"He said something," she whispered, her voice barely audible over the rush of wind and the steady beat of my wings. "Hewes. He said he controlled the White House. That I just didn't know it yet." Her voice cracked, splintering on the words. "We don't know who we can trust."
"No," I agreed, the single syllable heavy with grim certainty. "We don't."
"Then what do we do?"
I glanced down at the dark water below us, the Potomac's surface rippling with reflected light, then back toward the citylights in the distance, that sprawling constellation of power and corruption. There was only one being we could trust. "We contact the Prime."
Chapter 7
Ellie
Rickon flew over the outskirts of the city, his powerful wings cutting through the night air. He flew us low, so low I could have reached down and brushed my fingers against building roofs and treetops. My heart hammered against my ribs with every dip and swerve, the rhythm frantic and unsteady. I worried about us being picked up by the air defense system that guarded all of D.C., the sophisticated network of sensors and automated weapons that could turn us into ash before we even knew what hit us. But Rickon assured me that since we were flesh and blood, we wouldn't show up on the scans. I trusted him. Right now, he was theonlyone I trusted.
The wind whipped through my hair as we descended, the city lights giving way to darker streets lined with shuttered storefronts and the occasional flickering neon sign. Rickon banked hard to the left, and I tightened my grip around his shoulders, my fingers digging into the warm skin beneath his shirt, feeling the shift of muscle as his wings adjusted our trajectory.
He touched down in a narrow alley behind an old-fashioned diner on the outskirts of the city. The kind with chrome trim and a blinkingOPEN 24 HOURSsign out front that cast everything in alternating shadow and red light. The momentmy feet hit the pavement, the cold slammed into me like a physical force. I'd been so focused on not dying that I hadn't noticed how freezing it was up there.
My teeth started chattering immediately, the sound loud to my own ears. The slinky dress I'd worn to dinner offered about as much protection from the elements as tissue paper, and the way we escaped hadn't left time to grab my coat or purse.
Rickon shrugged out of his jacket without a word and draped it over my shoulders. It was still warm from his body heat, the fabric almost hot against my frozen skin, even with the ragged rents in the back where his wings had burst through. I pulled it tight around myself gratefully, my fingers trembling as I gripped the lapels. The fabric smelled like him, something earthy and wild that shouldn't have been comforting given the circumstances but somehow was.
"Here," he said, reaching up to adjust the collar, pulling it high around my neck and face. His fingers brushed my jaw, callused and gentle, and I shivered for an entirely different reason. "Keep your head down. If anyone recognizes you...."
"I know," I said, my voice muffled by the fabric. "We're screwed."
He nodded toward the diner's side entrance, a battered metal door with peeling paint. "Come on, we need to get you warm."
The door chimed as we pushed through, and a wave of warm, grease-scented air washed over us, the smell of bacon and coffee and something frying on the griddle. The interior was exactly what I'd expected. Cracked vinyl booths patched with duct tape, a long counter with spinning stools, and fluorescent lights that flickered and buzzed overhead like dying insects. A handful of patrons were scattered throughout. A trucker in a plaid shirt and baseball cap hunched over a plate of eggs, his face lined and exhausted. An elderly couple shared a piece of pie,their hands clasped together atop the table. Someone passed out in a corner booth, their head pillowed on their arms in such a way I couldn't tell whether they were male or female.
Nobody looked up.
Rickon guided me toward the rear, his hand at the small of my back, warm even through the jacket and my dress. We slid into a booth tucked in a corner away from the windows, the vinyl cold against the backs of my thighs. I kept my head down like he'd told me, the jacket collar pulled high enough that I could barely see over it. I was shaking from the flight, from the gunfire, from everything, my entire body trembling with exhaustion and adrenaline crash.
A waitress materialized beside our table, her expression bored. She was maybe fifty, with tired eyes rimmed in smudged eyeliner and hair pulled back in a graying ponytail. She wore a light pink uniform dress that had seen better days, the fabric thin at the elbows, and the frilled apron tied at her waist bore the spoils of years spent as a waitress, coffee stains and grease spots that had become permanent fixtures. Her name tag readDeb.
"Coffee?" she asked, not even bothering to pull out her order pad. Her voice was gravelly, like she'd been smoking since she was twelve.
"Two," Rickon said. His voice was calm, steady, like we were at the end of a pleasant date and hadn't just escaped an assassination attempt and flown across the city via his wings.
Deb grunted something that might have been an acknowledgment and shuffled away, her shoes squeaking against the linoleum.
I watched her go, tracking her movements until she disappeared behind the counter. Then I turned back to Rickon. He was scanning the diner with those sharp eyes of his, cataloging exits and threats, his gaze moving methodically fromface to face, door to window. The tension in his shoulders hadn't eased even slightly, muscles taut beneath his shirt.
"Nobody is looking at us," I whispered.
"Good," he said, his eyes still moving, never resting. "That's exactly what we need right now."
I leaned forward, keeping my voice low enough that it wouldn't carry beyond our booth. "So, what now? How soon before we contact the Prime and let her know what happened?"
Rickon's jaw tightened, the muscle jumping beneath his skin. He reached into his front pants pocket and pulled out a sleek device about the size of a phone but thinner, with a surface that seemed to shimmer between silver and black depending on how the light hit it.
"This is how I communicate with—" He stopped mid-sentence, turning the device over in his hands, his expression shifting from focused to something darker.
"What?" I asked, though I already knew it wasn't good.
He held it up so I could see. There was a hole punched clean through the device, the edges scorched and twisted like melted plastic. Tiny fragments of what looked like circuitry glinted in the light, exposed and clearly destroyed.
"Fuck," he muttered. "One of the bullets must have hit it."
