Page 8

Chapter 7

A Feather Changes Everything

My limbs locked as that low voice, steeped in darkness, stole my breath. An ominous shape detached itself from the gloom beneath the closest tree and stepped toward me, almost as if moving through a curtain. Shadows bled away to gather in a dense veil, and suddenly, a dark figure stood before me. Only a few paces between us—not enough room to run or launch toward the sky. Even if I could convince my legs to move, he was between me and the relative safety of the citadel.

The voice was unmistakably male, and the figure was taller than Haniel, almost as tall as Kiran. Dark leather armor and flowing fabric covered what little I could see of his body within the shadows, and a hood obscured his face. It was indistinct, but I thought I could make out the outline of raw bone beneath it. There was no mistaking the black-as-night wings that flared subtly, stirring the shadows.

“Fallen—”

The forbidden word slipped out past the fear clogging my throat. My heart started up a frantic rhythm that pounded in my ears and belied my outer stillness.

The shadows surrounding him shifted at my words in a way that was unnatural. Were wraiths about to spring forth, or were these shadows something else?

I was dead either way.

The shadows drifted closer and clung to him, moving with him as he took another step toward me.

“You dare name the Fallen so casually? The name your people branded us with, then forbade you to utter?” His dark wings flared wide, startling me and making me flinch, breaking my stasis. Yet his approach halted, at odds with the unspoken threat underlying his words. “Don’t my dark feathers scare you, little light wielder?”

The shadows surrounding him deepened as they chased over his body. He could have horns and razor-teeth for all I could see. Yet his voice was oddly melodic, like a dark song designed to lull me into a trap.

“No.”

The answer came out on a trembling breath, barely loud enough to hear. The sharp intake of his breath told me he’d heard it, but I was unsure if the denial was for him or me. It wasn’t a complete lie. My heart raced as every whispered story I’d ever heard about the Fallen and the bloody war they’d started spun through my head. But his feather itself held no fear for me, only fascination. It was a thing of beauty.

“No?” The melody of his voice turned dark and taunting. “You don’t fear what I’ll do to your body? Your elders claim we desecrate unsuspecting females with our darkness.”

A bubbling, hysterical laugh almost spilled out before I could choke it down, something I was sure he wouldn’t expect. After what Alastor had whispered to me tonight, it was an all too real threat, just not from the direction I’d been taught to expect.

“I’ve heard,” I stammered. My shallow, panicked breathing had me lightheaded and giddy—a dangerous combination when standing in front of a predator. “Yet it appears my body has never been my own. I no longer expect to get a say in who desecrates it.”

The bold words spoken from my heart had me clamping my lips shut tight. They belied the fine shake I could feel starting within my body as adrenaline pumped through me. I never spoke my mind, and now was not the time to start, not when a nightmare was taunting me.

A low rumbling noise broke the silence as my words hung between us. The darkness under the trees seemed full of menace, and I waited for wolven to spring forth until I realized the noise wasn’t coming from an animal. It was him. Making me wonder, again, what he looked like under that hood.

The rumble cut off as abruptly as it had started, and his hood tilted as if he was looking me over anew. Unable to meet that unseen stare but wanting to keep him in sight, I fixed my gaze behind him, only to notice a lone sliver of shadow as it slipped out and glided along the grass. Its slow drift as it inched toward me reminded me of the way dusk stole over the citadel, only more condensed. The shard of night had me transfixed until he noticed the direction of my gaze and flicked a wing, forcing it back on a current of air.

“You have me intrigued. Your Lumière Codex demands your fear,” he began, as if minutes hadn’t passed since I spoke. “It forbids you to even speak of us.”

His knowledge of our codex, and its contents, shocked me. It didn’t fit with what I’d been told of his kind. They were savage creatures that sucked your soul from your body as you slept. Curiosity had me wanting to ask how he knew about it, but experience had me locking my jaw. Asking questions had never led anywhere good, and I’d already said more than enough to warrant punishment.

His hood tipped farther to the side at my silence. If he was examining me even more closely, the bored tone of his voice when he next spoke suggested he’d found me lacking. “If you have a question, ask it, light wielder.”

