He made it sound so simple. But whatever was shifting my back felt so heavy and strange.
I choked out, “How do I—”
“Stretch them out. Farther. They’re not big enough yet.”
More pain, as creatures grabbed onto my newly-formed wings.
“Not yet, Aefe.”
“It has to be—”
“Not yet.”
No time. This was it. We were overrun.
I pushed with everything I had. Snap, as bones cracked. Crack, as my body twisted with unnatural force.
“Now!” Ishqa shouted, and I locked my arms around his shoulders and lurched these unfamiliar muscles in what I thought, hoped, prayed would be enough to get us into the air. Ishqa’s wings, one powerful and one ruined, pushed too.
The pain was so intense that I didn’t realize it had worked until I looked down and saw a mass of limbs squirming beneath us.
“Focus, Aefe. Stay level. Tilt to the left.” Ishqa’s arm was tight around my waist, the two of us supporting each other. Our wings tangled. My muscles burned. There was nothing graceful about this — we were flailing through the sky.
“Keep going,” Ishqa said. “Just beyond the wall.”
The edges of my vision were going grey.
Distantly, I became aware of the fact that we were falling.
“Aefe!”
The wall hurtled closer. We lurched through the air as Ishqa’s wings pumped desperately to keep us airborne.
The last thing I saw was the ground rushing towards me.
And then nothing.
Somebody was screaming — a horrifying, jagged noise.
Hands were on me, on my back. Gods, my back, something was terribly, terribly wrong with it. Something was being torn out of me, or plunged into me, or both.
I looked up, through blurring vision, and saw my sister leaning over me.
My perfect sister should not be in a place like this.
“Put her to sleep,” a voice was saying. “She’s…she can’t stay like this.”
I blinked. The face looking into mine was not Orscheid’s. No, it was Siobhan’s, lined with concern.
And then I realized that the screaming was mine.
“She can’t,” another voice said. “That’s why she needs to be awake.”
Awake? No, I couldn’t be. Surely I was dying. I had to have smashed into the ground and shattered into a thousand pieces.
“Aefe. Aefe, look at me.”
Fingers turned my face. Ishqa was there, the waning sunlight spilling from behind him.
“You cannot stay this way. Do you understand? You need to shift back.”
I don’t know how, I tried to say.
“The wings are a part of you. Bring them back within, like you are drawing air into your lungs.”
“I can’t,” I choked out.
Warm fingers curled around mine. Caduan stared down at me. The touch of his hand felt like the touch I’d press against the Pales, now so far away — steadying connection.
“You can,” he said. “You must.”
He said it as if it were a truth, and I allowed myself to think that it could be.
The pain tore me in two. I heard cracking sounds. My fingers trembled around Caduan’s hand.
“I can’t,” I sobbed. “I can’t, I can’t…”
“You can,” he repeated, firmly.
It was going to kill me.
But one more time, I drew in breath, curled all of my limbs in on each other. Let out a ragged scream.
CRACK.
The pain dimmed my vision. I felt hands running over the bare, smooth skin of my back.
“There.” Siobhan gave me a shaky smile. “You are done, Aefe.”
I fell back into darkness.
Chapter Twenty
Tisaanah
It is strange to call war mundane. But that’s what it became, conflicts running together like blood between rain-soaked cobblestones.
When the Kazarans had retreated, they had taken with them breathless whispers of Zeryth’s foreign witch, who had brought down the cliffs and soaked the stone in blood. Overnight, my reputation caught fire.
I was grateful for it. Those whispers were my greatest weapon. Zeryth wanted to win, and he wanted to do it quickly. I had no choice in fighting for him — the only thing I could control was how I did it. I could wield death, or I could wield a powerful performance.
We were to conquer six districts, all of them relatively close to Korvius. The first time I rode out, I had to keep stopping to vomit in the bushes, careful to make sure no one saw me. It wasn’t Reshaye’s magic making me ill, just my own nerves.
Reshaye picked apart my anxieties as if unraveling a piece of embroidery.
{Why do you so fear what you are capable of?} it whispered, confused.
I’m not, I replied. I just believe we can be better. And it is easy to destroy.
It was a poor answer. Still, I felt it consider the thought.
The night before we arrived at the next city, I pulled Sammerin far enough away from camp that no one could hear us.
“If I lose control, tomorrow,” I told him, “do whatever you need to do to make sure I stop. Do you understand?”
Sammerin gave me a long, serious look, and nodded grimly. “I do.”
“Promise me, Sammerin.”
He put a firm hand on my shoulder. “I promise.” He made it sound like an unshakable truth, and I was grateful for it.
That would become a ritual before every attack. Before the crest of dawn, I would go to Sammerin, and ask him to make that promise one more time. And to his credit, he always did.
But he never needed to fulfill it.
I showed these cities exactly what I was capable of doing to them. My spectacles embodied the shattering of their greatest strengths. I collapsed the stone around the most fortified district, as if to whisper to them, I can tear your walls like paper. In the one sheltered by the sea, I roiled the waves until they were ten, twenty, fifty feet high, to show them, I could swallow you whole. I made mountains shudder and fields wither; I filled the sky with smoke and snarling eyes.
Upon every target, I unleashed hell.
Or at least, I appeared to.
Some of it was a facade. Zeryth gave Eslyn those vials before every fight, and each time, she would support me, drawing Stratagrams to bolster my
