Did we win tonight?Red asks, his voice echoing in my mind and cutting through my whirlwind of thoughts.
I nod. How much of what I’m thinking can he sense? How much does he know?We didn’t lose, I reply.But our defense compound is severely damaged.
He’s quiet. There’s another question hovering in his eyes, but he doesn’t want to say it. I observe him, guessing at what it must be.
What did I do?he finally asks.
I think about not telling him. He’s still recovering, after all. But when he gives me a meaningful stare, I find myself taking a seat on the floor beside his cot.
Do you remember anything about the battle?I ask him.
No.
The only reason we won was because of you.
His lips tighten, and he seems to sink back into himself, as if it were his way of retreating from a situation he doesn’t want to be in.Why?
I try to recount what I’d seen. His wings. The light that consumed his eyes. The way he’d cut down the enemies around him like they were paper dolls. And then… how he couldn’t stop, even when our soldiers surrounded him in the end.
You didn’t attack our soldiers, I add.You may not remember what you did, but you seemed able to understand which side of the battle you were on.I don’t know if this is entirely true. Before he sank into my arms, his furious eyes and bared teeth had been directed at our men surrounding him. If I hadn’t approached him, would he have cut them down too? Would Jeran and Adena and the rest of my patrol be lying dead in the grass right now, their bodies drenched in blood?
Finally, I tell him about the way he’d put his hands on either side of my face, how we’d touched foreheads and felt the burst of this bond between us.
His brows furrow, his eyes lost in thought. Does he remember any of it, the moment when he finally came out of his trance? Does he remember me walking toward him with my hands outstretched, the way he’d collapsed against me?
They are making others like me, he suddenly says. Tears glint in his eyes with a feverish light. I watch him take breath after shallow breath.In their labs.
Others. There are others in the Federation like him, who can rain down death such that the world has never seen. The fear of it claws deep into the folds of my stomach, sending a ripple of nausea through me.
Red had said that they never finished experimenting on him before he escaped. What will happen when the other Skyhunters are finished and fully equipped, their bonds to the Federation tight and uncompromising? How will any of us stand a chance?
The link between us pulses again, and suddenly I glimpse a few faces. An older man with deep-set eyes and a worried slant to his lips. A young girl, running through the grass. And Red, staring at a faint reflection against a glass wall. Some of the same images I’d seen flashing through my mind when he’d first touched my face, except now I understand what they are.
His father. His sister. I know this without hesitation through our link, as if the memory were my own.
What happened to them?I ask, dreading the answer.
Red doesn’t reply this time, but the pain that comes through our bond now claws at my heart, ripping it open, filling it with the weight of grief and shame and failure. He won’t say what happened to them. All I know is that this is the reason he didn’t want to live, why he had despaired so much that he was willing to be executed in the Striker arena. This is the source of the haunting look in his eyes, the anguish burning deep in him.
I stare down at this weapon we have been handed, this young man who in many ways is still a boy. And in that moment, I know I must do everything in my power to protect him.
Red has started to shiver again. Even the little he’s told me seems to have taken everything out of him, and already he seems to be sinking back into an uneasy sleep.
If the others come to check on him and notice him awake, they’re going to want to interrogate him. More than that. He will be brought before the Firstblade, the Senate, and the Speaker. They may run tests on him. I can already hear the Speaker’s command to send Red out immediately to fight at the warfront. Will they have the patience to understand this bond we have? Or will they consider him too great a threat to use? Will they want him dead?
Maybe there’s a way we can help each other, I tell him.But first, rest. We can talk more in a few hours.
I pull my coat back over his body, and then start to get up.
His hand shoots up without warning and grabs my wrist. His skin is still feverishly hot. When I glance at his face, that undercurrent of panic has reappeared in his eyes.
Stay, he whispers in my mind, his voice hoarse with a sudden terror that I can’t explain.Please. Just for a while.
I may not have known him for long—I’m not even sure if I like him—but I recognize everything about the fear now roiling in him. It’s the way I’d felt in the months and years after my mother and I fled into Mara, the way I’d bolt awake in the middle of the night at the slightest sound, certain that the Federation’s soldiers were breaking down our door. It’s the way I’d stumble out of our shack to retch into the grass whenever I smelled smoke from the stove, because I thought it was the Federation lighting houses on fire, setting dead and living bodies alike aflame. It’s the way I’d cling to my mother, crying, until she finally rocked me to sleep.
His fear is the same as mine, and it never really goes away.
I settle back down beside him, my hand still in his, and nod once without a word. The heat of his skin seeps into my palm. My eyes linger on his face, his dark, bloody lashes, the curve of his lips. The brows that stay knotted even in rest, never at peace. There is a beauty about him, in the same way that the Early Ones must have imagined their angels. I study him in wonder, my cheeks flushed. He mumbles as he drifts off. Whatever he’s saying, he doesn’t send it through our bond—but keeps repeating it as a mantra to himself until he slips gradually into sleep again. And I find myself thinking about whether ancient angels were actually real or not, and whether they were the reason the Early Ones vanished.
