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Fire, one. Revenant, zero.
Through the dying embers of Javier’s corpse, I glimpse a figure on the bed. A woman. She’s unmoving, her matted brown hair covering her face. I check her and note she is not true dead. From what I sense, though, she’ll be out for a few more days.
Dead weight.
I can’t help her now, but I swear to myself when I get out of here, I’m bringing people back with me to free her and anyone else imprisoned here. Guilt floods me as I make my way out of the room and down the rest of the hallway.
Leaving the woman behind feels wrong. Wrong in a way I can’t name or quantify.
Sticking to the wall—mostly for support—I come to a large landing. One side leads to a grand staircase, and the opposite side is a service stairwell—the commotion of a kitchen bubbling up the steps. Keeping to the shadows, I skirt the circular space and pad down the servants’ stairs.
Of all the places for me to go, a kitchen is probably the last route I should take. It’s bustling with people preparing a meal, and a bloody, underwear-clad woman, is going to go over like a fart at High Tea.
I wait in the shadows trying to decide if taking a hostage is necessary for me to get out of here, or if the workers are too busy to notice me. Hoping for the best, I choose option two. Crouching low, I make it fifteen of the twenty feet to the door before a very young gentry woman notices me.
She may look young, but her gaze is haunted. She knows what’s chained within these walls. I put my finger to my lips, and she nods, looking away as if she’d seen nothing.
The next five feet are simple, and the door makes nary a squeak as it opens and shuts. I flee the warmth of the house to the cold, damp, darkness of the night. I’m not sure where the hell I am, but the weather and tree line suggest the Pacific Northwest. The house sits atop a lush foothill of a verdant mountain. Somewhere in Oregon, possibly, and I wonder if it’s the same village I grew up in.
These woods were my playground so many years ago, and it doesn’t take a psychic to foresee a pair of cut-up, dirt-covered, feet in my future.
The forest is far louder than I expect. The trees rustle in the wind, bugs trill and chirp in the fading light, but I’m still the loudest thing here. As carefully as I step, and as slowly as I’m walking, I still make a huge freaking racket. I stop, crouching in the high grass as I attempt to sense if anyone is following me. My head is still filled with cotton, and I feel nothing.
Picking up the pace, I figure if slow is loud, then I might as well go fast.
The descent becomes sharp, and before I know it, the trees are starting to thin. The precipice of a cliff emerges into view, and I scramble to slow down. My fingers scrabble in the dirt before an errant root allows me to skid to a halt at the edge of a fucking mountain.
Breathless, I nearly start giggling at the utter absurdity of it all. Especially since from what I can figure, I’m only left with two choices. I can attempt to climb the steep incline I just skidded down, praying no one from the Legion house is in the forest looking for me, or I can try to phase and coast down this cliff.
This also requires a fair bit of hope—especially since I don’t know how to fly.
While I do have wings, my primary feathers were cut by a Morganite blade when I was tortured by Iva so long ago. Those essential feathers—the ones that could have allowed me to soar—will never grow back.
That said, in the last one hundred and sixty years, I’ve had a lot of time on my hands, and studying bird anatomy is a hobby of mine. A bird can still coast with their secondary feathers, and I have those.
I might as well try it. It’s not like the fall will kill me.
The burn of transformation races over my flesh. The fire is first, coating my hands, up my limbs, to my torso. The flame only stings for a second before it starts to heal. The cuts and scrapes on my feet and legs are closing—my thumbs no longer swollen and tight.
The wings are next—bones crunch and crack before the added weight of my feathers rest upon my shoulders. It’s been too long. I stretch, shaking them to adjust to their size. They’ve grown a little in the last ten years or so—as they are known to do—but I don’t think they’ll get much bigger. Or at least I hope not. The wings hang down my back and reach the forest floor—the tips slightly bent and dragging.
The colors have changed over the years. As a child, they were fluffy and white, with the barest hint of yellow on the coverts. As a teenager, they were bright orange and yellow. Now they’re almost blood-red at the tips of the feathers, bleeding from a candy-apple to amber.
I stretch them out, flapping them once to catch the air with the feathers. In theory, this hair-brained idea should work as long as I have enough room to coast.
Shoring my fears, I hurdle myself off the edge of the cliff. The ground rushes at me rapidly, and I’m positive I’m about to go splat before the feathers catch a downdraft, and I glide the rest of the way down. I circle my feet in a running motion like skydivers before they land, but I fail miserably and completely biff the landing, eating dirt like a pro.
Well, at least I didn’t die.
The loud shuffle of footsteps sounds to my left, and I crack an eyelid to spy my impending fate. I’m still dazed, too busy coughing up forest bracken to even react. Three pairs of black leather motorcycle boots race into my line of sight—two large pairs and one small, dainty pair. The small ones are tapping a single foot as if irritated.
Craning my head, I blearily gaze up at Rhys, Evan, and West—each standing with their arms crossed, their expressions murderous.
It is completely possible I should have waited before jumping off a cliff.
Whoops.
Chapter Sixteen
