Page 186 of Ashwalker
Once we’re finished, we linger only for a moment on the outskirts of the city. It takes all the resolve I possess to turn my back on this place and keep flying, knowing it means turning away from the palace, too. Away from Briar. Arlo. Kestrel.
Away from Reave.
I don’t know how I manage to keep going.
I just do.
Only once we're well outside Lucindris—and I've counted every dragon in our formation over and over to make certain none have slipped away—do I finally allow the storm of feelings in my chest to truly unleash itself.
As soon as I do, what little is left of my strength seems to leave me all at once. My wings falter, twitching and tensing painfully before going slack, and the sky begins to tilt sideways in a way that suggests I'm about to become intimately reacquainted with the ground.
Sesca catches me upon her back before I tumble too far, rising beneath me with unhurried certainty, as if she anticipated my fall long before it happened.
She probably did.
It would have annoyed me, once; now it’s comforting, this familiarity we share. And the warmth of her scales and the steady rhythm of her breathing are equally soothing, so I fold my wings around myself and don’t think of anything else before letting sleep take me.
When I wake,we’re on the ground again.
I don’t remember landing, but I’m curled up against Sesca’s side, resting in the shadows of a mountain range I don't immediately recognize. Dragons circle overhead. My wings are gone, but the evidence of them remains—my torn, blood-stained clothing; scattered feathers on the ground; a deep ache between my shoulder blades.
The sun is setting, washing the unfamiliar landscape in shades of dark gold and amber.
Sesca lifts her head, watching me closely as I fight myway to my feet. Once I’m upright, I move with surprising steadiness, making my way to a better vantage point at the top of a nearby hill in order to study my surroundings.
The dry, dusty road in the distance looks enough like the Gallows Run that I'm transported briefly back to one of the last jobs Briar and I took together before all of this—to that fateful route to and from Lastlight that brought me to Sesca.
I look down at the Ashwalker mark on my wrist. It's tempting to pretend I'm still the same person who branded it there so many years ago. Easier, in some ways. Lighter.
But I know better.
It's an unfamiliar path stretching before me now—no maps or markers or certainties to be found.
The ache between my shoulder blades flares. I instinctively reach for Sesca and she rises from her resting spot in answer, her steps heavy but certain, carrying the weight of her ancientness as she comes to stand beside me on the hilltop. We watch the sun setting together. She doesn’t speak, but warmth occasionally seeps into all my aching parts, and I know it’s her sending it.
Once the stars begin to emerge, she takes flight as if to greet them, soaring so high I nearly lose sight of her. The other dragons follow, one by one, like she’s called them by name.
Sesca eventually returns to me, hovering just above the hilltop, close enough that the wind from her wings moves through my hair.
Waiting.
I inhale deeply as my own wings emerge and unfold again. The pain beneath them crests, then lessens, then goes away completely. My mind clears. I keep still for another minute, studying the shape and splendor of my wings in thelast glow of twilight, thinking of how there is a certain kind of beauty that grows from pain you thought would destroy you. A strength that only comes from falling and being forced to catch yourself on the way down.
“Still here,” I whisper, my gaze trailing up to the waiting dragon. Words that have followed me for so many years. The mantra of a burned and broken girl who did what she had to survive—and I am grateful to that girl for carrying me this far.
But I am destined for more than embers.
Nowwe fly,Sesca reminds me.
And so I spread my wings and move beyond survival, rising to meet her as the night descends and more of the stars come out to light our way.
