“It can't be that bad. Come on, you have it pretty easy. You have powers. You have wings. You have eternal life.”
“My wings are clipped,” Treycore said. “I don't have any of those things.”
“What?”
“You asked earlier about why I couldn’t fly. It’s because my wings were clipped.”
“Like Kinzer’s? But I’ve seen them. You—”
“Not like Kinzer’s. During the war, I was a spy for the Leader. I collected intel from the Almighty’s generals and swapped information with my contact. Some of the Leader’s warriors attacked a camp I was in. Several of us were captured. Back then, it was common to clip the enemy’s wings and take them to POW camps, where they’d torture us for information. But they couldn’t clip us entirely. If they did, we’d lose our ability to cross between immortal realms, and they wouldn’t be able to take us to their camps without a special serum. So they clipped us just enough so we lost our ability to fly. Unlike Kinzer, we retained most of our immortal traits.”
“Wait. The Leader’s men captured you?” Kid asked. “I thought you worked for the Leader.”
“I did. I was a spy, but the warriors that had attacked our camp didn’t know that. They assumed I was just another higherling that they could pry information from.”
“Then how did you get out?”
“At the time, Vera was also part of the Leader’s underground spy operation. When she discovered that I’d been captured, she had the Leader fake an escape for me. They had to fake it to look like I broke free. Otherwise, the Almighty would have questioned it. Questioned my loyalty, and I would’ve been at even greater risk.”
As Kid looked into Treycore’s eyes, he didn’t see the anger and hate he’d seen before. He saw pain and sadness. He saw weakness and vulnerability. He wished he could wrap his arms around Treycore and console him. But he knew how stupid that would look. They’d known each other for less than a day, and he was just a smelly mortal, as Treycore had continually reminded him. As much as he wanted to believe that Treycore was sharing this because he was having strong feelings too, he knew it was more likely he just wanted someone to share it with…like Kinzer had done at the diner.
Treycore’s wince-of-a-look fixed on him.
Kid felt as if it was probing for a secret, searching for more. He glanced to the side.
There wasn’t anything good in Kid’s past. Nothing worth sharing.
“Why?” Kid asked.
“Why what?”
“Why fight for mortals if you’re at such risk? The way you talk, it sounds like you hate us. But here you are, protecting us.”
“Well, I’m not a huge fan,” Treycore said with a smirk. “You’ve seen what I do. I don’t exactly see the best side of you guys.”
Kid knew what he meant. He’d seen how those men looked at him and the other boys at Dick Dongs. It was so similar to the way Jerry’s clients had looked at him.
“Exactly,” Kid said. “How can you look at those greedy, selfish bastards—who just see you as an object, who would break you and rip you apart without another thought about what they’d done—and think that there’s anything here worth saving?”
Kid snuck a look at Treycore. He could tell by the way Treycore glared back at him that he’d said too much.
Treycore appeared troubled, as if he was trying to see what in Kid had evoked his question, and Kid desperately didn’t want him to know. He wasn’t proud of his past, and he would rather Treycore not know about it.
“I’ve seen a lot of that,” he said. “I’ve seen centuries of torture, blood thirst, and rape. But every so often, you see some puny mortal do something that surprises you…sacrificing something so precious for the sake of another. For their child. For their lover. I was created to be aesthetically pleasing. It’s a quality higherlings venerate, but when you’ve had that advantage as long as I have, it doesn’t impress you. You come to see the beauty of things unseen. Like those things I’ve seen in mortals. Will, honor, love. When you see things like that, you realize that somewhere inside of these creatures is something beautiful. Something worth saving.”
Kid couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Even with all that rage and anger, there was an optimistic side of Treycore. It was beautiful. A feeling stirred within Kid that was so powerful it scared him. He couldn’t handle this anymore. He had to get away. He couldn’t let Treycore detect it. He wouldn’t let him see the surge of feelings that were raging within him.
“I guess we’d better start back up.” Kid hopped to his feet.
