The Dark Light (37 page)

The wind kicked and swirled against the tower. We continued up and up. At least I’d get my view of the Brakaland Plains before I died. At least I’d have one last chance to look across the land and think of Crownsville and everyone I loved waiting safely on the Other Side.

My legs heard my heart. Though heavy beyond belief, they carried me up. The cold air cooled my sweat and brought gooseflesh to my arms. I thought of Ben Griffin wrapped in my jacket and prayed that he and Alex were safe with Vermillion and Delane. This final flight toward death was worth it, as long as I knew that at least two of the kids had made it out. I imagined them at home, their parents spoiling them rotten, celebrating their return with hamburgers and ice cream.

Tears fell as I pictured home and all the stupid things I’d never do again. Never again taste my favorite combo at Harper’s Ice Cream Parlor? Black raspberry, chocolate chip, French vanilla . . . This wasn’t how it was supposed to be! But we were cut off from escape—nothing in front but a dwindling number of steps, nothing behind but demons. Would I really let them take me? Or could I take that leap and put both myself and the Solenetta forever out of the Suzerain’s hands?

I ran out of steps to wonder.

After passing me on the stairs, Sol had already reached the top of the tower. Miraculously, he didn’t seem breathless. He gazed over Orion, head high, shoulders straight—the King of Brakaland’s son.

Speechless, panting, I collapsed onto the third step from the top. I peered over the edge of the tower. Black cloaks swirled below us as the demons mounted the coiling staircase. They
streamed in line, twenty, thirty, forty visage demons. Not even Sol and the Lunestral could save us from this crowd. “They’re coming,” I said, my throat dry.

The first demon appeared about ten steps down. It stopped. I don’t know how a creature with no face could portray such hatred, but I felt its disgust with every ounce of my being. Others formed a pack behind it until a black wall of bodies sucked the light from the bright white stone.

Though I saw little point in delaying the inevitable, I shuffled up to the next step and took another glance into the void of open air. But when I thought of spreading my arms, of taking that final leap . . . I couldn’t rise. I wanted me and Sol to live. The only way that could happen was to give myself up.

I looked down at the demons. A familiar face, repeated over and over, gazed back at me. The visage demons had seen into my heart. Only this time, they hadn’t found Jay. They’d found
Sol
. All the wasted moments between us swirled through my mind. The real Sol waited just a few steps away and here I’d wasted our last few seconds thinking of ice cream and surrender.

The demons screamed, the collective sound of their call piercing my ears. I raised my hands to block out their cries, then froze.

A swath of gray fabric fluttered in the breeze, landing at my
feet. I glanced at the fabric, perhaps a flag liberated from the parade by the wind. But then the color looked too familiar. And was that a sleeve hanging loose across the step?

Confused, I twisted to face Sol.

Then my eyes widened and my heart leapt.

I couldn’t believe what I saw.

S
ol’s wings reflected every ounce of light. In green, gold, red, and blue, each spanned more than six feet. Shaped as eagles’ wings, they formed a rigid line from his shoulders, like two great arms held out to his side with a curtain of feathers across them. This was the Lunestral’s power in all its glory.

Sol stood tall and strong, his bare chest out, his wide shoulders back. His eyes had blackened and bore into the demons’ with the Lunestral’s steely gaze. Thick red veins—I could see scarlet blood pumping through them—had risen to the surface of his skin. The Lunestral made real in man.

Delane’s words tumbled back to me.
Solandun’s not rarefied. But that’s different.

Sol was descended from the dream bird. Its power slumbered in his blood. A power unleashed on the visage demons paralyzed by his gaze.

He held out his hand. I didn’t take it. The wind carried my whisper.
“How?”

I didn’t expect him to reply, I mean, it wasn’t even really a question, just a barely evolved thought that had escaped my lips. I got to my feet and inched closer with tiny, uncertain steps. Sol held still and bore my gawking with good grace, as if he knew it was better just to let me see. No words could truly explain what had occurred.

I ducked beneath the tip of one of the wings. Soft vanes brushed against my hair as I passed. The wings sprang from Sol’s upper back in the exact place where the tattooed wings met the Lunestral’s body. The inked image of the dream bird lay between them, but now its wings were real. His shoulder blades had shifted, rotated, and the muscles around them firmly braced the wings. Two deep gashes had opened along the length of his back. Each was at least a foot in length. Blood trickled from one.

