Page 148 of Fortune's Blade

The bird’s feathers ruffled, and it shed a single, dark quill, black as night and iridescent as dragon scales under the sunlight. It looked like the ones on my shoulders, but much larger. I carefully picked it up.

“Thank you,” I murmured, and he ducked his head. And then flew off to help his nest mates, for they were all one big, extended family. And as it turned out, they did mind, very much, the gods’ intrusion.

“So do I,” I thought, as Marlowe grabbed my arm. He had a bad habit of that.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“What I was made for,” I said, and changed.

Chapter Forty-Six

The taste of the candy that Ray had pressed into my hand was sweet on my lips, until I suddenly didn’t have lips. It was sticky on my fingers until I abruptly didn’t have those, either. It was lost in the tastes and sensations of this new form, this wild, unfettered, dark sleekness that washed over me as easily as the tide.

It was the only thing that was easy, as I quickly discovered that I did not know how to fly. I had the body for it but not the know-how, leaving me floundering in the snow, all wings and taloned feet and newborn awkwardness for a moment. And I wasn’t the only one.

Birds were falling all around me, their black bodies leaving splatters of red wherever they hit down, or flinging droplets about as they tried to fly away with broken wings and missing limbs. Athena was taking out her ire over not finding the witch on them, creatures which she probably thought the redhead had conjured up to torture her. But she had not.

I had seen them when I came in, and received confirmation from the thousand minds I had touched in our brief communication. This was their world, their home, and the fact that she didn’t even know that seemed another defilement. It told me, if I’d had any doubt, how we would be treated should the gods win through.

So, they didn’t get through. But that meant that I had to get past her guard. And that . . . would not be easy.

I finally managed to get my body and wings sorted out, mostly by stopping trying. My new form knew what to do, and once I got out of its way, it figured things out quickly. That was good, since the witch appeared to have been driven from the field.

The storm, once fierce and frenetic, was barely discernable now. Just a soft, cold mist slapping my face as I began to run and then to fly, soaring up and over the battlefield while feeling as light as a feather, despite being far larger than any bird on Earth. But the cold air bore me up like a helping hand, exhilarating even now, ruffling my wings and streaming by my face, and leaving me feeling strangely at home.

I banked, slicing through the air with split second precision, which was needed as the goddess’s rage was still white hot and her flashing blade was deadly. I had a perfect view of the battlefield from up here but couldn’t use it, as I had to dodge a sword that was moving so fast that it was virtually invisible, save for the corpses it was raining down in pieces all around me.

But the birds were not retreating, and not because I had done anything to force their hand. They were furious and frenzied, attacking the goddess right in the face, dive bombing her from all sides, still going for the eyes. They didn’t succeed, but I saw blood on that skeletal face, on the bare shoulders above her golden cuirass, on the arms around her gauntlets.

They were actually giving her a fight, but they were paying a price for it. One tumbled out of the sky, sliced straight in two by that terrible blade, and part of it hit me, causing me to almost crash. Another sent a bleeding arc to splatter me across in the face on its way to the ground, temporarily blinding me, and I had no hands to wipe it away.

And once I shook my head enough to finally clear my vision, it was to see a flash of light headed straight for me.

I dodged, but the edge of that terrible blade clipped my left wing, throwing my body off balance and causing me to tumble uncontrollably for an instant. But I tumbled into something instead of hitting the ground, and had just enough awareness to grab hold. Which was how I found myself hanging off the tattered skirts of a goddess as the battlefield slung all around me.

To your left! To your left!

Crazily, I could still hear Ray’s voice in my head. I didn’t know how, but it was there and it steadied me, allowing me to sort myself out. And to crawl awkwardly to the left, where I found—

Yes! Thank you, Ray, I breathed, because there was a rent in the goddess’s skirts, showing the thigh guards she wore underneath. They protected the legs until the greaves began below the knee, and like the cuirass, were bronze covered in a thin layer of gold that was starting to flake off. It wasn’t something my beak was likely to penetrate, but there was a gap in the back where they were held in place by leather straps, and in between, bare flesh peeked out.

It was an awkward angle, as I was still swinging off the front of her skirt, wildly in some cases as she slung her body around in combat. It made me dizzy, but I had to attempt it. She could notice me at any moment, and as soon as she did—

I had a sudden, vivid flashback to the bird’s skull I’d seen on the troll witch’s necklace, dead eyes staring, and that was enough. That was more than enough, I thought, as the ravens made a sudden, screeching assault, perhaps fifty of them all at once, and I took my moment. The skirt slung around as Athena whirled to face them, and I pecked wildly for flesh, any flesh.

I do not know what I found, or where it lay, as the tattered mess of a skirt was in my face. The fabric was overlaid with leather strips to help deter sword slashes at the hips, but they were slinging about all over the place and did not succeed in deterring my beak. Somewhere, it found an opening, and I struck.

The next moment was confused, and composed primarily of sensation: blood on my beak, in my mouth, just a smear of it, but that was enough; fire swelling in me, burning, boiling, flooding outward from my center down all my of limbs, and they were not the ones I’d had a moment before; the slush of sand and blood beneath my feet, squelching up between my toes; the cracks of tiny bones from the corpses littered around as I stumbled back, as I found my footing, as I looked up—

But not very far. Because I was as tall as the goddess as I stood up, my shining new form born of my power and her blood still encased in the leather armor that I vaguely recalled Ray dressing me in, which must have been enchanted. For it had stayed with me through everything.

But the body underneath . . . was very different.

The body underneath looked a lot like a goddess.

And finally, I had Athena’s attention.

The remaining birds wheeled away, black spots on a pale blue sky, and the sounds of battle seemed to diminish. Or perhaps I simply couldn’t focus on it anymore, as holding a goddess’s eyes is not an easy thing. But hold them I did, remembering all the pain these creatures had wrought, all the arrogance they had shown, all the blood they had spilled.

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