How could he know I had a question? Could he read my mind? The idea stilled my errant thoughts and had my legs threatening to buckle beneath me.

“I thought you said you weren’t scared?” he taunted at my continued silence. “I thought maybe you had some backbone, being out here all alone. Yet it seems you’re just a well-trained little potentiate—a pet of your elders, like the rest.”

The words rubbed salt on fresh, gaping wounds. A pet. Is that how the world saw me? What I’d let myself become? My mind shied away from the idea, but I tucked it away to examine later, when I wasn’t faced with a terrifying monster.

The dark figure stood, menacing and silent. Nothing moved. Even the breeze had died off as he waited me out.

“You’ve read our codex?”

The question slipped out of me as if pulled by his silence. It probably wasn’t the most important question to be asking right now, but it was the one at the forefront of my mind.

“Yes. Does that surprise you? It’s important to know your enemy, or you risk becoming blinded by your own ignorance and being taken by surprise.”

It was an intelligent, honest answer, something I rarely got to one of my questions. It had me feeling off-kilter as I stared at him. Yet the word “enemy” sounded like a gong as it rang a warning in my mind. He meant us. Me.

It was a sobering reminder I shouldn’t be talking to a Fallen. This was no time to indulge the curiosity I’d never been able to shut down. I needed to escape, and now , or I was as good as dead.

My mind scrambled. Maybe if I kept him talking, I could somehow distract him and get away. I just needed enough time to launch into the air through the open patch of moonlight above me without being caught. Simple.

“Is that why you’re here, lurking in the shadows? To get to know us? Or are you here to pillage and cause destruction, like your kind do?”

My words had the opposite effect to what I’d intended. His attention became even more fixed on me. He seemed to almost swell in size as his shadows swirled darkly around him, merging his form into the inky darkness of the night. As if dense clouds had devoured the moon, despite the moonlight still filtering through the trees elsewhere.

Instinctively, I swallowed hard and stepped back. Taunting a monster was reckless, and I was anything but that. My pitiful attempt to put distance between us only had him stepping closer, his shadows coming with him.

“Have I laid a single finger on you or anyone in this citadel, or pillaged anything besides a few apples?” There was anger darkening his tone as his shadows thickened around him. “I won’t give you answers if you’re too blind to see the lies in front of you, light wielder. Including the ones in your codex.”

“The codex is the word of our goddess. It cannot be contravened or questioned.” My conditioned response to any criticism of the codex was ingrained deep yet came out far too shaky.

He tipped his head back as he shook it angrily, and his hood inched back, exposing part of his face. Only, he had no face. The raw bone I thought I’d glimpsed earlier shone in the moonlight. A curved bone jaw and wickedly sharp teeth flashed at me as my heart raced so hard it hurt.

“Is it the word of your goddess? Or is it the word of your elders, spreading lies and grasping at a power that isn’t theirs?” His hand, gloved in black leather, shot out from his writhing shadows and gestured angrily toward the feather I was still holding. “You can and should question everything, little light wielder. If you can’t understand that, we’re done here. Give me the feather.”

The codex described the Fallen as monsters who had created the wraiths by perverting the goddess’s light, making the ground uninhabitable and forcing us into the sky. They had become twisted by their misdeeds and were now little more than beasts. They were a stain on our history and had caused untold pain and suffering. There was no disputing that.

An unfamiliar outrage shot through me. After everything his people had done, this Fallen was going to fly up here and impugn the very goddess they’d abandoned. My body heated, and my muscles quivered with the need to make him take back his words.

As I raised my trembling hand, unsure what I was intending to do, the bluebird I’d been following earlier flew down and alighted on a branch behind the Fallen’s shoulder. It cocked its head in an uncanny mimicry of the Fallen before it. The little bluebird showed no fear, making me hesitate.

A warmth trailed over my skin, and unseen attention fixed upon us. This moment seemed significant somehow, as if the watching stars and the goddess herself held their breath.

Too many shocks tonight had already cracked my mental shields, and the world was creeping behind the walls I’d built around my emotions, making my guarded world fracture too.

