“Ow!” I growl.
Adena props herself back up and scowls at me. “Let me know if you’re going to flinch that hard!”
“Let me know if you’re going to stab me with a knife.”
“I didn’t stab you with a knife!” Adena snaps as she holds both arms out.
“Well, it felt like it.”
“I tried to straighten one of your feather blades, and you squawked like you just saw a lizard crawl out of my mouth.”
I blink at her strange analogy. “Is that possible?”
“You’ve never heard that phrase before?” She stands up and dusts off her hands. “Never mind. Give your wings a try. You still won’t be able to fly well, but I think you can glide.”
I stand up, my wings still extended. At the sight, Adena backs away automatically, her expression wary. I may be their friend now, but it doesn’t mean they think of me that way. To the rest of this camp, I’m still a Karensan war machine, one that’s somehow gone rogue and ended up temporarily allied with them. No one forgives an enemy that easily. There will come a day, they must think, that I’ll turn on them again.
I step back, then gingerly try to move my wings. Immediately I wince—whatever Adena thinks she did to dull my pain, I can’t tell. But to my pleasant surprise, I’m at least able to fold them enough into a pair of narrow blades against my back, if not a complete and proper fit into their slots. I grit my teeth and extend them again. The pain lances through me like a ripple of heat. Still, my wings extend, casting their shadow on the forest floor beneath me until they can reach almost halfway open.
Not exactly perfect, no, but much better than before. What can I say? You take the little wins when you can.
I nod at Adena with a tentative smile. “Make sure you don’t ever fall into Federation hands, all right?” I tell her. “You’d make them a valuable ham.”
“A valuable what?”
I must have used the wrong Maran word. “Ham?” I try again.
Adena smiles wryly. “I think you mean soldier, but the words sound close enough.” She holds up a small metallic cylinder, then tucks it back in her belt. “You’ll just need to be able to move quickly enough to be a distraction tomorrow. Can you do it?”
At that, I give Adena a half smile. “I was literally created to be a distraction.”
Adena laughs once at that. “You must have been a real pain in the ass before your transformation.”
I laugh, but as I follow her back to the campsite, her words linger in my mind. A real pain in the ass. It’s hard for me to remember anything about who I was before the Federation came for me and my life descended into fragments, years of torture. Before my mind bent under the weight of isolation and experimentation.
Who were you before that? I ask myself constantly. It’s a question I used to grapple with back in the glass chamber, something I forced myself to answer whenever I felt my grip on my sanity fading. I would ask myself this until my voice no longer sounded like my own, but like some second being that lived in my mind, talking to me because I had no one else. That other voice echoes through my head now.
Who were you before that?
Maybe you’ve lost him forever. You have vague memories of a boy chasing his sister through a garden, playing a game of hide-and-seek with his father. There are pieces of your life as a boy soldier, laughing and joking with your fellow troops. Memories of friends you once had. A girl named Lei Rand. A boy named Danna Wendrove. How you all would bet on which of you could perform some stunt, just to trade guard duties or long night shifts. Danna had come over frequently for dinner. Lei once told you that you were too soft.
You live life, certain it will always stay this way, until it doesn’t.
You must have been happy back then, before the Federation took that from you.
3
TALIN
After the worst is done, the prisoners are dragged back into their cells to finish their transformations into Ghosts. As they’re led out of the arena, Constantine turns to me with those steely eyes and nods up at the sky.
“Go scout the tracks, Talin,” he says, “and report back to me at the National Hall. I want to make sure they are clear for the train.”
Of course, I know this isn’t the only reason for him to send me on this mission. Whenever I soar around the city walls, everyone looks up at my silhouette, fear naked on their faces. The people of Mara need to see the power of the Federation overhead, be reminded of why fighting back against Karensa is futile. I am Constantine’s champion—and his spectacle.
Though, mercifully, I was not the one to deliver Constantine’s punishment today, I remain exhausted. All I did was stand and watch. Still, the muscles of my mind tremble from the effort of holding back. Of having no choice but to obey.
Every time Constantine gives me an order, a jolt of anguish shoots through me. Will this be the time when he’s displeased with me? Will this time be when he kills my mother?
So I step forward without hesitation. My fears stay held firmly in my heart, behind the barriers I’ve erected to keep my emotions in check. Black steel unfolds from my back, clicking as metal feathers slide against one another, until my wings have opened to their full span. I bow my head to Constantine, then lift my eyes to the sky. I launch myself up with a surge.
As I soar through the air, it’s hard to resist the only part of being a Skyhunter that brings me any hint of joy. The world rushes away below me, and suddenly Constantine looks small, his slender figure disappearing from sight as I clear the height of Newage’s walls, until I’m high above the city and the people below me turn into dots. In this small moment, even as my link tethers me to the Premier, I get the illusion of freedom.
Immediately, the guilt overwhelms me. During my transformation, when I lay trembling in a recovery ward on my stomach so that my back—which had been carved and opened up in preparation for steel wings—could heal, the Chief Architect told me that I would relish the feeling of my new power. That I would become addicted to the strength of being a Skyhunter, that there will be nothing more intoxicating than the realization that I can do anything I want.
I can fly. I can destroy. I can kill at will.
I told her then that I would hate it with every fiber of my being. I’d signed it through a sheen of sweat over my entire body, my vision blurring from fresh tears. She’d understood me too—she’d seen enough of my Maran sign language over the months of my captivity to parse some of what I say.
Just wait and see, Skyhunter, she’d told me, a knowing smile playing on her lips.
And here I am, not six months later, the thrill of flying rushing in my veins. My stomach twists and I push down my emotions once more.
From up here, it’s easy to see the split between Newage’s own architecture and the ruins it was built upon—ancient black steel blended with clean white stone, a clash between two civilizations that nevertheless looks familiar and comforting to me. Now, though, scarlet banners cut through the city’s black-and-white features. Smoke trails into the air from where troops are emptying homes and throwing their contents onto bonfires. The Federation is burning remnants of Mara’s rule: our flags, banners, uniforms, crests. These fires have been going sporadically for a while now, turning the evening sky a muted ash brown as fine soot rains down everywhere.