All the feelings I’ve been pushing down come spewing to the surface, and I continue screaming her name to the suns again and again and again, beating my chest cavity until I’m nothing but a crumpled mess on the ground with red eyes watching over me.
thirty-nine
Gideon
Feeling the open air…
The trees flying past my body…
The sounds of the humming forest…
I am alive.
Nothing else beats this.
It has been an age since I have felt the utter privilege of some semblance of my own independence. I can almost—almost—forget the king’s voice in my ear, a constant noose around my throat, slowly cutting the cord to myimmortality.
Travelling through the forest and witnessing the beaches that line the shore, leading me to the mountains along the north is something I do not take lightly. I have been here many times, running these coastlines, hunting these mountains.
It is strange to part with a practice only to return and have nothing changed.
The sweet vanilla rose scent lingers in the air, leading me to a rocky formation with a landing that is nothing more than a dead end.
Padding around on all fours, I decide I will need more than smell. This is fae territory. I know the magic well, and they are masters of disguise. Without an insider willing to help me get within their walls, it is impossible.
Standing tall, I open myself to the sounds and smell of the wind. Like all the Gods’ creations, intuition is our greatest ability, an inner knowing, to find when you trust your connection to all living things.
I trust my wolf can sense where the songbird is. As the first creation of Orion, I can hone my knowing from rotations of practice.
A soft ripple in the air…
A hint of honeyed florals with a burnt edge. My nostrils flare.Interesting. The burn is strong. A smoky heat.
Flowing from— Pricking my ears up, I can hear a whooshing—the sound of wings. Not small, but big. Big enough to create a torrent of wrinkles in space.
Curious.
A compulsion to run takes over my straining muscles, and my wolf is off, back down the mountain and towards the sea.
forty
Dove
Saff and I don’tneed words. She recognises heartache, and she sees it in me. It’s part of the reason she chose me.
After my breakdown, we take to the sky.
Wrapping her body along the side of the cliffs bracketing the ocean below, I let out a yip of surprise, and Saff rights herself again.
Patting her back, I say, “I’m not quite ready for tricks yet.”
“Fair, human.”The sound rumbles as if she is chuckling, makingme smile.
Together, we have grown quite comfortable in our companionable torment as we skirt the seas and cliffs around Terra. Staying on the back of a dragon is a good distraction from my strange new reality.
“We land,”Saff warns me as she brings her wings in and glides through a large hole in the side of the bottom of a cliff face, releasing them once we find ourselves in a large, sparkling cavernous space etched in the rocks.
My snug grip loosens on Saff’s reins, and my mouth opens in utter disbelief.
