Page 163 of A Reign of Roses
And the future played out for me in vivid clarity: Lazarus retreating safely back to Lumera. Defeating Hart. Building up his armies once again. Replenishing his lighte reserves. History repeating—more violence, more death—because I couldn’t kill him when I’d had the chance.
A sob racked through my throat at the thoughts—at all the unnecessary loss. I watched, enraged and so depleted as the wyvern sailed easily up into the sky.
I’d come so close—
It could not end like this.
And for the first time, that tingling at my shoulder blades, thatprickling sensation I’d only felt when falling, wrenched up my spine and across my back.
Come on, I begged myself. No Stones. No Gods. Just me—
Come. On.
The split second it took to shift was one of utter, agonizing pain, and I was sure I’d screamed so loud I’d severed the forest itself in two.
But then the clearing was lit in incandescent golden light. And I was breathing, and nothing hurt—
And everything was lower, smaller, as I appraised it. Every critter and owl, staring up at me in awe. Every pebble, every blade of dry grass jutting through packed snow.
And my back was heavy. So heavy, and yet weightless. Buoyed by something that had sprouted from my shoulder blades.
Wings.
I hadwings.
Glorious, massive, mighty wings of gold and red and yellow. Delicate, destructive—like burning fire, or autumn leaves, or the bright colors that painted the sky at first light.
Like a firebird of myth, my wings were those of a falcon, but my body was my own. The same as it always had been as I ran one hand across my cold lips and eyelids, the other still tightly grasping the blade, which now pulsed inside my grip in time with my heartbeat. The same, though dusted in a thin layer of insulating golden feathers, shining as I moved, casting pure light into the darkness—like I was the sun.
Without another thought I took off into the night sky.
It wasn’t perfectly intuitive. My arms flailed as I flapped and wove, soaring and then plummeting a bit. But flying—how grateful I was that even if these were my last few moments in this world, I’d gotten to experienceflying.
Though Lazarus’s wingspan was twice the size of mine, I was faster, and my feathered wings were more suited for flight than his bat-like ones. Sweeping up, I barreled into him, sending us both twisting and turning through thick, moonlit clouds and down toward the clearing from whence we’d come.
Head tipped back, he ripped his vicious fangs into my wing and I clenched my fists harder around the pommel of my blade to stave off the agony. His throat was in my eyeline now. I didn’t even deflect his next blow. That claw as it came barreling toward my face, tangling in my hair, andripping—
I allowed it. Felt his talon carve through my skin as I plunged the Blade of the Sun deep into the Fae king’s outstretched neck.
And that blade—it really was a weapon of pure sunbeams.
Of dawn and air and light.
A light that bloomed forth from Lazarus’s strangled moan, consuming his throat, his bared teeth, in white-hot flame. That glorious, dazzling sunfire tore through his scales, across his outstretched wings, down his flailing, barbed tail.
And for a moment, I hoped—simply wondered—if maybe the prophecy had been wrong all along. If I might watch Lazarus—this wretched, writhing wyvern consumed by flame in the deep night sky—combust like a comet. If I might flap my brand-new feathered wings and soar down to the woods below. Feel the moss and earth beneath the snow once more. Run to my family. Run to Kane—
I allowed myself to want it. To pray and wish and beg the Stones themselves to allow me to live. To please,pleasegive me one more chance at this life.
But then the blade itself lit with sunfire—and so did I.
My chest, my throat, my face.
My ears, shattering with the noise. It was my voice, that noise.My screaming. My long, feathered hair sizzling. My eyes squeezing shut before they could melt in their sockets. Mywings, burning as I flapped them frantically.
And as the blazing fire devoured me, as I could no longer feel any pain—
That childhood game my mother had taught me—the one used for quelling panic—shoved itself to the front of my deteriorating mind.
