"Now you warn m-me." Her breath hitched when he slowly took her wings and spanned them out.
Such a strange, numb feeling. The stretch burned and ached, using muscles she’d never tapped on before.
And that was how her first day of flying lessons went.
As was the next, and the next.
Until, eventually, one windy, warm day, she stood before him, arms trembling from overuse and agitation simmering.
"This is useless!" Luella threw her hands up before her, and they all tensed as the treetops quaked. She lowered her hands, shocked. "This—this is useless," she repeated, her feet taking her before Graves, where she shoved a finger against his chest. "I will never learn to fly like this. It’s like you don’t want to teach me." She softened her tone. "Tell me, do you want to keep me caged?"
Luella’s frustration and inadequacy were too great to consider Graves’s feelings in their bond.
Graves was uncowed. "Okay, then." He stepped back, and her hand fell before her. "Raise your wings. Without my help."
"I will," she snapped.
As she stood there, feeling like an actor upon a candlelit stage, she let her eyes fall shut, blocking them out. Words of self-loathing were a whirlwind in her head. She blocked that out, too.
Her fingers twitched by her sides as she tried to work her wings. Her shoulder blades flexed, and she growled softly. Wrong muscles.
Something pulled at her back. An invisible string wrapped around her chest, cutting into her skin and making her midsection twinge. She focused on the feeling, imagining herself taking that string andyankingit. She gasped, shooting forward.
Luella fell against a hard chest. Graves held her elbows. She opened her eyes. Her nose brushed his shirt; his scent soothed her.
"Look, sweetheart." Graves’s voice vibrated through her.
Luella straightened, and she didn’t even have to turn her head to see the glorious white wings, stretching on either side of her. She gasped in awe. The thread around her middle pulled, causing her wings to droop slightly. She tightened her muscles back up, and they unfurled again.
"I did it." She smiled.
Graves returned it, but it was a note darker. "You did."
Pride filled her—not all of it was her own.
As the weeks passed, Luella had fallen into a strange routine.
Her wounds healed each day, especially due to Tharen’s ministrations. Every eve, he came to her, sitting behind her on the bed, his knees brushing her backside, as he carefully applied the soothing salve to the scrapes on her back. His fingers were always sure as he changed the bandages on her upper arm until she no longer needed one. The cut was a grisly red line on her pale skin, and she wondered if it would ever fade completely.
As Luella healed, her lessons in flight continued. She was still able to lift her wings and unfurl them. It grew easier each time. Her lessons lengthened as her determination grew. A taste of what commanding her wings could feel like sparked an intense desire not to cease until she could take to the skies like the Fallen she watched with envy.
Graves was an unyielding and meticulous teacher.
His voice was always a low rasp as he commanded her to stretch her wings out. That lasted for many days. Then, he changed orders. When she stood before him, wind whispering through her outstretched wings, chest tight with exertion, and sweat beading upon her brow from the heat, he told her tomovethem.
The first time, she could not. The second, only barely. And the third, Luella was finally able to obey—the movement was infinitesimal. But the proud smile he gave her was not.
After each lesson, Luella was sent away with instructions to continue on her own. She would sit cross-legged on the bed or onthe stone outlook, cushions under her, as she would take the tips of her wings in her hands and pull them out and down, training them to be used.
It sent ripples of awareness cascading through her body with each brush of her fingertips against her wings. She wondered if she could reach that starry pinnacle of pleasure from it.
48
WITH EVERY BREATH
LUELLA
Luella was sore each night she fell into bed.
