His voice lowers. “But the rocks beneath the surface are very bad, indeed.”
The gold around my wrists begins to slide slowly against my skin, a gradual unfurling motion that I’m certain is designed to make me afraid.
Fear certainly pushes at me as I glance down again.
Are there dark shadows beneath the waves? Are those rocks?
Dammit, I think they might be.
He pushes at my legs and that’s all it takes for them to slide away from his sides, and now I’m dangling in the air by the force of the gold alone.
I try to grab hold of it, trying desperately to cling even as my shoulders wrench with my own body weight and the gold continues to slide effortlessly through my fingertips.
Oh. Fuck.
There’s only a short portion of the bands left before I’ll fall.
I only have one option now.
With a sense of burgeoning despair, I focus on the intense, crawling sensation that tingles all the way from my lower back up to the base of my skull.
The sensation surges, an unyielding energy, scarily easy to call since it’s been pushing at me ever since the dragons first appeared.
I swallow my scream as my jagged, black wings tear from my back with a painfulthump.
They’re so sharp that they slice right through my tunic—rips I can’t see but can easily feel when the material flaps in the wind and the cold sea air rushes across my skin.
The force of my wings bursting from me wrenches me away from the gold bands.
Opposite me, Ryuji’s eyes shoot wide as my wings stretch to either side of me.
“There.” I give him a broad grin. “Have fun trying to drop me now.”
It’s a moment of triumph that quickly fades.
My body tips to the right and I desperately try to make sense of the sensations in my shoulder blades and spine, the burn in my upper back and the searing heat of overstretched muscles all the way around my ribs.
I know I need to beat my wings, but I don’t know how. I don’t even know if theycanbe beaten. For all I know, I needed to develop the muscles to use them throughout childhood, to grow with my wings.
Fuck.
I’m like a butterfly in a book.
My wings are stiff, remaining outstretched and unmoving while my feathers ruffle uselessly in the wind.
I’m airborne for a mere heartbeat longer.
The breath leaves my chest as I plummet toward the water, the rocks beneath the surface rearing up at me, clearly visible now.
I wrench my arms inward and push them outward, trying to throw myself to the side, trying to glide away from the darkest, rockiest section of ocean below, trying to control my descent in any way I can.
It doesn’t work.
The wind simply whistles through the gaps between my feathers.
Well, damn.I was right all along: My wings are fucking useless.
I brace for impact as the rocks rush up at me.
