Page 66 of Children of Fallen Gods

And then I felt an unfamiliar magic bubbling up within me.Ishqa’smagic.

My greatest shame. My curse. This was my horrible gift — my ability to steal the magic of others. It was such a dirty, shameful thing that I barely knew how to use it. I had never done this before with magic so unfamiliar to my own, never mind a power that would force my very body to change.

I imagined wings. I felt wings. And to my frantic relief, slowly, I felt them shifting.

I just didn’t expect it tohurtso much. My back seemed as if it were splitting, my flesh parting, blood soaking my leathers.

That was when Ishqa noticed what I was doing. Out of the corner of my eye, through the fighting, I saw him lurch — saw the realization spill over his face, as he understood what I was. And thankfully, he did not spend time lingering in his surprise or revulsion.

He bought a split second to whirl to me, cutting two slashes in the back of my leather armor, finishing just in time to strike down another attacker. Making room for the wings, I realized.

“Structure first,” he ground out, as he fought. “Bones, then flesh, then feathers.”

He made it sound so simple. But whatever was shifting my back felt so heavy and strange.

I choked out, “How do I—”

“Stretch them out. Farther. They’re not big enough yet.”

More pain, as creatures grabbed onto my newly-formed wings.

“Not yet, Aefe.”

“It has to be—”

“Not yet.”

No time. This was it. We were overrun.

I pushed with everything I had.Snap, as bones cracked.Crack, as my body twisted with unnatural force.

“Now!” Ishqa shouted, and I locked my arms around his shoulders and lurched these unfamiliar muscles in what I thought, hoped,prayedwould be enough to get us into the air. Ishqa’s wings, one powerful and one ruined, pushed too.

The pain was so intense that I didn’t realize it had worked until I looked down and saw a mass of limbs squirming beneath us.

“Focus, Aefe. Stay level. Tilt to the left.” Ishqa’s arm was tight around my waist, the two of us supporting each other. Our wings tangled. My muscles burned. There was nothing graceful about this — we were flailing through the sky.

“Keep going,” Ishqa said. “Just beyond the wall.”

The edges of my vision were going grey.

Distantly, I became aware of the fact that we were falling.

“Aefe!”

The wall hurtled closer. We lurched through the air as Ishqa’s wings pumped desperately to keep us airborne.

The last thing I saw was the ground rushing towards me.

And then nothing.

* * *

Somebody was screaming— a horrifying, jagged noise.

Hands were on me, on my back. Gods, my back, something was terribly, terribly wrong with it. Something was being torn out of me, or plunged into me, or both.

I looked up, through blurring vision, and saw my sister leaning over me.

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