
I step forward and drop into the dark.
My back burns but my wings don’t come.
Panic sinks its claws in, and suddenly he’s pulling me into him without a word.
He launches us into the night and I sag against him, deflated.
The Iron Isle stretches out beneath us. “Where are we going?” I eventually shout over the wind.
“You’ll see.”
We don’t land for a while, not until the ground rises to meet us on a jagged cliff edge.
He sets me down first and I step forward to ground myself.
Then I freeze.
The drop is worse than the turret, so much worse. The cliff stretches out beneath my feet, sheer and endless, before meeting the crashing violent sea far below.
And suddenly, everything is too familiar.
“Jump,” Silver orders, but the word hits me like a blow.
I don’t turn, I couldn’t if I tried. I just stare at the waves as they tear themselves apart against black rock.
“I can’t.”
“You can.”
My fingers curl into fists at my sides.
No, not here. Anywhere but here.
He must have moved closer at some point, because his hand lands on the small of my back.
“Scar…”
I shake my head.
“The turret wasn’t working, and you’re almost out of time before the game.”
“I can't. Not here. Anywhere but here.”
He doesn’t understand. Of course he doesn’t. To him, it’s just another ledge to throw myself from.
Another fall he will save me from.
Another lesson.
He doesn’t know that cliffs don’t mean falling to me.
They mean losing.
They mean death.
“I think a new location will help,” he says, quieter now. “Different air. Different instincts. Just try it once. Jump.”
He’s pushing me because he cares. That’s the worst part, his heart is in the right place. He just doesn’t know.
He steps closer and I turn my back to him further before he can see the tear that’s slipping free, hot and unwanted, trailing down my cheek.
I stare out at the endless dark instead. At the place where the sky meets the sea. The place she disappeared forever.
My throat tightens.
I don’t tell him.
I can’t.
Because if I say it out loud, I’ll cry, and then I won’t be able to stop.
Behind me, his voice softens. “Scar, I wouldn’t have brought you here if I didn’t think you could do it.”
I close my eyes. The wind whispers around me.
For a moment, I let myself pretend it’s her. “Mom…” I breathe into the air, so quiet it almost disappears with the wind. “I can’t keep falling. I need this. I need to fly.”
The words break something open in my chest.
The wind answers, or maybe I just choose to believe it does.
I inhale, step forward, and fall.
The world vanishes beneath me and the air hits me hard, ripping past my body as gravity drags me down faster than I’m ready for.
My stomach lurches, my heart slamming violently against my ribs.
The cliff rises high above me now, shrinking as it disappears.
I’m falling, fast and far, and for a split second, I’m my mom back on the cliffs above Tidecrest, helpless.
Then I’m above her, watching the person I love disappearing into nothing.
No.
Not again.
It starts as pressure building beneath my skin until it tears free from my back.
My breath catches as heat explodes through my spine, and then they’re there, my wings, ripping into existence.
This time they move instinctively, clumsy but strong, and the falling sensation stops.
Then I’m hovering, suspended in nothing and everything at once.