I took my opening.
My blades plunged into her back. Then I pulled them up, splitting her. I should have felt the resistance of bone and cartilage, but her flesh parted easily.
For a terrible moment, she remained that way, clinging to Ishqa, and I thought we were dealing with something truly invincible.
But then, she let out an inhuman wail that sounded more akin to the whistle of wind through the rocks.
Don’t take them, don’t take them, don’t take them…
The intonation never changed, but the words faded like dissipating echoes.
The creature fell to a heap on the ground. Unmoving, she looked even stranger.
I swore, lowering myself to take a closer look, and—
A shriek. And then another. Off in the distance.
Ishqa and I shot each other a glance of alarm. “There are more,” I breathed, and he gave a serious nod, and neither of us had to say anything else before we were running out of the temple. “This way!” I said, when Ishqa nearly took us down a wrong path, grabbing his arm and yanking him turn by turn.
The air hit us like a wall. It was so much more humid, it seemed, than it had been just minutes ago, the fog thicker, the air damp and hot. The world was eerily silent as we ran through the main gates of the temple, back onto the pathways, leaping across stone blocks hovering on water so dark and still that it looked like black glass.
I slowed to a stop, ears pricked. I heard nothing.
“Perhaps that’s it,” I murmured, quietly.
“No.” Ishqa’s eyes scanned the horizon. Of course he would be looking to the skies. But my gaze slipped down. Down, to the slate under our feet, and further, to the water that surrounded us. Water so smooth that it was practically a mirror. My own face staring back at me.
My own face and…
And…
Horror rose in my throat like bile.
“Ishqa,” I whispered. “They’re in the—”
And that was when all of the eyes beneath the surface of the water — hundreds and hundreds of lifeless, disfigured fey faces — opened at once.
My blades barely made it up before they burst out of the water. They were on us in seconds. Ishqa and I only had time to clumsily fight back. Their blood spattered my face. Even that was odd, not the vibrant violet of Fey blood, but putrid and milky.
I heard a sound behind me, and caught a glimpse of gold. Ishqa’s wings flared out, a thing of pristine beauty in a world of deformed shadow. Between slashes of his sword, he reached for me. We didn’t have to speak — we both knew there was nothing else we could do but fly out of here.
But then, one of the creatures grabbed onto Ishqa’s left wing. A sickening crack split the air. His whole body lurched.
I skewered the creature, kicking it off of my blade and into the morass. But one glance at Ishqa’s wing told me it was now useless, hanging off of him at a revolting angle.
I swore under my breath, before whirling to decapitate another creature. Their not-blood slicked the handles of my swords. My hands stung, as if it was poison. A sharp pain gripped my side. Another one was on me, razored fingers digging into my flesh. Yet another looming behind.
Too many. Too many. Ishqa and I were back-to-back, our bodies pressed against each other, but we would not last like this. We were corpses being overtaken by maggots.
We would die here.
“We fight back to the walls,” Ishqa commanded, voice straining. “Our only chance.”
Hardly a chance at all. The creatures surrounded us in all directions. We would never make it to the gates.
A grim realization settled over me.
We couldn’t fight like this. But I could do something more. Even though I didn’t want to. I didn’t want him to see what I was.
“Aefe?” Ishqa pressed, between panting breaths.
I could save us. Even if it meant revealing the ugliest piece of myself.
“Trust me,” I said, skewered two of the creatures in the eye, and, in the split seconds of time that bought me, I whirled around and buried my teeth in Ishqa’s forearm.
He nearly yanked his arm away, uttering what I had to assume was a Wyshraj curse. But I didn’t release him, my incisors digging deep, the hot warmth of his blood flowing over my tongue. I swallowed. Once. Twice.
I couldn’t hold on longer than that. It would have to be enough. And as I released him and returned to the fight, I prayed it would be.
“What in the skies were you doing?” he spat.
Claws sliced my left shoulder. More at my right forearm. Ishqa barely held off one that dove for my throat.
I waited.
And then I felt an unfamiliar magic bubbling up within me. Ishqa’s magic.
My greatest shame. My curse. This was my horrible gift — my ability to steal the magic of others. It was such a dirty, shameful thing that I barely knew how to use it. I had never done this before with magic so unfamiliar to my own, never mind a power that would force my very body to change.
I imagined wings. I felt wings. And to my frantic relief, slowly, I felt them shifting.
I just didn’t expect it to hurt so much. My back seemed as if it were splitting, my flesh parting, blood soaking my leathers.
That was when Ishqa noticed what I was doing. Out of the corner of my eye, through the fighting, I saw him lurch — saw the realization spill over his face, as he understood what I was. And thankfully, he did not spend time lingering in his surprise or revulsion.
He bought a split second to whirl to me, cutting two slashes in the back of my leather armor, finishing just in time to strike down another attacker. Making room for the wings, I realized.
“Structure first,” he ground
