3
TALIN
After the worst is done, the prisoners aredragged back into their cells to finish their transformations into Ghosts. As they’re led out of the arena, Constantine turns to me with those steely eyes and nods up at the sky.
“Go scout the tracks, Talin,” he says, “and report back to me at the National Hall. I want to make sure they are clear for the train.”
Of course, I know this isn’t the only reason for him to send me on this mission. Whenever I soar around the city walls, everyone looks up at my silhouette, fear naked on their faces. The people of Mara need to see the power of the Federation overhead, be reminded of why fighting back against Karensa is futile. I am Constantine’s champion—and his spectacle.
Though, mercifully, I was not the one to deliver Constantine’s punishment today, I remain exhausted. All I did was stand and watch. Still, the muscles of my mind tremble from the effort of holding back. Of having no choice but to obey.
Every time Constantine gives me an order, a jolt of anguish shoots through me. Will this be the time when he’s displeased with me? Will this time be when he kills my mother?
So I step forward without hesitation. My fears stay held firmly in my heart, behind the barriers I’ve erected to keep my emotions in check. Black steel unfolds from my back, clicking as metal feathers slide against one another, until my wings have opened to their full span. I bow my head to Constantine, then lift my eyes to the sky. I launch myself up with a surge.
As I soar through the air, it’s hard to resist the only part of being a Skyhunter that brings me any hint of joy. The world rushes away below me, and suddenly Constantine looks small, his slender figure disappearing from sight as I clear the height of Newage’s walls, until I’m high above the city and the people below me turn into dots. In this small moment, even as my link tethers me to the Premier, I get the illusion of freedom.
Immediately, the guilt overwhelms me. During my transformation, when I lay trembling in a recovery ward on my stomach so that my back—which had been carved and opened up in preparation for steel wings—could heal, the Chief Architect told me that I would relish the feeling of my new power. That I would become addicted to the strength of being a Skyhunter, that there will be nothing more intoxicating than the realization that I can do anything I want.
I can fly. I can destroy. I can kill at will.
I told her then that I would hate it with every fiber of my being. I’d signed it through a sheen of sweat over my entire body, my vision blurring from fresh tears. She’d understood me too—she’d seen enough of my Maran sign language over the months of my captivity to parse some of what I say.
Just wait and see, Skyhunter, she’d told me, a knowing smile playing on her lips.
And here I am, not six months later, the thrill of flying rushing inmy veins. My stomach twists and I push down my emotions once more.
From up here, it’s easy to see the split between Newage’s own architecture and the ruins it was built upon—ancient black steel blended with clean white stone, a clash between two civilizations that nevertheless looks familiar and comforting to me. Now, though, scarlet banners cut through the city’s black-and-white features. Smoke trails into the air from where troops are emptying homes and throwing their contents onto bonfires. The Federation is burning remnants of Mara’s rule: our flags, banners, uniforms, crests. These fires have been going sporadically for a while now, turning the evening sky a muted ash brown as fine soot rains down everywhere.
Packs of Ghosts cluster here and there, some in cages, others wandering the hills at the outskirts of the city. And the train track winds away from Newage like a snake, our carriage already prepared and waiting at the train’s end. Tomorrow, that train will carry us, along with dozens of carriages full of Maran spoils—artifacts, ruins of the Early Ones, prisoners of war—back into the heart of the Federation.
This is the other reason why Constantine wants me to see the city from the sky. The view from up here offers a firm reminder of Mara’s conquest, the starkest sight of a nation overtaken. It is his unspoken way of continuing to break me down. It is his way of whispering to me:Don’t forget.
Mara no longer exists. It is only another territory in the Federation.
What little joy I’d felt from flying disappears, leaving behind the empty anguish of my new identity.
It is only here, up in the lonely wind and sky, with no one else to see me and Constantine some distance away, that I finally loosensome of the walls around my heart. I can’t restrain myself any longer. I let myself relax, and the flood of emotions I’ve been holding back rushes through me in a tide, pouring through every inch of my body.
It’s too much, this release. My eyes well with tears.
I weep in silence as I arc around the city, the wind wiping away the evidence of my grief. Up here, I can cry without a drop landing on my cheeks. My thoughts wander to my mother, then to the ever-looming question of where Constantine will decide to send her next.
Last month, I’d openly refused his order to root out a pocket of Marans who had been caught hiding in a valley outside of Newage. The next day, the Premier had my mother shipped off to one of the factories along the river winding through Cardinia. I spent our last visitation day sobbing helplessly at the bleeding scars on my mother’s chained hands and the sharp hollows of her cheeks, the sight of her struggling to load cubes of stone onto the back of a wagon. Telling her I was sorry, so deeply sorry. This month must be different.
Will he reward her this time because I stood beside him in the arena today? Or will he punish her for my angry outburst? A wrenching sob bursts from me at the thought—a hoarse rattle from my lips—lost immediately in the roar of wind around me. What will happen to her? How much more will I make her bear for me?
I weep until my lungs are heavy, until the icy air pricks my eyes, until I can no longer tell whether my tears are in anguish or from the sting of flying.
Finally, my breaths slow. My fists unclench and the muscles in my back relax, smoothing my flight as I yield to the air currents. When I first started flying, I tired myself easily by fighting against the wind. Gradually, I learned to turn my body in tune with it instead, to observethe way birds used the air to their favor. My flights have gotten longer as a result. By the time I’ve circled over half the city, I’ve calmed enough to rebuild the walls around my heart, firmer after having been allowed to rest. Bit by bit, I compose myself again until my emotions feel securely restrained under the surface.
Down below, the arena comes into view behind apartment towers. I can see it changing from an execution stage to a makeshift supply station, where laborers working on the nearby prison excavation site are moving crates in order to make more room for piles of debris outside the worksite.
A closer look makes me slow momentarily in my sweep. I change my path to a tight circle over the arena as I peer at the massive pit that used to be Newage’s dungeon.
The pulleys and ropes, which have long hung deep into the pit, are now hauling up something big from the depths. Cardinia’s mayor stands beside the teams and peers down at it.
I frown, my heartache giving way for a moment of curiosity. Have they finally found something?
