Page 55 of Kiss the Fae

I might be screaming, or I might be silent, it’s hard to tell. The atmosphere blasts into my ears, blasts of it plugging my nostrils and watering my eyes. With my arms splayed, I fumble for purchase, but it’s no use.

A winged shadow blots out the moonlight, emitting a long caw that rolls across the valley. It reminds me that I’m no bird, that I’ll never fly, because I’m too busy being human.

I’m falling, falling, falling—my chest jolts to a halt. A swatch of air slaps my body, while breath whooshes from my lungs.

The sky catches me.

Like a puppet, my limbs snap as if tacked to invisible strings, my nose punting a pillowy surface. I grunt, landing on a pallet of plumes, the vanes waxen yet downy. The wind mellows, enabling me to suck in oxygen, the odors of aged bark shooting up my nose.

A strong back revolves under me, a pair of wings spreading on either side. The bird of prey has an impossible girth, its size akin to a small dragon, though I’ve only seen those creatures in illustrations from Juniper’s books. A boundless landmass of barbs, fluff, and stems unfolds into those undulating wings, the mantles buffeting the great big nothing underneath us.

I gawk at the massive owl, my whip caught safely in its beak. As the raptor coasts across the range and I cling to its mammoth form, shock robs me of speech. Glimpsing the avian’s bronze feathers and the shafts of its ear tufts impaling the clouds, I know which animal this is.

Warm limbs straddle my upturned ass. I break from my stupor and twist, meeting a pair of derisive blue eyes.

“Careful,” Cerulean advises. “Or you’ll fall.”

“How…,” I stammer. “What the fu…”

I recall him whispering to that nightingale chick. That same bird had fluttered beside me while I dangled from the rope. So Cerulean had assigned the wee one to spy on me.

Follow the wind.

And that’s how he knows where I am at all times. Even though he sent the nightingale to watch over me, that had been a precaution. The wind tells him where I am.

The Fae sits astride his owl, the elements ravaging his hair. His arms flex, palms resting on his spread thighs, the limbs encased in graphite linen. He rides without reins, without holding on to the creature, as if he does this all the time. Like this, he lives up to his title.

He’s majestic. He’s elegant. He’s dead meat.

“You son of a bitch!” I dive across the owl for him. My hands make it halfway around his throat when his reflexes kick in, seizing my arms and hauling me against his chest.

“Now is that any way to greet your savior?” he berates.

“I was almost there!” I shout into the gale. “I was almost up that ladder, and you blew me off the rungs! You set this up!”

“For shame. The wind has a mind of its own. Perhaps it merely doesn’t like you.”

I ignore half of that answer, though he’d told me his powers of elemental persuasion only extend so far. Disorientated, I jolt from him. I should have died, and I don’t know what to think, much less what this means for the game. Why is he here?

My mouth opens. Exasperated, he presses a finger over my lips and uses the same digit of the opposite hand to point ahead. I swerve around and discover a canvas of enmeshed cliffs, ribbons of flame, swinging net bridges, and stairs glazed in a compass of moonlight. It’s the same panorama from The Parliament of Owls, but from this perspective and altitude, it becomes surreal. The gulf blurs, swimming beneath us in a kaleidoscope of greens, blues, and golds.

My legs hang like bells, the air tracing the chimney scars carved into my knees. The atmosphere rushes through my hair, flares the slit in my skirt, and pounds against my heart. I’m soaring, suspended so high that as we pass through a cloud, mist sprinkles my skin.

I’m flying.

I take care to wiggle forward and lean over the owl’s shoulder. The flight offers a view forged from storybooks, where torches stubble the landscape, and a mobile of birds spiral toward that massive, circular building crowned in greenery. I close my eyes, savoring the rush of it.

This is what it’s like, wanting to holler in joy, cry in relief, and scream in terror. I’m thrilled, and I’m awed, and I’m scared. Nobody can hold me down, because I’m a shooting star, and I’m a cyclone, with nature wrapping itself around me. And this moment is a dream, and it’s real, and it’s temporary, and it’ll last forever.

Then I open my eyes, remembering I’m not alone. Cerulean’s chin hovers over my shoulder. His chest braces my back, his breath stirring my nape. I sense his eyes charting my profile, appraising my reaction.

“Glorious, isn’t it?” he blows against my ear. “How none can claim you up here? No one to harm or deprive you? No traps. No confinement. Only endless freedom and fortune, the rush of the unknown and the knowledge that if you indulge, you won’t crash.”

Yes. That’s it exactly.

His cheek rubs against mine as we gaze ahead. “How humbling, overwhelming, exciting to realize what an infinite plain the world is, to touch that infinity without boundaries or borders. You cannot help but explore the land from this impossible prospect and wonder…”

That if the land is this limitless, we could be, too. Our journeys never end, and that’s distressing as much as a comfort. But I don’t say this, and I doubt Cerulean expects or wants me to. That would mean acknowledging we understand each other, even in the smallest sense.

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