I'm here.
The wait was less than an instant; yet, more than anything that Luka Sullivan and Iolani Tori had ever wished for. Something about the night was the brightest that it could be. Eyes adjusted, as they would at every change, from light to dark and dark to light.
Wide open, Luka's eyes met that of the moon emerging from the clouds—a sight he so missed, the one he adored—filling his sky and everything that he was, as Iolani Tori often did. The latter stood before his companion, between him and the world that was cold and dark, looking almost foreign.
Nothing could encompass or contain Io's wings, spread wide like a shield that braced against the slings and arrows of Fortune. Its downy glow spanned the entire clearing from end to end—pieces of the moon, fetched from the night sky as though all he had to do was reach; attached to a back so mall, a single beat was enough to take him higher. To greater heights.
Luka! He heard him—a voice he found most familiar that pain and exhaustion settled in for his guard was lowered and the bars of his cage were limp with joy. Luka. Luka. Luka. Luka. Luka. Luka.
His head was filled with the calling of his name and the rest of the night, along with the creature in his cage, stared at the lunar wings on Iolani's back. Stunned.
Io.
His companion's back was faced towards him and he couldn't see the emotion written on his features but the beat of his heart and his frame, slight, as though the chaos of the Wind could have swept him off his feet, yet—doing his best to protect something that was more than himself.
I heard you like my company
Laughed the moon and he felt the creature within swell like it had never before, with something he knew not what it was. He felt the insane urge to soar with wings that were broken and a sky that was dark; the ability to face a war waged by Fortune and the Wind, slings and arrows, carried forth.
The breath of the night quickened with a beat, shaking broken shadows and bending trees, waking the inky darkness which Reux Yvone often encompassed. He seethed at the sight of a sparrow he thought he'd tamed, the naïve, inexperienced child he'd corrupted and stained with the colour of him.
It was infuriating.
That a child would not be taught; would be so stubborn and foolish as to dismiss the prospect of utopia and refuse to cave or be trained by his hand—
I'll be waiting.
His eyes caught a lunar smile upon the other's lips and fury flooded his cage, bending the bars and opening the gates. You disgusting child.
Reux shifted into his halve and positioned himself for a dive but there was a hand on his chest in warning and all of a sudden, there was an air of reluctance—clouded by hesitation and fear. Among the Hunters was a sparrow, a girl of lowly rank and a frame smaller than Io's. She frowned upon the fearful gazes around, snapping.
"He's one. What are we waiting for?"
There were so many of them. So many who remained hidden beneath the shadows. "But those wings...he really is the moon phoenix—"
YOU ARE READING
Flight School: Predator
Fantasy[Second book of the Flight Series] "More than anything, the sky was red. It wasn't dark, no. Just red." Iolani Tori learns about the part of him that isn't human; and sees the line between animal and himself thin to something less than a thread. If...
