Clockwork Wings by Lexi Ostrow

Author:Lexi Ostrow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lexi Ostrow

Four

Amerial’s heart thudded in her chest as she zipped backward in time. The strands were hard for her to control, despite her elder’s assumptions. She had gotten away, but the images that assaulted her brought back fresh waves of old pain. Her hand darted behind her and grabbed a cold metal wing, checking to see that it was still there.

She could feel her heart pumping, so quickly she was amazed she had not fallen to the ground in a fit of spasms with how intense it had all been. But her wings were safe, she was safe, and she’d finally found a way to touch time and move through it. Fear had held her back, but fear for her life had pushed her forward.

The sun was slowly rising, its rays offered minimal warmth. If she did not find out how to control a time displacement and stop this, she would have to return to where her people lived, just outside the city of London.

“Whatever could this be?” the female’s voice from moments before pierced through the air, and Amerial’s head jerked up in time to see the human bending forward.

“No, no this cannot be.” She tried to step away, but just like earlier, her foot caught in a lump of cold snow, and she fell into it.

Her wings fluttered, and she managed to pull out of the icy ground in time to avoid being plucked from it. She hadn’t gotten far enough away — hadn’t put enough time between them. There was nothing she could do, she was forced once more to avoid the blasted glass prison created for her kind.

How a human could have known that fairies cannot escape glass was beyond her. Many tales spoke of iron, but it was a falsehood planted purposefully by her kind. Humans had existed mostly peacefully alongside them before she’d been locked away, only the occasional son of man attacking a fairy. Now, even if these humans meant no harm, memories stopped her from letting them catch hold of her.

Breaths punched in and out of her chest as she tried to dodge, duck and weave away from the man called Henry. She could hardly force her wings to move, the metal growing far too heavy for her exhausted body.

“Do not fall, you’ve just been out a day, do not fall,” she chanted over and over to herself as if it would make a difference.

Pulling on and moving through time took a rapid succession of a fairy’s wings and an energy level that she did not have right now. With each narrow escape, she could feel herself getting lower and lower to the ground. The sun was getting higher and higher in the sky, and soon enough, she would be easy to spot, no matter where she went. She could not fly faster than a human could run. The effort was futile, but still, she flew on.

A chunk of snow flew up and slammed into her back. The icy cold spread through her metal wings as quickly as it would have the pair that she had been born with.

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