Sol glanced over his shoulder and the wing beside me separated the air as it made a gentle beat. His eyes were so, so
black—not a trace of white remained. But they were still Sol’s eyes. It was still him.

I skirted back to the front of the tower and looked down on the visage demons. Not one had moved since Sol’s metamorphosis. It was as if someone had simply pulled a plug. Their menacing aura had gone.

“We really should go,” said Sol.

“You mean, fly?”

“Unless you’d rather go back the way we came.”

I turned away from the demons and scanned Sol’s wings from tip to tip. Huge. Powerful.

“You said you trusted me, Mia.”

I looked out over the city. We were so, so high . . .

“I do,” I said. It was the time to prove it.

Unsure of the recommended form for flying with one’s crush turned dream bird, I put my arms around his neck. “Like this?”

“You’d hang like a dead weight. I need to lift you.”

I clung tight as he swept me up. His wings commenced a slow beat, casting a deep thrum as they sliced the air. I tapped him twice on the back of the neck.

“What’s that for?” he said.

“It’s for luck.”

I couldn’t help but smile. This was so surreal, so
amazing
. Minutes ago I was preparing to say good-bye to Sol and the
world. Now we had risen like a Phoenix from the ashes. Or in this case, a Lunestral. My heart beat in anticipation of taking to the sky.

“Okay,” I said, and held tighter. “Like on a one, two, three?”

“Like on a right now.”

Sol moved with such speed, I barely felt us go. One great leap and we were off and out.

The wind stole my breath. My stomach flipped. Face buried against Sol’s shoulder, I screwed my eyes shut. The whoosh of his beating wings was the only sound I heard over the rushing wind.

“The masks,” said Sol. “They’re moving.”

I wanted to look, but that would involve opening my eyes and I was kind of pretending that we were still on top of the tower, or on a really windy street.

“Mia, it’s okay to open your eyes.”

Easy for Sol to say; he’d done this before. But was I really going to spend this amazing experience with my head buried in his shoulder? I tightened my grip and peeked open an eye.

Orion lay far beneath us, its main thoroughfares cutting like runways toward the outer gates. The black veins of darkened alleys threaded through the city’s heart. Beyond the walls spread the Brakaland Plains, the road to Bordertown a pale ribbon in a patchwork of brown and green. Forests grew in the distance, the
mountain I’d seen from the valley lay hazy beyond. I could see how far that mountain actually stood from Welkin’s Valley; it had seemed much closer from the ground.

Though it remained difficult to breathe against the rushing currents, from over Sol’s shoulder I could see that we’d already sunk below the tops of the towers. The visage demons spiraled back down the steps of the Morningstar tower, their black cloaks stark against the white stone. Soon the Suzerain would know we’d escaped.

“Can you find Vermillion’s?” I asked. It was only then that I noticed Sol’s labored breathing. Knowing it couldn’t be a good sign, I held on tighter. “What’s wrong?”

“My wings are meant for one,” he replied.

“Then we need to get down!”

“I’m looking.”

Though we descended smoothly, the rapidly approaching rooftops made my stomach flip. A little like in the Wastes, the sounds of the city popped into life. Clear among them, a tolling bell.

“Does that mean the same thing it did in Bordertown?” I asked.

“They’ve called out the guard.”

“Then they must know already. Sol, the demons saw your wings. Elias will know who you are!”

The beat of Sol’s wings slowed and again we dipped lower, the ground clear beneath us. We were close to the wall, east of the gate I’d first entered, but far from Orion’s main streets. Sol straightened. His legs pushed down, and we dropped onto a shadowy, deserted courtyard between a tight cluster of buildings. As soon as we landed, Sol gently put me down. Then he dropped to his knees and lowered his head, his breaths deep.

I knelt before him and cautiously touched his shoulder. “Is it always this bad?”

“It’s flying with two,” he replied between breaths. “Give me a second and I’ll be fine.”

“Take as long as you need. I’d be dead if not for you. Or in front of the Suzerain. Or . . .”