I needed to think, but I’d spent too many years shoving down my need to question for it to come naturally now. I recalled Mara’s words from earlier—that I needed to watch and see what was in front of me before it bit me. There was no better time to try out her advice.

I looked at the Fallen, trying to see beyond the swirling shadows. He spoke like a Neven, which didn’t fit with the face of bone I kept glimpsing. The fact we were having a conversation also contradicted everything I’d ever been told. Enough about this hulking male wasn’t adding up that it gave me further pause.

My gaze dropped to the feather in my hand as I worried my lip. He could have killed me the moment I reached for it and I would have never known he was there. I’d walked right past him, unseeing. He’d stayed his hand to talk to me, and as terrified as I was, I wanted to know why. Blind trust wasn’t an offer I was about to extend to a Fallen, but confusion made me push past the fear clawing at my throat.

If this male didn’t intend to kill me, he couldn’t do much worse than what would be done to me by my own kind if I stayed on my current path, and he seemed to know more about my people than I did, while I knew nothing about his beyond vague stories told to terrify us. My hand dropped back to my side as my mind, and my instincts, started to wake like seedlings long buried, unfurling into the light.

“If you want your feather back, you have to answer my questions first.” My voice trembled and my body quailed at being so forthright, but I stood my ground as I tried to calm my breaths. It felt ridiculous. I was a tiny mouse demanding a wolven barter with me. I had no idea what I was doing.

“There you are,” he said in a light, lilting tone that almost sounded relieved. “What else do you want to know, little light wielder?”

A deep breath filled my chest, and I held it a moment before I spoke my will on a long exhale. As much as I wanted to ask why he was here, and how he’d gotten here—questions that seemed important—there was one thought crowding out all the others, and it was the only one that slipped past my clenched throat.

“Who are you?”

I meant more than just this male. If the Fallen weren’t who we’d been told, I wanted to know who they were as a people.

His unseen gaze seemed to sharpen on me, and I felt a prickle run up my spine. “I can tell you who I’m not. I’m not your enemy. Only, I can’t tell yet if you’re mine. That makes you dangerous.”

The idea almost had me laughing again, even as I felt hysteria rise at the impossibility of this moment. I didn’t even have power over my own life. “I’m the least dangerous creature in existence.”

“You couldn’t be more wrong.” He shook his head slowly, seeming as stunned as I felt. “You’re incredibly dangerous. You just don’t know your own power yet. They’ve made sure of that.”

“Who?” I was confused, my mind trying to keep up with a conversation that had taken a turn I wasn’t expecting, not that I was practiced in the art of conversation.

“Your elders. They’re not the saviors you think they are, sweet, naive little light wielder.”

I felt like he was mocking me now, and my confusion morphed into consternation, loosening my tongue. “How can I be both sweet and dangerous?”

“The most dangerous things are usually the sweetest. Have you not learned that yet?” His tone was serious, if a little pensive.

His words had me feeling flustered and disoriented, and I shifted and stared up at the patch of moonlight above me. None of this made any sense. Part of me still wanted to flee, but another part of me—the part that had long ago spent hours wondering about the world outside our citadel—was intrigued by this mysterious Fallen. “I asked for answers and you’re giving me riddles,” I huffed, frustration building. It felt like he was playing with me. Toying with his food, perhaps, like I’d sometimes seen alley cats do with mice they caught.

“My apologies, little light wielder. What is it you want to know?” He dropped casually into a crouch, making himself smaller, although no less threatening. He could as easily kill me from the ground as he could towering over me, I was sure.

“Do you have horns?” After blurting the question out, I felt my cheeks flush. It wasn’t what I’d meant to ask.

He was silent for a moment, and I wasn’t sure he was going to answer. Maybe I’d confused him as much as he had confused me.

“No, I do not have horns,” was his quietly spoken response. He didn’t scoff or chastise me. He just answered.

The sadness infiltrating his tone lent an unexpected vulnerability to his words. The way his hands fidgeted where they rested on his thighs as I watched him drew my attention to them. Hands shaped like mine beneath the gloves. Not a claw in sight. As frightening as his dark visage appeared, he acted nothing like the Fallen did in stories. He seemed almost as unused to being seen as I was.

