I hesitated, taking a moment to flex my back muscles. They were fiercely sore, and every movement felt clumsy with the wings attached to them. I didn’t regret sending Raihn away, exactly—no, I told myself, I definitely didn’t regret it—but it might’ve been wise to get some more wing instruction before I had.
I wasn’t going to let you fall. But more importantly, I knew you weren’t going to let you fall.
The words floated through my mind unprompted.
Mother, I hoped he was right.
I kept my eye on my target, and I jumped.
Whatever I did to get from one tower to the other was probably better described as “controlled falling” than “flying.”
But I made it.
Barely.
I let out an ugly oof as my side jammed against a pile of ancient brick. Pain tore through my left wing as it scraped a stray shard of rock—it was amazing how disorienting it was for the boundaries of your own body to suddenly be twice as wide in both directions. The impact threw me, sending me rolling across the brick floor with a collection of ragged grunts.
I pushed myself to my hands and knees, collecting myself. I was more shaken than I’d like to admit. Wings were sensitive, apparently, because the cut hurt fiercely. I craned my neck to try to see the injury with little success.
I lifted my head, and suddenly my wound didn’t matter anymore.
“Fuck,” I whispered.
Wings spread out over the wall before me.
Hiaj wings, slate gray with tinges of purple. They were life-size, or maybe bigger, pressed against the crumbling remains of the stone wall. Growths that at first looked like bulging veins spread along their length, clinging to the formation of the bones and reaching across the expanses of skin, tinted red, forming a knot at the center that pulsed bright crimson.
A heart. It looked almost exactly like a heart.
But as I pushed myself up and dragged myself closer, I realized the growths weren’t veins at all. They were some kind of… fungus, maybe, though one that looked sickeningly lifelike. The heart at the center of the wings, though… that looked so real. Was it flesh, petrified like the wings? Or something else?
I didn’t remember getting to my feet, nor crossing the room, but the next thing I knew, I was standing right before it.
The veins and the heart pulsed in small, rhythmic movements, slowly quickening. I realized, after a moment, that they mirrored my breathing. The hairs stood upright on the back of my neck. I’d never been so repelled by something and simultaneously so drawn to it. It was disgusting. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
One part of me thought, I need to get far, far away from whatever this is.
The other part thought, Septimus was right. I do just know.
Simple, uncomplicated fact. This was what we had been looking for. It was beyond questioning.
And I’d just found it alone.
My hand was outstretched before I even told my body to move.
My fingertips brushed the heart-like growth. It was so cold I almost jolted away. But before I could react, several veins slid along the surface of it, reached for me, and—
I let out a hiss of pain. Drops of my blood, bright human red, smeared against the fungus as the veinlike cords slithered back around the heart. It momentarily seemed as if the wings were flexing, stretching—an illusion of shifting muscles.
Then the fibers pulled away, retreating along the walls of the ruins, and the thing that had so resembled a heart opened.
Warmth suffused the air. The red glow drenched the shadows. I stared into it, blinking, forcing my eyes to adjust.
The heart had shifted, now mimicking open, cupped hands. At its center was a crescent moon of polished, gleaming silver, painfully white against the fading red surrounding it. It was perhaps the size of my palm, the two tips sharp as blades—so sharp that at first, I thought that maybe it was intended to be a weapon, until I noticed the delicate silver chain attached to one end.
A pendant.
Once the light faded, it was unremarkable, if very pretty.
I reached for it—
My father’s blood is hot and slick on my hands. The wings are still warm. I need to keep wiping the blood on my shirt. I look like what I am—a monster, just like the ones that crawl through the ruins of Lahor every night.
I do not have regrets.
This is not what the historians will write one day about me.
No one will remember the names or faces of the children that I killed tonight. A Nightborn tradition of power, killing children. My father killed my younger brother minutes after he drew his first breath. I was sixteen years old when I watched him throw that little bloody wad of fabric over the railing, feeding it to the demons circling below. He always made it clear that I was to function as his heir, but never as a threat.