At least she knows I’m here.
But it’s all she can do. Because in the next moment, she arcs back in agony as one of the Skyhunters grabs her by the throat.
And as I look on in horror, the second Skyhunter grabs one of her wings and—in a single, violent gesture—rips it completely from her back.
41
TALIN
The pain is worse than any experimentRaina put me through during my transformation. Worse than the nights I spent trembling and sweating. It feels like my body has split into two, like someone has taken a sword and jammed it into my back, then ripped out my bones.
My mind goes blank from the trauma. My eyes widen and my mouth opens in a silent scream. I arc backward as the pain rips through me in a violent wave. My balance suddenly feels off—part of me feels too light, lighter than the rest. The girl releases me, and I feel myself falling. From somewhere, I hear an anguished cry.
Red? Is he here?
As I hit the surface of the roof, I glimpse the two other Skyhunters. Vaguely, I realize what must have happened to me. They have torn off one of my wings.
The forceful hand seizes my back again. I have no strength in this moment to defend myself. My body is swimming in too much pain. All I manage to do is look out across the roof to see Red racing toward me, shouting my name, before the Skyhunter grabs my remaining wing and tears the metal from my back.
Stars explode in my vision. I crumple to the ground, tasting blood in my mouth as my lip scrapes hard against the stone. Constantine’s voice comes to me from somewhere.
It’s the end, Talin.
There is real grief in his voice, as if he regrets losing something he had worked so hard on. I clench my teeth and, through my swimming vision, look to my side to see the second Skyhunter rush to crouch beside me. She arcs her wings and reaches out to seize me, as if to pull me forward and impale me on her bladed feathers.
I don’t know what I do. Sometimes the mind is a curious thing when it tries to protect itself. But as she pulls me toward her, I manage to twist around so that the Skyhunter at my back is forced to move with me. My body is slick with my own blood, turning me slippery. As I go, I slide out of her grasp and throw myself flat on the roof.
Her wing, instead of impaling me, stabs straight into the chest of the second Skyhunter.
A shudder wracks him. He drops the bloody wing he had ripped from my back, then stares down in dumb shock at the steel feathers of his Skyhunter partner that have entered his chest and exited through his back.
For the first time since I came up here, I feel a tremor of surprise and anger come from Constantine. It’s all I manage to grasp. Over me, the impaled Skyhunter drops to his knees as his partner pulls out her wing in stunned surprise. Then the hurt Skyhunter falls heavily. He stills. Blood pools underneath him.
Who was he? Who are his loved ones that he’d been forced to fight for?
My head swims. I feel my limbs grow weak, as if they’re moving through water. I don’t know how much blood I’ve lost. I don’t evenknow to feel relief or joy at the death of the other Skyhunter. Somehow, in the midst of all my feelings, I find myself grieving for him.
The female Skyhunter turns her rage on me. Before she can reach me, though, I feel Red’s presence near. Then he’s here, really here, all his strength and fury barreling into the Skyhunter. The two of them tumble into a rolling heap.
I am so tired. I could lie down right here and sleep. My blurring vision sweeps the roof, searching for Constantine before I finally see him standing some distance away. No, he is already moving. He’s running away from me. I blink, trying to comprehend what I’m seeing. Everything in my mind feels so slow.
Constantine is running away because, for the first time in his life, he knows he’s lost.
I find my last vestiges of strength within. They have been buried deep in my chest, locked tightly away since childhood, since the night that Karensan troops burst into my family’s home and killed my father. They remained buried as I ran across the grassland at midnight with my mother, for nights and nights on end. That strength has been stored away since I fled across Mara’s bridges with my mother and crouched on the other end to watch the Marans cut their bridges down. The strength has been untouched, idle during all the years I’ve fought at the warfront, defending Mara even as she didn’t defend me. That strength is still inside me, shielded behind walls. Waiting for the moment when I would need every last bit of it.
This is that time.
As Red struggles with the Skyhunter behind me, I push myself onto my feet. Blood stains my hands and arms, stains everything. I trip over scarlet rivers as I go. Somehow, I break into a run. One of my daggers is clutched in my hand. I hold it tightly, afraid the blood will make it slip from my grasp, and I run toward Constantine.
Without his war machines at his side, he is weak. I’m reminded of all the times I had to steady him against my arm as he walked, the frail, human set of his body, his vulnerable nights when he couldn’t sleep. Now he runs, and as he does, I see him for what he really is: a dying young man, hanging desperately on to the shreds of a Federation he cannot hold together, the end of his father’s legacy—and his own. I realize this is what I feel through our bond now. His true, grieving realization that this is the end. That he is about to meet his greatest fear.
He is too weak to run fast. Even in my injured state, I catch up to him. He turns around, teeth bared, slashing out at me with his own knife—but I don’t care. One of my hands comes up and I pull him toward me.
I meet his eyes. He stares back at me with a wide expression, and I find myself wondering if this is what he looked like as a child.
Then I take my dagger and stab him in the heart.
His body goes stiff. I hear him take a rasping breath, as if he’s still—even now, at the end—shocked that I did it. He leans heavily against me, the blade digging deeper as he does. The pain that trembles through him hits me in a wave, and I feel my own legs in danger of buckling. It occurs to me he must have felt a hint of my agony, too, when the Skyhunters ripped my wings from my back. That was the grief he felt. As if a part of himself had died.
