Winter & Wing

Chapter Six

My day was cut short.

I awoke to the chamber doors opening and Beatrice's voice piercing the silence, telling us to get up. I saw Lonan's irritated face in the dim light that shone through his feathers over us. I let a smile play on my lips before I'm suddenly ripped from beneath Lonan's wing and a needle pierces my neck. 

Lonan shouted.

I don't remember what.

I fell asleep once again.

***

When I wake, I can't breathe. My lungs burn. My arms burn. My wings--my wings are on fire.

"Try to breathe," Lonan murmurs to me, but he sounds so far away.

Muffled, like he's through a wall.

My heart plummets, and my lungs go into overdrive. 

No. No, not again. I don't want to be separated again like this. I can't--

"Dove, calm down. I'm right here."

Right here. Right where?

I take a deep, staggering breath and open my eyes. I see the ceiling in our chamber, and Lonan's petrified eyes gazing down at me. He holds me in his lap, cradling me like a child to his chest. The pain in my wings radiates down to my fingertips, and Lonan holding me so tight makes it worse.

Yet, the last thing I want is for him to let me go.

"Did they-" My voice sounds like a toad. I cough. "Did they cut me open again?"

"No, Dove," Lonan whispers. I realize he's crying.

Lonan does not cry. I've never seen a tear shed from his eyes, not even on the day we were torn from our murdered families. He stayed strong for me. I cried for both of us.

But he is weeping over me, and I begin to wonder if this is even real.

But it has to be.

This pain is so real.

"Then what?" I say.

He squeezes his eyes shut as a tear slips away and splashes across my cheek. "They took your feathers. All of them."

***

In our village, our wings were a representation of our dignity and pride. They are everything. Taking the feathers from a Faru is only done as punishment for a severe crime. The only thing worse is removing the wings altogether, which usually results in death - a punishment deemed appropriate for a murderer. 

I have no energy for weeks. The shock numbs the rest of my emotions, and all I feel is a wave of fatigue and excruciating pain along my arms. At first, a nurse comes periodically to check my bare wings, but Lonan won't let her anywhere near me. He demands she give him the supplies to care for me, and she surprisingly obliges. 

Everyone knows he's on the verge of breaking.

Our days go like this:

Lonan wakes me up and unwraps the bandages around my arms. He carefully unravels my wings from being tucked against the backs of them. He takes the damp cloth that the nurse provides each morning and cleans the excess blood and discharge that seeps from the wounds across my barren wings. He applies an ointment to them, also courtesy of the nursing staff, and then he carefully folds my wings back into themselves. 

Then he wraps my arms again.

I rarely talk.

I have nothing to say.