as the starlit night.
No you won’t, Sig thought.
She shouted at Fritha, then, as the world narrowed to a single point of light, though it came from her lips as little more than a whisper.
‘Truth and Courage.’
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CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
RIV
Riv opened her eyes. She was lying on her back, looking up. Above, she could see the thick timber beams of a roof. A beam of sunlight, motes of dust. She heard birdsong. The familiar creak of branches, scraping, soughing in a breeze.
Where am I? Not home. Not my barrack. Not even Drassil, I think. Though she was not sure how she knew that.
And then the weight of memory fell upon her.
Kol, Israfil.
Mam.
Tears leaked from her eyes, rolled down into her hair. She didn’t know how long she stayed like that, crying silent tears, but it must have been a while, because the beam of sunlight had shifted when next she looked. Then a new sound, a baby crying. She rolled over, onto her side; her back felt odd. Heavy. Numb. A big feather floated close to her face, speckled grey.
A feather-stuffed mattress! No wonder I feel like I’ve slept for a moon.
She stretched, muscles shifting, and ran a hand through her hair. It felt longer. The longest it had ever been.
A fair-haired woman was sitting close by, half in shadow, a baby wrapped in swaddling held in the crook of one arm, feeding at her breast.
‘Hello, Riv,’ the woman said.
It was Fia.
Riv tried to sit up, but her back felt strange, as if it were heavier than it should be, dragging her back onto the bed, and then there was the thud of boots, and hands were taking hers, helping her up, faces dipping into her vision. Vald, grinning, Jost, eyes wider, odd. Staring at her. She looked at herself, saw she was wearing breeches and a linen shirt, baggy and shapeless.
‘Where am I?’ Riv asked, closing her eyes for a moment, feeling light-headed. She blinked them open, realized she felt better, physically, than she had for such a long time.
The fever is gone. And I feel stronger, full of energy.
‘A woodsman’s hut, deep in Forn,’ Fia said.
‘Safe,’ Vald said.
Jost was still staring at her, all white-eyed wonder.
‘What’s wrong?’ she said. He was starting to annoy her.
‘Wrong? Nothing,’ Jost said. He looked away, eyes almost instantly drifting back to her. No, behind her.
‘What is it, then?’ Riv snapped.
‘Well … you’ve got wings,’ Jost said in wonder.
‘Don’t be an idi—’ Riv started. Then she stopped. Another feather drifted idly down to the ground. She looked over her shoulder.
The arch of a wing reared there, big. She took a staggering step forwards and the wing followed her. Her head snapped around to the other shoulder, another wing there, too.
‘I’ve got wings,’ she said, fear and wonder mixed.
Without knowing how, a subconscious movement, she unfurled them, a shifting of muscle, a ripple of feathers, and her wings snapped wide, almost filling the room.
‘Not in here!’ Fia laughed as pots and plates went tumbling and smashing, and somehow Riv furled them back in with a snap. Vald and Jost led her outside, Fia following behind her, and Riv stepped out onto a timber porch, a woodland glade around them. The wings felt heavy upon her back, a shifting of weight and balance that she wasn’t used to. Horses whickered somewhere nearby and she saw a figure sitting on a tree stump, tending to a bow on his lap.
It was Bleda.
He looked up at her and smiled, and to Riv it looked like the most natural thing in the world. She smiled back at him.
Hesitantly, she stepped bare-footed onto cool, soft grass and moss.
Then she unfurled her wings – My wings! – a smooth ripple of muscles expanding, and looked at herself. Her wings were spread wide, almost as wide as the woodsman’s hut. They were not gleaming white, like the Ben-Elim, but a soft, dappled grey.
Riv felt a thousand emotions surge through her – amazement, fear, wonder, worry, confusion, a moment of blind terror – all wrapped around the grief of losing her mam, which ran through her like a seam of silver through rock, and then back to wonder again. Because her wings were magnificent. She felt a grin split her face.
And then she saw a strange thing in the glade before her. Rows of stone cairns, but miniature, as if it was a burial ground for small animals, like cats, or hares.
Or …
A weight shifted in her stomach, like a snake uncoiling, rippling through her.
‘What is that?’ she said.
‘Those are the cairns of your kind, Riv,’ Fia said behind her. ‘A graveyard of bairns, offspring of the Ben-Elim and mortals. You are the first of your kind to live longer than one day.’
Riv looked from the rows of cairns, so many of them, to the baby in Fia’s arms.
‘And this is the second?’ Riv asked.
‘Aye, he is,’ Fia said, a fierce love in her eyes.
Riv just stood there, all of it washing over her, through her, and her friends gathered close about her.
‘Well, what now?’ a voice said, Vald.
‘Now?’ said Riv. She blinked, thinking of her mam and Aphra, of Israfil and of Kol’s betrayal. How her world had changed immeasurably. She looked at her friends, at Fia and the baby in her arms, felt a fierce protection for him.
‘We make the world right,’ she snarled, an echo of her old anger. ‘But first, I’m going to learn how to use these,’ and with that her wings were beating, swirling forest litter about their feet and she was rising, unsteadily at first, then faster, more confidently. With a shout of joy she burst through the forest canopy, wind ripping tears from her eyes, and she yelled for the sheer joy if it.