“I’ve seen this before,” she said, her fingers tracing the edges of the lines. “I mean… something like it. It wasn’t this exactly.”
“In Ironmyer?” he asked.
Ana nodded and took a step back. “It was in the hall outside their Throne Room,” she said. “Though I don’t remember this—“ She pointed to the dark shadowed area, of a man with great black wings standing atop a burning wall.
Sam stepped up beside her. “The Fall of Atrion,” he said. “Ironmyer wouldn’t have me in their painting. They’ve tried to pretend I don’t exist. As though their previous king had never helped King Atrion punish me for speaking out against him.”
Ana looked up at him. “Millie told me something.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” he muttered, his hair falling over his eyes. His gaze lifted to hers, a flash of the person she’d fallen in love with shining in that moment. The smile she’d missed.
“What did she say?”
“She said you were once enslaved by Atrion, when the Myers and Moors were unified.”
Sam ran a hand through his hair and looked up at the painting again. “I was,” he sighed. “The powers I possess… the things I can do…” Shadows curled around his fingers, the hallway darkening with a thunderous rumble. He stared at his hand as the umbra swirled and swirled as snakes slithering over his skin. “Men have always desired it,” he continued.
He looked up at the painting, a haze casting over his features as the memory filled him. “I was once only a shadow,” he said. “I existed between everything. Back when everyone worshipped the gods Firemoor continued to hang onto as a way to control the masses. I always heard the distresses of people. Always went to them to try and give them some sort of comfort in their grief. After a while, I began to help ease their pains. I comforted them in their final moments and helped them into the next life.”
He paused, his eyes darkening as they moved to the next painting. One of his, she assumed, by the black canvas and white chalk line work—the abstract of men on their knees before a giant.
“I went to Atrion’s wife, Queen Adaline, when she lost her first born. I was there to help her grief and take him. Though I only appeared in darkness, the king knew I was there. He blamed me for the death of his son and said I had taken him away.”
Sam stopped at the next painting and stared at his hand again.
“He used witches to set a trap for me,” he said solemnly. “I became ravenous with anger and betrayal. And from my cage, those witches gave me a body—a prison. Immortal still, but…” Sam opened and closed his fist, a twinge in his jaw, and she could see the rage in his eyes. “One witch thought if she gave me wings and a deadlier form to shift into that it would ease some of the pains of being trapped in this. That I would still have the freedom of the wind and darkness, along with all the same powers I’d possessed.”
Ana looked to the shadows of his wings against the firelight before them, seeing the missing feathers, the broken arch. She wanted to touch them, to reach out and feel the softness beneath her fingers. So much so that she lifted her hand into those shadows and let the cool umbra swarm her hand. A shudder ran over Sam’s body at the simple touch, and he looked down at her like he might take her fingers into his.
“Can I see them?” she asked softly.
Sam shifted the weight in his shoulders, and she watched as he rolled his neck, the shadows swirling over his legs and up into his bones. His eyes fluttered once, and before he said another word, a black feather tickled her cheek.
She beheld them in the darkness, nearly weeping at the feeling around her. They blocked out the firelight as they rose higher, and though he made to extend one out, the tightness of the hall blocked him from doing so. And instead, he merely let it curl around her shoulder, a small smile lighting his eyes.
“They’re not as grand as they once were,” he said. “But they still make an entrance when I need them to.“
“They’re beautiful,” she said as she stroked one of the feathers. A few were missing, showcasing bone beneath. She noted the burn marks on the membrane there, and she remembered Millie saying they’d once been burned.
“He tried to burn them,” she said, eyes meeting his.
A tick rested in his jaw at the memory. “He tried to rip them out first,” he told her. “And when that was too slow, he set fire beneath me.”
“How did you escape?”
“I didn’t,” he said. “I burned and broke, my body healing over and over as fast as the flames licked my flesh. Seeing he couldn’t kill me, Atrion grew bored. He ended my punishment and swore he’d do worse the next time I acted out.” Sam shook his head. “Smug bastard,” he grunted. “Hazel was the one that came to me that night to try and heal my wings, but… It wasn’t long after that she was murdered.”
Ana blinked. “How old was she?”
Sam stepped down the hall a few feet and stopped at a painting of a woman, old and fragile, with a dark hood over her head. She looked almost… comforting. Like she’d have made the best soup to mend any and all your ailments. A soft figure, and yet, she reminded Ana of one of the older witches she’d met in Icemyer. One that spoke few words but watched her relentlessly.
“Hazel was over two thousand years old when she died in my arms,” he said softly. “After her High Priestess discovered what all she’d tried to do for me, and she tortured her in front of me until Atrion said enough, then he cut her heart out.”
“Why did you go along with it for so long?” she asked. “With being Atrion’s puppet when you could have gotten yourself out?”
Sam’s head hung, those shadows trickling over his shoulders and fingers. “I was told if I helped, he would give me everything I wanted when the war was over. Territory to rule over. No more chains. No more cage.” Sam sighed. “I realized one day that I would never be free unless I took it. Hazel found a way out of it for me.”
A realization washed over her. How he’d begun making demons. The creature he had spoken about making her.