“Most of what you’ve been told about us is lies,” he added, as I continued to watch him.

“Like what? Give me an example.” Tension and nervousness had my words coming out far too abrupt.

His silence stretched out this time, as if he was thinking, though it was impossible to tell with his features hidden. When he finally spoke, his next words were formal, considered.

“The name Fallen isn’t one we chose for ourselves. It’s a name your people gave ours after they were betrayed by your elders. The Neven who fell were guardians, their only crime trying to protect a vessel from being sacrificed. They were punished and outcast for upholding their sworn duty. Even worse, their families were made to fall alongside them.”

“That’s not true. It can’t be true.”

“Really? We are not a violent people. We do not harm women and children. Is that something you can claim about the elders and nobles within Lumière?”

I couldn’t answer him. Not truthfully, anyway, based on my experience and my recently gained knowledge. How could I admit that to my enemy? So I stayed quiet.

He didn’t seem to need my words this time. A tendril of shadow crept out again, and this time, he didn’t flick it away. As it stole across the space between us, I watched, trapped between fear and fascination. I stood as motionless as the citadel towers behind me while it rose to wrap softly around my wrist. The time for fleeing had long passed.

The shadow tickled where it touched my skin and left a trail of ghostly warmth in its wake. The feather I still held shook in my trembling fingers, but I refused to utter a sound, afraid to spook the wandering tendril.

“You are scared, yet here you stand, brave in front of the monster you have been taught to fear.” The tendril pressed the hammering pulse at my wrist. His unseen eyes bore into me as I watched his shadow with rapt attention. “I fear you have already met monsters far scarier than me.”

There was no response to that insight I wanted to give a stranger. Instead, I raised my hand, watching as the shadow slid back around my wrist. I’d assumed it was aiming to steal the feather back somehow, until the tiny shadow ran over the raw welt on the back of my hand instead, the one layered over many older not-quite healed ones. I flinched, jerking my hand, but the shadow clung to me.

His next words came out gravelly, like his throat had turned to stone. “Who did this to you?”

The welts surely meant nothing to him, but the danger in his tone said otherwise. I knew when a question demanded an answer. His voice almost dared me to lie to him. This was not the same male of a moment ago. This was the nightmare.

“The elder of my house, Elder Welkin. As an acolyte, I required a lot of…correction.”

That low, menacing noise reverberated around the clearing again, making me tremble.

“How could you require correction when you’re perfect?” His voice was so low, I only just made out the words.

A tickle against my hand distracted me from answering. When I dragged my gaze away, I saw the small shadow stroking the reddened mark, almost like a caress. Its warmth felt like the heated compress Kiran would put on my aches when I was younger, only softer and insubstantial, like I imagined a sun-warmed cloud might feel.

As if drawn forward by something unseen, the Fallen shifted toward me, while more of his shadows reached in my direction. As he impatiently gestured them back, I got a glimpse of the myriad sheathed knives strapped to him.

“Your light is strong, but something within you is blocking it.” His words were low, almost as if he were talking to himself, but they shocked me all the same. How could he know about that? Nobody knew about that, except maybe Mara now.

Is that why his shadow was touching me? Could he somehow gain insight through them? Questions whirled through my mind, tumbling all over each other in my panic.

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” I dodged, my voice going high and loud. Those few words, uttered so casually, left me raked open and exposed, as if he’d burrowed inside me and was prodding around amongst the deepest parts—the ones even I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, breach.

Tensing, he peered up at the sky. There was a swirl of dark shadow, then only moonlight in front of me. He was gone, as if he’d never existed. The grassy clearing appeared undisturbed and betrayed no trace of his presence, leaving me strangely bereft.

Even the bluebird had fled.

All that remained was the feather, and the tiny sliver of shadow still wrapped around my wrist.

Before I could decide what to do, the sound of beating wings made me freeze. I scanned the sky frantically, my heart hammering.

Had I been spotted out here, where I wasn’t supposed to be, talking with a Fallen?

If I had, I wouldn’t have to worry about him killing me.

A bigger threat would do the honors…

My own people.