Inkmistress (Of Fire and Stars 0.5)(56)
“She sent me out on a mission with it tonight. I came here instead. They won’t look for it—or me—until morning,” Hal said. “Are you ready?”
I nodded, not sure how to respond to the knowledge that he’d betrayed her for me. I didn’t imagine Nismae reacted well to incomplete missions, much less her own brother turning on her.
Hal pulled me closer, the scent of him so clean and pure I felt as transported as I’d been in my dreams. In spite of my new uncertainties about him, the familiarity of his closeness brought such solace that I struggled not to cling to him, to bury my face in his back, to hold on and never let go.
“On the count of three, we jump,” he said.
“All right.” I held on to him one-handed, hoping it would be enough. I no longer had the ability to grip anything with the other, and likely never would again.
He stretched out both arms in front of him and counted to three. His muscles coiled before he sprang, and I moved intuitively with him so that we took the leap in perfect tandem. He caught the bar of the Moth, and it glided away from the tower.
For one perfect moment I felt nothing except the wind in my face and a heart-pounding surge of energy as we swooped through the sky. Was this how Ina felt when she flew? The cool night air whipped loose strands of my hair and slipped into the gaps in my clothing, but I barely noticed, too caught up in watching Hal manipulate the wind in my Sight. It was a little like dye being gently stirred into water, the way he pulled the thermals toward us to give us altitude. We glided left and then banked right as he shifted his weight, floating over the city in a serpentine pattern that allowed us to lift through the turns. After a few weeks of near blindness thanks to the peaceroot, having my Sight back made me feel alive again.
When we lost enough altitude to almost sink into the fog over the city, Hal called a more powerful gust to lift us closer to the dome of stars overhead. I never wanted to stop flying. No one could reach me here, and even without the bed of stardust, I felt as safe as I ever could have wished in my dreams.
Like all good things, it came to an end too soon, when the opposite side of the canyon came into view.
“We’re going to hit the ground hard,” Hal shouted. “Try to run with the momentum if you can.”
We barely cleared the far side of the canyon before our feet hit the ground. We ran, stumbling over the rocks and grass, coming to a crashing halt when the Moth slammed into the ground in front of us and pitched us both into the dirt. I barely muffled a cry as I caught some of my weight on my wounded arm.
Hal unhooked me from the Moth and helped me slip out of the harness. I lay on my back for a moment, trying to ignore the buzzing of damaged nerves in my injured arm. My heart still raced from the flight, and a swell of fierce gratitude made my breath catch. Never in my life had I been so thankful to feel earth and grass underneath me. I was free. Thank the Six, I was free.
Hal bundled up both our harnesses, tying them securely to the Moth’s navigation bar, then teased the contraption back into the air with conjured gusts of wind, sending it out across the canyon and over the fog to the south.
I sat up. “Why did you do that? Couldn’t we have flown farther?”
“The Moth is too difficult to travel with—my magic can only carry us so far, and if I were to exhaust myself in the air and lose consciousness . . . well.” He didn’t have to finish the sentence. “It will be more useful as a decoy to keep Nismae off our trail. She’ll notice me missing, and she has spies everywhere in this city. There isn’t anywhere safe to hide in Orzai. Might not be out here either,” he said grimly.
I sighed, brushing the fingers of my uninjured hand gently through the leaves of a dandelion. My satchel was gone, probably forever. Nismae had all my notes, precious years of Miriel’s work and mine, details about how to enchant my blood. I had no doubt she’d succeed in doing great things, or that she’d come after us as soon as she noticed our absence. Hope seemed very small and far away, but at least outside the confines of the tower, it existed.
“I need to sit down for a minute,” Hal said as soon as the Moth was out of sight.
“Help yourself,” I said, still sitting on the ground.
He collapsed beside me. “I know you’re probably angry with me, but you need to know what’s going on. Nismae read that journal of yours and figured out how to enchant your blood to give Ina some of your powers. The shielding. The magic draining. She saw you do both those things when trying to defend yourself from her, so it wasn’t hard for her to replicate. Now that she has another batch, she might be able to do more.”
My stomach clenched. Everywhere I turned and everywhere I went, my blood led only to further doom and destruction.
“I should have unhooked myself from the Moth somewhere over the city,” I said.
“Don’t say that,” Hal said firmly.
“You don’t get to tell me what to say,” I replied.
“No, I don’t. But maybe there is a safer way to use your true power. I can take care of you if it comes down to having a headache, like I get with mine—”
“No.” I interrupted him. Power always had a cost. I knew what the price of my gift was. It wasn’t so much aging or pain that frightened me, but the unexpected collateral damage that always seemed to result. A flood that killed thousands. A village destroyed by bandits just so one girl could find her manifest. What would happen next?