Page 53 of Demon Touched

Well, I don’t want this model. Send them back please. What do you mean you don’t do exchanges?

“Do you think Captain Hasteed’s right?” I ask, testing the waters. “That the color’s just a rare mutation from mixing my human and ephilium blood?” Filippa made me report this development to our instructor right away, but now we’re holed up in her room, away from staring eyes.

“That’s got to be it,” she says, straightening up. “I mean, nephilim aren’t very common, so I guess it makes sense we’re learning new stuff about you all the time.”

I tilt my wings forward so the primary feathers are in reach. It’s amazing how naturally it comes to me. Just like moving any other limb, I don’t so much think about doing it as it just happens. I thumb the tip of a feather, staring at the dark sheen of it.

I keep to myself my growing certainty that the mutation isn’t from my human blood but from my demonic bond. These feathers aren’t just black as night—they’re black as demon wings. I’m wearing my bond to Syrus out in the open for everyone to see. Except, thank the ancestors, it seems no one’s made that connection. As uneasy as my black wings in a sea of ivory might make them, no one’s calling for me to be locked up yet.

“And no one else has wings that aren’t white?” I ask.

She frowns. “Sometimes when people are sick their wings can change, but you’re feeling all right, aren’t you?”

“Sure,” I say, massaging the base of my skull. “Apart from this nasty lump where Keros tried to brain me.” I’m lucky I don’t have a full-blown concussion right now. “I can’t believe you didn’t let me name him to Hasteed.”

Filippa crosses her arms. “Could you say with absolute certainty it was him?”

“Yes,” I say. “It happened fast, but I saw his face, Filippa, I swear.”

“But do you have any proof? Could anyone else have seen him?”

Yes, actually. I have the Lord of Malice willing to testify to the fact, I think snarkily.

“No,” I grit my teeth as I lie through them. “I was alone.”

“He’s the nephew of a seraphim, Leah. There’s no way they’ll just take your word over his.” She grimaces, reluctant to say this next part. “It’s not even that they won’t believe you—they just won’t much care.”

“Because even murder is fine if the murderer’s got a seraph in the family?” I gape. “I thought you guys are all about honor?”

Filippa shakes her head. “They won’t care because whoever pushed you ultimately did you a favor. They forced your wings to fully develop ahead of schedule, drastically increasing your chances of surviving the trials. Lots of people will see that as tough love—it made you step up and get stronger. That’s basically what the whole fledgling trials thing is about anyway. And don’t look at me like that,” she says at my disgusted expression. “Don’t you think I know how fucked up it is? But it’s just the way things are.”

“Well, how are things ever going to get better if no one is willing to actually talk about how fucked up it currently is?”

Filippa gives me a dry smile. “Sure. And I wonder how that would work out for someone like me. Forging our own paths isn’t an option for most of us.”

Her eyes flicker again over my black wings, and I can’t tell if there’s jealousy or pride there. Maybe a bit of both. Filippa’s spent so long on the fringes of her family, barely tolerated, but then here I am, breaking the norms and still being welcomed by Garion with open arms—at least, that’s how it must seem to her.

It plucks at that old tension between us, and I decide to change the subject.

“Well, Keros better watch his back from now on,” I say. Filippa doesn’t look very impressed by my threat, but I’ve already made up my mind. I might not be able to use my star witness against my attacker, but I’ll bide my time and take my revenge on that blond bastard when the moment comes.

“You’re better off just avoiding him from now on. I bet he won’t have the nerve to try anything again now you’ve survived. Especially if you just walk into the Fledgling Ball tomorrow with your wings out and head held high like nothing happened.”

I groan. “That’s tomorrow night? That’s all I need right now, parading my weird wings in front of the seraphim and every other important ephilium in Luminis.”

She rolls her eyes. “Suck it up. It’s just a few stares. And the ball means that we’ll be getting a break from trials and training. There’s never any trials in the few days around the ball, so we can all relax a little. People might find your feathers a little strange at first, but they’ll get over that fast. The general and the seraphim will all just be pleased you’ve gotten your wings like a good little ephilium.”

I hope she’s right. It’s not like I can tell her the real reason I’m worried—that they might figure out my tie to Infernum. I’d ask Syrus how realistic that fear is, except…

He hasn’t spoken to me since the fall.

It’s weird. I felt his horror course through me as I went over the wall, mingling with my own. I’d have expected him to come charging through the bond the first second he could, desperate to find out my condition. Sure, it always takes him a while to find his way back to me when he’s thrown out of my head, but it’s been hours.

There was a moment, when I was talking to Hasteed, that I thought I sensed him: the prickle up the back of my neck and the shivery slip of something moving into my mind. But I was distracted by the captain asking me a question, and when I had a chance to check for him again, he was gone. No word. Nothing.

Maybe once he knew I was alive he had nothing else to say to me. Maybe he’s angry after I told him we had to break the bond—basically forced him into accepting it.

But I had to be forceful. He can’t know there’s a part of me that wants to keep the connection between us, because if he knew that, Syrus would definitely take advantage of it. We both have to remember that breaking the connection could be the only way for me to stay alive.