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His hair is too long and tangled to be washed. I use the scissors I found inside to clip off his gnarled hair, washing it again and again until the brown washes out and to my astonishment, I find it’s blond. I do the same to his gnarled beard. I can’t remove it completely, but I trim it to about an inch.
He begins helping me as if enlivened by the bit of stew I fed him, clawing the layers of mud off his torso and legs. If he was wearing clothes at some point, they’ve long disintegrated from being in the elements.
When he turns, bending to modestly wash between his legs where I can’t see, I gasp at his revealed back.
Crouched over, he turns his head to look over his shoulder at me.
We share a long, silent look. He knows what I’ve just seen.
Protruding from between his shoulder blades are two blackened stumps with some sort of garish, bronze-like metal covering them—it looks as if it was poured on them while it was hot because there are still drips of it burned into the flesh of his back. Little white feathers stick out around the metal, as if what was once there before is trying to grow back but can’t because of the metallic cap.
“Are those—” I reach out unwittingly to touch them.
He yanks away, standing up with his hands covering his manhood. “Do you have a covering?”
I stand up, too, my knees and shins wet with the pool of water we’ve created underneath the pump spout. But I hurry to hand him the large gray towel I brought with me.
Wings. It looked like wings on his back. Wings that were somehow brutally shorn off and kept from growing back by hot metal being poured over them, if such a thing were possible to survive.
“Here.” I turn my face away, averting my eyes as he takes the towel and wraps it around his waist.
“Thank you,” he says quietly.
We face each other again.
“I must leave you now.”
I shake my head. “No. You can’t. You’re not strong enough.”
Seeing him now, standing tall and lanky, barely more than bones with skin wrapped around them, he looks painfully young.
“I’m poison to any who are near me,” he says, taking a step back from me. “You’ve seen the truth of what I am.”
“And what is that?” I ask, taking a step forward. “I’m not easily scared off.”
He comes forward and bares his teeth. “You should be scared of me,” he hisses. “I am the hunger in the darkness. I am the monster that separates crying babes from their mothers. I am the slow death, the angel of Famine, a Horseman of the Apocalypse. Run before I steal all the fullness and life you’ve ever known, little girl.”
I laugh in his face, obviously startling him and his attempt at menace.
“Oh, honey, you’re adorable.” I pat his lean cheek right before he can yank away from me. “I’m a much bigger monster than you. Now come inside. You can barely stand on your feet. Let’s both get some more dinner.”
Chapter Three
LAYDEN
Present Day
I lay awake most of the night, watching Phoenix sleep beside me in bed. I can go a long time without sleep, and considering she means this marriage to be in name only, I know this may be a rare opportunity. The fact that we’re even sharing a bed is only because we’re in Vlad’s compound.
It’s better this way, I try to tell myself. I don’t want to lose the best friend I’ve ever known. It would kill me if I ever did anything to drive Phoenix away again. I lost her once because of my own idiocy. And the loneliness afterwards… I’ve always known hunger of every kind, but that was an emptiness that almost drove me mad. I lashed out at the whole world and almost destroyed my brothers because of it.
The thing is, when Phoenix first came to me in that forest, pulling me out of my self-appointed exile and bringing me back to life, or really, to life for the first time… It was like color bursting into the world. I’d been cold so long, alone so long. Even before I came to the forest, when I was with my brothers. We just existed, moving robotically through each day, doing what our Creator-Father demanded like we were mere cogs in his constant war machine.
All I did was destroy and deprive, bringing misery and devastation everywhere I went. No one was more surprised than me when I finally lashed out at the Creator-Father. But I snapped. I’d had enough. It wasn’t so much courage as the build-up of a lifetime of desperation. I didn’t care what happened to me if I failed.
Granted, I regretted the lack of forethought as my wings were cut from my back and the searing hell-metal was poured on the raw stumps.
I close my eyes, chest clenching as it always does with the memory. Then I open my eyes again and look at Phoenix as she sleeps. She huffs out a little breath in her sleep and moves, snuggling in against my chest and throwing one of her legs over mine.
