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TWELVE

Thorn

Standing in the vast courtyard, looking up at the peaked dome topping the majestic building ahead of us, an uncomfortable tightness spread over my limbs. The columns framing the courtyard and the weathered stone of their construction brought back far too many echoes of the archaic times before the war that had nearly ended the entirety of the wingéd race. The fact that Flint and I were on the verge of addressing two more survivors of that catastrophe didn’t do anything to alleviate my uneasy spirits.

As we crossed the courtyard through the shadows of the buildings and passing tourists, my companion gave off an equally discomforted vibe alongside his usual dour energy. When we’d found Flint, he’d been living alone in a hut in the middle of the desert, flagellating himself mentally—and perhaps physically, not that I was inclined to check for the scars—for remaining while so many of our kind had died. That had been mere weeks ago.

I was only just coming to terms with the idea that my survival might have been the result of keen thinking on my part rather than a failing of valor. But Sorsha had been right when she’d pointed out that I scarcely recalled what we’d even been fighting about. More and more I was coming to believe that if I’d heeded my doubts back then more rather than less, the outcome for all my brethren might have been better.

There was no telling what we might encounter with the two wingéd I could sense in this place the mortals called the Vatican, though. For them to have chosen to linger on the rooftop in such a place did not bode well for them having moved beyond wallowing in our history. As one who might have wallowed now and then myself, I was well-equipped to recognize the signs.

But they were here, and every wingéd had a warrior’s instincts and power. We needed allies now more than ever. And I would like to contribute something to our current cause beyond nearly battering our commander into a senseless pulp.

That was all the mortal woman who’d earned my heart had seen from me in recent days. How could I stake any claim on her affections in days to come, let alone as large a claim as I’d have liked to make, if all I could offer her was brutality and gore?

I’d brought Flint into our band. I could do the same with these two. Act the diplomat rather than the barbarian.

“I do not like the echoes of this place,” Flint muttered as we drew close to the main building. “Why do so many mortals flock to it?”

“They weren’t alive to experience the past these structures harken back to,” I said. “The echoes are more fanciful than real for them.”

He replied with only a grunt. Without needing to discuss our approach, we rose up through the shadows around the columns that framed the doorway, aiming for the rooftop where our brethren’s presence rang out most strongly.

They’d set up their sort-of camp around the back of the intricate dome. High above the surrounding buildings, I allowed myself to step from the patches of darkness into physical form to meet them in a presentation more suited to this realm. If they wouldn’t even detach themselves from the shadows, they wouldn’t be much use to us in our conflict.

The warmth of the morning sunlight steadied me. “My brethren,” I said, low but loud enough to carry around the pale stone. “We come to pay our respects in a time of great need.”

The dual impressions shifted, coming around to the side of the dome one right behind the other. Something about their form in the darkness sent a skittering sensation through my nerves. Then they materialized onto the dingy concrete, and I understood why.

Both of the figures, one male and one female, had the same stature and might Flint and I could boast. They were also both damaged beyond the abilities of their shadowkind powers to heal.

The man stood lopsided, one of his arms missing and little more than a hollow where his right shoulder had been, the flesh there twisted into thick, knobby scars. The woman had lost her left leg from the knee down, a worn wooden post fixed in its place, but more striking was her face, where half of her jaw had been carved away.

We could form our physical features and dissolve them again as we leapt from and back into the shadows, but those features were set in our essence… and if they were damaged beyond repair, they remained so, just as a shadowkind who died mortal-side remained dead. By all appearances, these two had only narrowly escaped the latter fate.

A different sort of uneasiness rippled through my chest. Even with the mangling of her face, the sight of the woman wingéd struck me with an unexpected sense of familiarity.

One she evidently shared. Her gaze skimmed over us and settled on me. Her voice came out warbled around the remains of her jaw, but no less weighty for it. “If it isn’t Thorn. Back after all these years to finally attend to the wreckage you left behind, are you?”

My lungs constricted. I drew myself up to the full extent my considerable frame would allow. “What do you speak of?”

“Oh, do you not even remember those you fought alongside? You once stood shoulder to shoulder with one I might have called my brother, we came into being so near together and so similar in nature.”

That was what I recognized. In her violet eyes, in her silvery hair, there were echoes of another aspect of the past. My own voice came out quieter than before. “You speak of Haze.”

He’d been one of my closest comrades. I couldn’t count the times we’d fought together shoulder to shoulder. How many times I must have deflected a lethal blow before it could land on him and the same from him for me. Until that last battle when I’d abandoned my post and failed to return in time.

The woman who’d considered him even more than a comrade simply stared at me with her stormy eyes. More words slipped from my mouth unbidden. “I searched for him. If there’d been anything I could have done?—”

“You could have remained with us and fought as you were meant to,” she spat out. “Instead you took a coward’s way.”

Not long ago, I might have accepted that judgment without argument. It would only have been how I’d already judged myself. But now, a protest rose up. “I didn’t leave for cowardice. I left because I saw how many of us had already fallen, and it seemed wrong to me that we tore into each other so violently over matters none of us truly understood. I meant to prevent the battle altogether if I could.”

