Page 104 of Storm of Shadows

He marches us across the moorland and Clare groans, then makes a queasy face.

“I can’t walk any further. I think I’m going to vomit.” She peers at me. “How come you seem okay? Weren’t you as drunk as I was?”

“Yes, but Dray Eros gave me something to sober me up – seems it cured any potential hangover too.”

“See, being a thrall has its advantages,” Fly points out. I think of the two awesome orgasms I was treated to last night – definitely another advantage. My cheeks pinken. Something Fly spots immediately.

“What?” he hisses.

“Huh?” I respond, pretending to straighten my jacket against the wind and not meeting his eyes.

“What was that?” he sweeps his forefinger in my direction. “That blush.”

“I didn’t blush.”

“You’re still blushing now, Cupcake.” He turns to Clare. “She regrets something that happened last night – something that was obviously dirty enough to make her blush just thinking about it – but she won’t give me the details.”

“I imagine it’s private,” Clare says.

“Exactly,” I respond.

“Yeah, but where’s the fun in that!” Fly whines, walking us several hundred meters away from the tall buildings and then stopping.

“This should do it,” he mumbles.

“Do what?” I say, spinning around. There is nothing here. Nothing to see and clearly nothing to do.

Fly unzips his jacket.

“Are we getting our own private strip show?” I ask. “Is this what this is? Couldn’t we have done that indoors?”

“You wish, Cupcake,” he says, pulling out a piece of material from inside his jacket. The cloth is multicolored and cut into the shape of a diamond and he holds it up to show us.

“A kite?” I say. This is not what I was expecting.

“Yep, a kite. It’s the best I could do with the limited resources I had.”

“You made it?” I say.

“I did. Had to sacrifice quite a good shirt for it too.”

“Shhh, don’t let the teachers hear. They’ll have you carted off to Slate Quarter for manual craft work in no time.”

“We can make things in Iron Quarter, you know.”

“And in Granite,” Clare pipes up.

“I used to make and fly these with my grandpa, before, you know, I became the disappointment.” He smiles sadly. Then hands me the kite. “Here, hold this out in front of you, at the bottom tip.”

I do as he says, and he unwinds the string, stepping further and further away from me as he does. When he’s content with the distance, he yells towards me.

“Okay, Briony, toss it up.”

Bending my knees, I throw the kite up into the air. The wind catches it immediately and it swerves around like a crazed bird before crashing into the ground.

“Again,” Fly commands me, untangling the string.

This time, I concentrate on making my throw straighter and higher and somehow Fly manages to time it with a tug on the string and before we know it, the kite is sailing up into the sky. Fly runs out the string and we watch it climb higher and higherinto the gray clouds, bright and vibrant among them, a trail of bows bobbing after it.