Page 7 of Court of Shadows
I looked between him and the cloud of dust in the field just beyond. Lee shooed me off again and I stood, gathering my skirts and climbing the low fence. “I’ll go and have a look,” I told him. “Stay here and I will let you know what I find.”
He ignored me, climbing to his feet and dusting off his muddied trousers.
As I turned toward the crater in the fields, that icy sensation lanced through me again. I shivered and wrapped my arms tightly around myself, rubbing at my elbows. It was such an odd feeling... to be perfectly aware of the lovely spring sun overhead while my body felt plunged into the depths of winter. I blinked, gasping, watching as a puff of my own breath bloomed into the warm air. How was it possible? But then, I should’ve known better than to question the curiosities of this new and darker world I found myself living in.
The whisper in my bones rose again, stronger, and with it came a physical tugging, as if the warning inside could slow me down, turn me from the hole in the ground, and march me back to the house. I still wore the small silver pin Mr. Morningside had given me, a token that allowed me to pass beyond the boundaries of Coldthistle. Even so, I felt ill and numb with strange frost.
The noise around me dimmed until there was only the inner voice, panicked and desperate.
Foolish child, turn back from here. Turn away from this place.
Though the words were strange to me, I somehow knew their meaning. Turn back... Some hidden voice inside wanted me to turn back. It was a woman’s voice, thin as a knife’s edge. I fought the urge to flee, watching as the cloud of dust kicked up by the fallen object began to dissipate. A figure took form, hunched, and while my steps grew slower from the cold, the image became clearer and clearer.
How could anyone survive such a fall? Yet the person righted himself and moved closer, ducking through the particles of dust as if parting a misty curtain. The moment he appeared in full, a surge of light blinded me, painful, a spike of heat cutting through the cold. I grabbed for my head and flinched, falling back, stunned by the agony. The voice did not throb now but screamed, wraithlike and wailing as the pain crested—
Cursed sky sentinel! Priest thief!
I must have doubled over from the intensity of it, hands clasped on my knees as I fought to regain my balance and strength. An instant later I felt pressure on my back. A hand. The sensation gradually ebbed, and when I could breathe again I found a young man standing next to me, his full, dark brows knitting with concern.
A kind of yellow glow surrounded him, then faded, and at last I could make out the details of his face. He did not lookbruised or battered from the fall, and even his very fine gray suit was untouched by the impact.
As I beheld him, the voice whispered to me one last time, repeating itself. It was ghostly and stern, like a mother turned ghost.
Cursed sky sentinel. Priest thief.
“Priest thief?” I murmured. It didn’t make any sense at all. In fact, looking at the young man, strong and well-groomed, with dark brown skin and a mane of wild black hair, I couldn’t imagine he could be any manner of thief. He looked every ounce the impeccable London gentleman, though I had never met anyone of his particular origin.
“Sorry, could you say that again?” He still looked racked with concern. “Are you well, miss? You look ill.”
“M-me?” I stammered, laughing. “Am I well? You... How did you do that? I saw you fall so far; how could you possibly survive a fall from such a height?”
The young man opened his mouth to answer, but a second figure emerged from the haze of dust and grass. She, too, was dressed in clean, gray colors, in a cut of suit not so different from the boy’s. For a woman in men’s trousers, she did not seem the least bit ashamed of her odd attire, striding toward us with her head held high, a cocky sway to her full hips. She was beautiful, suffused with that same yellow glow around her shoulders, and with her large sapphire eyes and yellow hair, she might have been the boy’s opposite.
“Frightening the local wildlife, are we?” she drawled. She was far taller than I, and in my shocked state I could hardly find the outrage to respond as she approached us and put a finger under my chin, tilting my head upward. Nobody but Mr. Morningside had ever studied me so closely or with such cool intensity.
“You will of course excuse my sister,” the young man said, batting her hand down and away from my face. “She has all the subtlety of a bull.”
“Wings, dumpling,” the girl added, ignoring her brother. “He has wings, that’s how he managed. Not his most graceful entrance, I’ll warrant...”
They both had crisp London accents to match their tailored clothing, though I also heard a hint of something foreign that I did not recognize. There were stories, of course, of the wealth coming to England from the East Indies, and I had to wonder if these two hailed from that region, though she might have been from any town in the commonwealth. How they could be related, I did not know.
They have wings, you fool; they’re not from any region on known Earth.
Sheepishly, I glanced around the young man’s shoulder. I saw no wings of any kind, big or small. The girl noticed me looking.
“Ha. Not the kind you can see with your eyes, my dear. Not usually, anyway.”
“I’m Finch,” the boy said, giving a polite bow and thengesturing to his sister. “And this charming creature is Sparrow, my twin. I had no intention of making such a cumbersome entrance, but it seems protective measures at Coldthistle House have been improved since our last visit.”
Finch and Sparrow? Was everyone around here obsessed with birds?
“Your twin?” I repeated, glancing between them.
“Ah, you see, our kind attain physical b-bodies in an unconventional way,” he said with a charming stammer. “We start as just little motes of light, and when we perform our first act of service, whomever we helped, well, that’s who we come to look like. Sparrow and I were ‘born’ at the same time, which is why she’s my twin.”
“That’s rather lovely,” I said, thinking it over.
I watched as they both turned toward the mansion, leaving behind the immense crater in the field. Far in the distance, beyond the hole, I noticed a cluster of sheep on the hill. A furry herding dog there watched us, too, wagging its tail before it gave a few short barks and disappeared at a run.
