And then I hear it. The horn echoes across the valley, the Federation’s call to stand down.
A roar goes up from our soldiers. New strength rushes through my veins, and I throw myself into every cut and thrust, every spin and crouch. Their soldiers are retreating. Our men pursue them.
In the midst of our wild joy, I pause to see Red crouched in the middle of a bloodstained field. My elation trembles.
He is surrounded by our own soldiers, but he bares his teeth at any who attempt to come close to him. His eyes are still drowned in that silver-white light, so that there is no expression on him except pure rage. His fingers claw long lines into the dirt. His giant wings drip with blood. When he shifts, those wings move with him. The soldiers around him dart away like a school of fish, only to come back with their raised spears.
“You have to stop him,” Jeran says, materializing silently beside me. His face is streaked with blood and dirt, and in this fiery night, it’s hard to see the softhearted boy I know so well. “They’re trying to rein him in. I don’t think he can tell that they’re Marans.”
He’s going to kill them. I break into a run, then slow as I reach the circle of soldiers surrounding him. His eyes dart from silhouette to silhouette, still glowing with white-hot fury. I don’t know how much of them he can see. Perhaps everything looks like a smear of monsters to him.
There is no Striker training for this. No precedent I can draw on for pulling your Shield out of a trance. He hasn’t known me long enough to recognize my gestures and habits. He might not even be able to recognize me if I approach him.
But I still turn toward Red and start to take steady steps in hisdirection. His glowing eyes snap to my moving figure. A low snarl comes from his throat, and his crouch tightens.
“Red,” I sign to him. I pause, point to myself and sign, “Talin.” Then, “Friend.”
The other soldiers back away at my approach, their eyes wide. I know they think this is suicide. They may be right.
I stop again to repeat the signs I’d once taught him. “Red. Talin. Friend.”
My head feels light. I barely know this prisoner. But I have given him my oath. He has saved my life, there by the ruins, when the Ghosts closed in and I knew all might be lost. I am sworn, until death parts us, to protect him, to lay down my life for him, to be there when he needs me. So I continue on. My hands are empty of weapons. The world around me seems to still and slow.
He watches me, his fingers digging against the earth. But he doesn’t move. His wings arc black against the night sky.
I step closer and closer, until finally I stop a mere foot away from his crouched figure.
Everything about him screams of death. But my heart is steady, and I don’t feel afraid. I take a knee before him, completely vulnerable to his steel wings, then remove my glove and press my hand gently against his tightened fist on the ground. His skin feels hot enough to burn.
His eyes turn narrower. He looks like he’s going to attack.
“It’s me,” I sign to him, knowing he can’t understand me, knowing I have no language I can use to speak to him. But I keep trying. “You can come back now.”
He stares at me with his burning eyes. I wait for him to strike me, for those bladed wings to cut into my flesh. But he stays still.
“You can come back now,” I sign again, gentler.
Then, gradually, the glow of his eyes begins to fade. His dark irisescome back into view. For the first time, I realize that they are not black at all, but a deep blue, slashed with metallic gray. His wings droop, still dripping scarlet, their metal tips dragging lines against the dirt as they start to fold into themselves. Slowly, slowly, his posture loosens. As his wings retract entirely, slicing more lines into the shredded back of his coat, he blinks once, twice, then meets my gaze directly.
The light of rage fades from his eyes. He recognizes me.
Suddenly, his hands come up toward my face. Before I can stop him, he presses his palms against my cheeks and pulls me forward, so that my forehead touches his. His eyes close.
I try to pull away, but he holds us firmly together, and my body feels frozen in place, locked with his in an unbreakable grip.
A searing brightness in my head engulfs everything.
I wince and squeeze my eyes shut—but it feels like it’s coming fromwithinme, this overwhelming light. Pain lances through my body. The brightness feels white hot, so harsh that it’s burning a hole through my mind. I gasp, trembling. It floods every inch of me before it settles into a narrow band that links me with him.
And all of a sudden, I witness a blur of landscapes. The glass walls of a room. A woman in a white coat and shining glasses, leaning over me while I’m strapped to a strange table draped in cloth. A lush garden with a man and a girl. A dense, foreign mass of buildings, all built in a series of circles. The Federation. A forest rushing around me as I run desperately through the trees, my throat dry with fear. And a grief so deep and yawning that it threatens to engulf my entire being.
Somehow, I know these are Red’s memories. His thoughts. His emotions.
As if my mind has been cut open and flooded with glasslike clarity.
Red releases me. The painful brightness fades in an instant, replaced by what feels like the tug of a string connecting me with him.
What has happened between us?
