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I pale and shake my head. “I’m not ready.”

“Yes, you are.”

Des’s wings spread wide behind him, and wind tugs at his T-shirt and hair.

Right now, in this moment, I’m sure I’m in a dream. He’s too wild, too beautiful, too fantastical to be mine, and what he’s asking me to do is too strange and unbelievable to be real.

“Fly,” he says, releasing my waist. Power rides his words, pulling my wings into position.

Before I can object, he spreads his arms to either side of him. It happens in slow motion, his body tipping away from me and the balcony, the night poised to swallow him whole. His feet slide off the ledge, and then he’s falling.

“Des!” I reach for him reflexively.

My body pitches forward, and I lose my balance. Suddenly, there is no more balcony railing to perch on. There is nothing but empty air beneath me.

Des smiles as he stares up at me, completely at peace with the fact thatwe’re falling. And then, right in the middle of our descent, he vanishes.

Vanishes.

I’m left staring down at the palace grounds a hundred feet below, and Des is nowhere to be seen.

Oh God, I’m fucked. So, so fucked. This isn’t flying, this is the art of dying, and the one person who got me into this mess is gone.

I guess I now have my answer to that stupid “rhetorical” question: If a friend asked you to jump, would you?

Apparently, twat-waffle that I am, I would.

Des’s magic still encircles my wings, tugging at them. I grit my teeth and follow their lead, angling them to catch some of the wind. The force of my descent makes it difficult to control my movements.

Floor after floor of the palace blurs by me, the ground quickly zooming up. I continue to fight the wind trying to fold up my wings, Des’s magic aiding me. Just as I’m beginning to think it’s hopeless, my fall begins to slow.

I let instinct take over, tilting my wings to level me out. I go from falling to cutting into the wind, my body beginning to glide over the ground rather than plummet toward it.

I’m pretty sure I’m no longer going to fall to my death, but I’m still not exactly flying. I’m more like that autumn leaf that gets blown about by a gust of wind.

Out of nowhere, Des manifests beneath me, his hands moving to my waist. “Beat your wings, love.”

I can barely hear him over the whistle of the wind, but I force my wings up and down, up and down.

I wobble, and for a few seconds, I worry I’ll lose whatever gains I’ve made and plunge the rest of the way to the ground. But now Des is beneath me, making sure I don’t do exactly that.

Slowly, steadily, my wings propel me up. Des releases me as I break away from him, rising higher and higher in the air.

Holy crap, I’mflying.

A shocked laugh escapes me. It’s more exhilarating than I could’ve imagined. I hit a warm air current, and then I’m gliding, the thermal carrying me on its own.

A shadow with wicked-looking wings swoops in next to me. I glance over at the Bargainer, his white hair rippling in the air. He smiles at me, and it lights up his entire face.

“Follow me!” The wind snatches away his words, but I read his lips.

He pulls ahead then banks right, his body arcing across the sky, those giant wings of his gleaming dangerously in the moonlight. If I thought he was fantastical before, it has nothing on him now. Des is magic, and somehow, through some odd twist of fate, I get to be a part of that magic.

I follow his lead, adjusting my wings to curve through the air like his do. I laugh again, my heart so much lighter now that I’m officially flying.

Des is still on my shit list for scaring me almost literally to death, but this might be worth it; it might even be worth the fear and self-loathing I endured in the days after I received my wings.

I follow Des until he drops back, and then the two of us glide next to each other. There’s nothing quite like the silence up here in the sky. The wind is too loud for us to talk, and yet everything has a quiet pall to it.