The man guffawed. “Prevent the battle? Are you wingéd or weakling? It was our duty to stand with our brethren and respond to the call to war. That we linger at all is our own shame, but you —those minor scars show how little you paid.”

The comment summoned the sphinx’s harsh remarks from days ago—her accusation that I’d forgotten what I was. From her the suggestion had rankled; hearing the same from one of my own drove it deeper. The stabbing of guilt, my constant companion of many centuries, lanced through my gut as I’d thought it never would again. Had I strayed too far from what I was meant to be?

I swallowed thickly. “What is done is done. I believed it was for the best for us all—including you, including Haze. There is no glory or benefit in dwelling in the shame. We have other wars in which we are needed, where we might see a better outcome for all our kind if we respond to the call.”

What remained of the woman’s lips curled into an undeniable sneer. “Is that what you’re here for? To call us into some new fray—what, so that you can see us cut down even more while you stand back and simply watch?”

She might have summoned up old guilts, but I hadn’t lost my sense of honor. “I have already spilled more blood and protected more of my kind in these past weeks than I’d imagine you have in centuries.”

At her wince, a deeper pang of guilt struck me. That statement had been a blow in itself, one that should have been beneath me. I coughed and fumbled for the right recovery.

“I do not mean to criticize. You have borne a terrible burden, one greater than my own ever was. I respect that. It is simply that we face a far greater threat to all shadowkind than we ever encountered in the ages long past. There has never been a greater cause. I wouldn’t step back from this one even for a moment, knowing how much hangs in the balance.”

“It is our chance to win where we lost before,” Flint spoke up in his hollow of a voice. “An opportunity to make something of the shame of our continued existence, to make it more than a matter of shame.”

There, he could speak their grim language better than I could now. But our two brethren looked unconvinced. The woman worked her fractured jaw from side to side in a nauseating motion. “You betray us all that time ago and now you seek our help? Ha!”

Was clinging to her sense of righteousness more important to her than doing what was needed in this moment, regardless of who was delivering the message?

Perhaps, knowing my kind, that was a foolish question. Of course it was.

I ignored the sting of the word “betray” and focused on the now. “The existence of all life in both realms may be at stake. This isn’t a matter of my own wants but of the greater good.”

“So you say,” the man remarked. “We have no one’s word for it but yours and this one you’ve already deluded.”

Frustration prickled up from beneath the guilt. “If you’ll come with me, you can speak to others who can assure you the impending disaster is far too real. It would merely?—”

“No,” the woman interrupted. “You will not appear out of nowhere and demand an even greater sacrifice from us, you who sacrificed so little. If you truly wish to atone for the offenses of centuries ago, you will honor those fallen, including Haze, now.”

Some part of me wrenched at the thought that there might be something I could do for those who’d met their deaths in my stead, as difficult as I found it to imagine what that might be. “How would you have me honor them?” I asked.

“We had a box…” She looked down at her hands. “Of mortal make, but as fine as anything you ever saw. It held what fragments we could gather of those who fell completely, including my greatest brother at arms. But a pack of griffins sensed the power lingering in those remains and flew off with it. In our deficient state, we haven’t the power to challenge them and win it back.”

A pack of griffins. The creatures with their mix of eagle and lion features could be formidable foes, but no match for an uninjured wingéd unless in immense numbers. “I could see to that. Where has this pack absconded to?”

“We know not,” the man replied. “It was some years ago, and we weren’t able to continue pursuing them. They are territorial creatures, though. No doubt they are still somewhere in this region.”

By region he might have meant all of Italy or even the Mediterranean. “Years ago,” I repeated, my heart sinking.

The woman let out a sharp huff. “Far less time than you’ve spent skulking around offering nothing in recompense. Are you only willing to lend your strength when it’s easy ?”

The words gnawed at me even though I knew they weren’t true. But—what had I offered to make up for the losses my brethren had suffered in my absence?

“The matter we are currently engaged with is urgent,” I said, groping for a middle-ground. “If you would see that through with us, as soon as we are sure of the security of the realms, I would gladly?—”

“Ha!” the woman said again. “I see how it is. No, you go back to your playing at honor while we remember how the world truly is. Do you think our own matters have no urgency? The griffins tear at the remains and devour them scrap by scrap… I can feel even from a distance Haze’s last fragments of energy fading away…”

Her face twisted with such agony that my stomach twisted alongside it. How long could it take to track down a roving gaggle of griffins for the sake of my old comrades? To show I hadn’t abandoned all concern for them as I’d abandoned our battle?

But what might happen to Sorsha and the others if I left their sides for long enough to see to address this issue?

Flint was watching me with obvious uncertainty. I took in the ruin of my brethren’s bodies again—the ruin I’d been able to escape by shirking my duty, regardless of the purity of my motives—and an oath tumbled out before I could rethink it.

“I swear I will help you in the best way I can, as I owe and have always owed those who fought and fell.”