expression when he finally snapped out of his rage, when he blinked up at me in confusion before collapsing. That was him, the boy inside the war machine.
“I’ll let you know when he’s up,” I sign, turning in the direction of the compound. “I’m not convinced he himself understands everything that happened.”
As I go, I can feel Aramin’s eyes on my back. He doesn’t trust Red. I’m not sure if I do, either.
The infirmary is actually the compound’s courtyard, now a mess of makeshift blankets lined up on the ground and ripped strips of cloth stained crimson. The low din of moans and sobs swirls around me.
Red is held in a separate room, a former officer’s quarters at the back of the infirmary. The first thing I notice when I walk in is that they have chains on him again. Shackles sit heavy on his wrists and ankles, anchored to weights even as he lies on his side, unconscious on a cot. It makes me wonder whether he’s done something in my absence that frightened the nurses.
I move without a sound to him. They’ve removed his ruined coat so that he lies in his tunic, the sleeves rolled up, the back of it cut up from his wings expanding and retracting on the battlefield. Now those wings are completely retracted into two slender strips of metal running flat against his back. He moves in a restless sleep, his fingers twitching slightly, his eyes shifting beneath their lids. His lashes rest long and dark against his cheeks. His hair, dark and tangled, fans out in a halo on the floor. A sheen of sweat gleams wherever his real skin is exposed, but he’s shivering enough to make his chains clink.
Here, he doesn’t look like the Skyhunter, the weapon I’d seen sweeping the skies, raining death down on any near him. He doesn’t even look like the cold, suspicious prisoner I’d first met in the arena. He looks young and very human, in danger of breaking if bent too far.
I kneel beside him, then remove my coat. It’s bloodstained, but at least it’s warm. I drape it over his trembling body. As I do, my hand accidentally brushes against the skin of his neck.
He’s burning with fever. I lift my hand, then tentatively touch his shoulder, where the black armor begins. Instantly, I jerk away. It feels so hot that it could scald me. In fact, when I look down at my finger, I see a red mark, as if I’d just pressed it against the stove in my mother’s home.
I stare at Red’s unconscious form in disbelief. Heat like this feels as if it should burn skin—but he seems completely unaffected. I pull my coat off him, wondering if the fabric will catch fire. As I do, something shuffles in his shirt pocket, and moments later his mouse pokes its head out and scampers down his body onto the floor.
The sight of the creature makes me smile in surprise. Had this thing been with him during the entire battle, hanging on for dear life inside his pocket? A survivor. In spite of myself, I reach out to rub its head. It lets me, leaning into my touch with its eyes closed.
Our movements finally make Red stir. His eyes flutter open, and I find myself staring down at the silver slashes in his irises. He looks back, brows furrowed. The mouse rushes up into his pocket.
Immediately, the strange feeling of clarity rushes through my head again, like the sensation of focusing down a bright, narrow tunnel. I wince instinctively.
Red squints with the same expression.
What I’d felt on the battlefield. The fragments of my memory, the moment when he reached for me and I felt the sear of a bond between us, linking our minds together like a bridge.
He tries to get up. His shackles clank loudly. He yanks on his chains, pulling them taut—a panicked light suddenly appears in his eyes. To my surprise, I can feel a trickle of that panic through our link, as surely as if the emotion were mine, followed by a rush of fragmented thoughts. In them, I think I hear a word or two—but it all sounds like a cacophony of noise.
I reach out to touch his hand, then shake my head at him. He turns wild eyes on me.
“The Federation,” he breathes. “The Federation.” It’s all he can say, so he keeps repeating it at me, the words turning more urgent as he goes.