He looked up. Some of the blackness had already faded from his eyes. His wings lowered. They softly swept the ground. Looking at him this way, my heart skipped a beat. I didn’t care that the bell tolled or that windows overlooked us on all sides. I saw only Sol. I finally saw him complete. He was beautiful.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, dropping my hand from his shoulder.

“I thought it best to stay quiet after the way you handled the whole ‘king’s son’ thing.”

“That little thing?”

“Yes,” he said. “That.”

His breaths now normal, the black still fading from his eyes, he shook his head. “I’m Beseye, Mia,” he said.

“But not rarefied.”

“Few are. The Beseye were the first to abandon the pure lines and mingle with other beings.”

I glanced at his wings. “But . . . a
bird
?”

Hands on his thighs, he took a couple more deep breaths. “The Lunestral was a bird in form only. It was a spirit, a force of nature. The Beseye were communicators and their strong senses allowed them to link with those spirits, the spirits of animals, beasts.”

“And the Lunestral’s spirit entered all of them?”

“Some,” he said. “Other Beseye linked with different spirits—spirits from the sea, the forests, the mountains. This all happened thousands of years ago. A spirit bond sometimes skips generations only to reappear years later. But my family’s line has always run strong with the Lunestral’s blood.”

“Which is why you have those gorgeous wings.”

It should have been weird to be kneeling with a guy whose very being was linked to another creature, whose
wings
carpeted the ground behind him. But it wasn’t. Bird. Man. Whatever. It didn’t matter to me—this was how he was
supposed
to be. The Sol from before had been perfect. Now he was more than perfect, more than the mythological creature from the book he’d loaned to me, more than simply the king’s son.

I kissed him before he could say anything more. I tried to put everything I wanted to say into that kiss. I didn’t have any words left that could explain what he meant to me. He was my dark light.

His hands grazed my face, my hair, my neck. Needing us to be closer, I crawled onto his lap, holding him so tight I wasn’t sure I could ever let go. His skin bare beneath my hands, I felt his muscles beneath his wings, the feathers caressing my fingers as I stroked his smooth, tight skin.

Sol responded to my touch with increasing fervor. Raising himself up on his knees, he held my body in an unbreakable hold. His lips moved to my ear and then my throat. This felt so right. My hands entangled in his hair, I knew we had to stop, but stopping was hard when Sol’s every touch led to the promise of more and more and more.

“THEY LANDED OVER HERE!”

Then we stopped. It was a man’s voice that had called.

My face hot, my breathing shallow, I pulled away slightly. “Where did that come from?” I whispered into Sol’s ear.

Sol didn’t move. His lips lingering beneath my jaw, the side of his face pressed to mine, I felt his breath on my skin as he spoke. “The next street, I think,” he said.

We scrambled to our feet, checking all around for a sign of the guards. But it wasn’t guards who watched us.

Though I’d not noticed her when we’d landed, across the courtyard sat a woman on a stool washing clothes in a large tin tub. She was older, maybe in her fifties, and was a little rotund with one of those matronly chests that burst out all over and refused to be constrained by anything made by man. Still scrubbing, she looked up to the sky, then looked at Sol. She harrumphed.

“It’s a long time since we’ve seen the Lunestral in Orion,” she said.

Realizing that the woman knew what the wings meant, I glanced at Sol.

“It’s been here,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “Only hidden.”

“THIS WAY!”

“That sounded closer,” I gasped. I grabbed Sol’s arm, knowing we had to move, confused why he stood here humoring some old lady and her laundry.

The woman leaned forward on her stool. “There’s no love for the Lunestral in Orion these days,” she said. “Best put those wings away, lad.”

She was so right. Sol was a dead man if they caught him; he’d fully revealed himself as one of the king’s line.

“SOMEWHERE DOWN THESE STREETS!”

The woman got to her feet. She wiped the suds from the front of her dress. “Get in here.” She jerked a thumb toward the house behind her. “You can hide until they’ve gone.”

With great relief, we slipped into the tiny house, leaving the woman to her laundry and the guards who suddenly swarmed onto the courtyard. We entered into a small, square room. A window, draped with yellowing net curtains, looked out over the street. Safely out of sight, I peered into the courtyard. The guards walked toward the woman, who remained at her tub. She was pointing them toward the neighboring streets.