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Seraphs. Elysiumerians. All these words meant nothing to the boy. “In what part of the world were you born?”
“I was not born in the mortal realm.”
“I thought you might have been from the place of my mother’s birth. You speak her language.”
The other boy let out a humorless laugh, shaking his head. “You are, perhaps, the most ignorant half-breed I’ve seen yet.” On a growl of frustration, he took to the sky on a whooshing sound. Enormous white wings trimmed in glistening gold spread from either side of him, holding him up into the air as if strings tethered his back to the sky.
“How!” The baron pointed a trembling finger at him. “How did you command them?”
“Do you not know how to control your own wings?” the other boy asked in a derisive tone.
“I can summon them, and make them disappear, but I cannot make them carry me up into the sky and hold my position there, as you are.”
“Tell me where to find the wolfsbane, and I will tell you how to command your wings.”
He considered the question for a moment, then nodded. “Do you see that plateau up there?” Jericho pointed to a stone ledge sticking out from the side of the mountain. “There is a cave there. It is just inside the cave. Now, tell me.”
“Call forth your wings.”
“My wings … right. Uh, give me just a moment. I cannot always summon them quickly. Or at will.” Clearing his throat, the baron rolled his shoulders back and closed his eyes. He imagined his own wings, black and silver, sprouting from his shoulder blades. When he opened his eyes, he glanced to either side of himself, finding nothing but a stretch of thorny bushes.
Cheeks warm with embarrassment, he closed his eyes again, really concentrating on the detail in his wings. The raven-colored feathers that bore a slight hint of blue, and the needle-thin lines of silvery metal. Yet, when he looked again, all he took in was the bored and unimpressed expression that twisted Soreth’s face.
“Mary and Joseph, it’ll be nightfall before you manage the task.”
The other boy’s words goaded the baron’s frustration, and a growl rumbled in his throat as he closed his eyes and focused again. At a sharp whoosh, he loosed a sigh of relief. Opening his eyes showed the glorious black wings stretched out to either side of him.
Soreth rolled his eyes. “How did I know you’d have black wings. All right, now flex the muscle in your arm, as if you would lift your arm into the air. But do not actually lift it into the air.”
Jericho attempted what he’d described and flexed his wings. His body shot up, but no higher than the top of a carriage, before he came crashing back down into the thornbushes. “Ah!”
The other boy chuckled, his mocking sending a dark rage through the baron. “Oh. I forgot. Once you’re in the air, you must continue to flex the muscle to keep you up. And to fly, you essentially roll your shoulders back.” Demonstrating, he flew off, and leaving the baron to untangle himself from the painful prickly bush.
Once free of it, he brushed a few lodged thorns from his breeches, pushed to his feet, and glanced to either side where his wings stretched out from his body. “Up and hold.” He flexed the muscle in his arm again and he arrowed upward, that time beyond a carriage height, to the top of the trees. “Hold,” he grunted, squeezing the muscle again. His body dipped with a sharp drop, and he let out a gasp, clenching the muscle tighter. Breathing hard through his nose, he eyed Soreth landing gracefully on the ledge a short way off from where he hovered in the sky. As instructed, the baron rolled his shoulders back, and his body sprang forward, the wind cutting at his face as he flew to where the other boy waited.
As he neared, panic gripped the baron’s throat. His body hurled toward the jagged rock, and no amount of flexing could divert his path. He let out a guttural scream and closed his eyes, contracting his muscles. Both wings coiled back, and the baron hit the rocky wall on a hardthunkbefore falling to the ledge below.
Soreth chuckled again, the sound of it stoking the anger and humiliation burning inside of the baron. “That had to be the most pathetic display of flight I’ve ever seen.”
“Sorry I’m not as perfect as you.”
“That is a shame,” the boy said, striding toward the mouth of the cave.
Grumbling to himself, the baron pushed to his feet and followed Soreth into the cave’s entrance, where the tall purple flowers stood up from a small patch of grass.
“Strange how it grows here.” Soreth knelt to the ground, running his hand over the grass that had grown out from the rock. He plucked one of the blades, studying its end, which even the baron had noticed bore no roots.
“Solomon tells me you are a scholar. Where do you study?”
“Here.”
“In Praecepsia? There is no university here. The closest would be Rome.”
“Your universities are mediocre at best. I am only here to observe.”
“What university do you attend?”
A high-pitched noise echoed over the surrounding stony walls, like that of an animal, and both boys turned in the direction of the cave’s depths.
