Page 19 of Glass Wings

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“Go home, wait for a signal. When it’s time, you will gather supporters from Waihema to show our strength. They can’t kill us all without this planet’s inhabitants suffering mass extinction. They will keep Precession safe at the least.”

Precession smiled sweetly and stood up with a wobble.

“Daughters of the moon,” she mused, and Roksana jumped up in anticipation of giving aid to her twin.

The rest of the table followed as they stood up and walked out towards their exit and back out to the Earth realm.

Only Arryn and Allienna remained. Arryn instinctually moved to her, ready to beg for permission to save her life. She had been kept in a bubble, Arryn’s bubble, for her entire existence. He would never let her go, always needing that skin contact from her, that relief that they both told themselves was love. She had always been okay with it; she accepted it as her duty. This was how she served her creator. She would have none of that now.

Allienna twirled her fingers in Arryn’s blonde hair, reaching up on her tiptoes even as he lowered his body down towards her. The two stood at the end of the table, and Allienna’s world was filled with nothing more or less than anguish. The sadness that erupted inside her, fueled by the spiking fire pulsing from his touch, made her want to cry.

She didn't. She never let it show.

She kept the hurt and emotions that she pulled from Arryn ashidden as possible, not wanting to cause him more emotional turmoil. He felt too passionately at times.

“You can’t leave me here alone,” he said to her, tears welling up in the corners of his eyes without shame. “All of the love that flows from this world is nothing in comparison to how I feel about you.”

“We were sculpted, made for each other,” she replied to feed his emotional appetite. She still played with his hair, now curling it in her fingers before pulling her right hand down to caress the back of his neck. The instant skin-to-skin contact almost blew her back as she absorbed more of him. His eyes lightened, and his shoulders relaxed. His love was real, yes, but it was closer to a drug, an addiction to her gifts and how they relieved him.

She arched her face up to his, letting his lips bounce off hers. She fell limp, unable to move. Her skin drank in his until the pain of Arryn’s gifts was too overwhelming for her body to handle. She was near a blackout, the edges of her vision fading.

This time, she let the darkness come on willingly. She had something to accomplish and needed a reason for him to give her space. Arryn was nothing but self-deprecating, a martyr, he would leave her be if his body didn’t demand her.

The next time Allienna opened her eyes, she was alone in the temple, as she had hoped. Her body was sore from the overload of power and fire that she let Arryn push into her. She had been placed on their regal, plush four-poster bed with opulent blue sheets. Petals from white lilies had been placed around her as if she were Arryn's personal shrine. Small plates of food, crackers, jams, and cakes were set on the antique side table.

When he overindulged her, feeding her gift until she physically couldn't handle it, Arryn repented hard. She imagined him sitting outside in the snow, putting his panic and his regret into a storm of his creation.

It was time to get what she wanted. For the first time, she would push the boundaries that she lived inside. She would grow a child. She had a plan.

Allienna sat up and swung her feet off of the bed with haste, notknowing how much time she had before Arryn came back to check on her. Her barefoot steps traveled to the opposite side of the temple, to the hall that was the furthest point from the exit into the Earth realm. She walked down the pitch-black hall until she reached the large, heavy stone door. The entrance into Mrilyosis.

Allienna gripped the handle so hard that the joints in her fingers protested and tightened. She threw her body weight to the right and pulled on the latch so that she could pass through the door, a portal into the realm of their childhood.

The latch gave way and pushed the door wide open. Allienna stared out to see a carbon copy of the world she had just left, of Earth. Snow violently blew in the wind as she stepped out onto the peak of a mountain, her boots crunching in an otherwise untouched land.

Allienna didn’t know how to do this, how to summon the goddess she was looking for. She was ready to beg, and hopefully, that would be enough.

She stretched out her wings, letting the wind drift her into the sky until she began floating down the mountain peak like a leaf carried in a breeze.

“Ayurveda,” she whispered, letting the name stain her lips. She thought hard, trying to land on a strategy to bring the sun before her. She began rhythmically chanting the name, building in volume until the demand in her voice became both a song and a question.

This was so foolish of her. Reign, Arryn, and all the rest of them would never forgive her for trying to make a deal with something, someone so . . . volatile.

The air began to warm with hostility all too quickly. There was no sun emerging from the sky above her, no additional source of brightness in her vision. Instead, there was only the smell of sulfur and heaviness in the air that made Allienna struggle to take breaths.

The world before her turned dark while sand and black ash choked her. She fell fifteen feet from the air in a panic, mercilessly caught by the soft snow. Feeling relief from the singe on her skin from the fall, Allienna buried her face into the snow underneath her. She pulled up, the snow melting into puddles, and gasped for breath, notfinding any oxygen. She was drowning, yet her immortality prevented the relief of death.

Allienna tried to call out for help, but with no air in her lungs, she had no other option than to lie there in the puddled melted snow while her skin cooked from the heat in the air. She was in an oven.

It was impossible to know how much time had passed. She could have stayed like that for seconds or days, but the ash became less violent, and the air no longer felt like it was pushing down on her.

Allienna took a breath, coughing and purging the ash from her throat and mouth. She pushed herself up to her arms and knees while convulsing and vomiting. Then, she opened her burning eyes to see the skin on her hands and arms melted, hanging off her muscles and bone.

She screamed.

“You called for me?”

A threatening voice cut through the thinning ash in the sky. Allienna looked up to see a bright blue light in the distance.