The Deepest Night

Chapter 11

I’ve mentioned that I wasn’t very good at the Turns, haven’t I?

I materialized upside down. Falling. My wings unfolded and began a frantic flapping. I rolled and managed a drunken veer that had me only just avoiding a collision with a corner of Tranquility’s roof. As it was, my right flank smacked into the leaden gutter, crumpling it like paper, and my tail whipped up and around and took out a row of slate tiles, sending them spinning like tops to the ground.

Better them than me. I flapped harder, gaining altitude. Soon I was flying straight, more or less, and Tranquility was a dollhouse beneath me, and the lawns and meadows and forests fell away, away, a map I no longer had to worry about or follow.

The rage that had driven me here, the feral anger and fear that had propelled me up into the sky, began to tear apart with the wind. Slivers, shards, blown into insignificance.

I thought, This is me. This is the most honest part of me, if not the very best part.

All those names flung at me recently, beast, bitch, thing, were true. If they were insults, then I would rip them inside out and make them my own. I was all of those words and a ferocious lot more, and right now—in this moment—I was glad for it.

I bared my teeth to the night. My talons clawed at the sky. The hummingbird hammer of my heart gradually calmed, becoming steady and strong, a constant guide.

I found a jet of air and let it snatch me south, opening my wings to it so widely they ached, but it was a good ache. I welcomed the pain.

I was a dragon of gold, by the way. Mostly gold, deep purple at my tips. My scales were glimmering, just as gorgeous as Jesse’s pinecone and flowers, and my tail was barbed and my wings—

My left wing had a hole it, I realized, craning my long neck to see. A bullet hole. Every beat of that wing brought a tiny whistle as the air rushed through. It didn’t hurt, curiously enough, though it looked as if it should.

war wound, sang the stars, watching me as they always did, glinting their rainbow colors, as they always did. war beast, dragon of war, fireheart. welcome back to us.

I faced ahead again. I stretched out my chin and climbed higher, higher, until all I could hear was my heart in my ears, and all I could fathom was the endless sapphire line between heaven and earth, ocean and night, and the slim golden thread of me tearing a path between them.