On Wings of Bone and Glass by M.C.A. Hogarth

Author:M.C.A. Hogarth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: M.C.A. Hogarth

But finding a creditable place to sleep required peace, and peace was something I lacked. Making our way down from Rose and Kemses’s look-out, I was beset by elves who wanted to speak to Amhric, and of course I could not abandon him. No sooner had I extricated him from his auditors than I found myself faced with Carrington and Eyre, and that happy reunion I would not delay though I was barely on my feet by then. It was full again an hour before Ivy finally guided me to the last of the partisans who wanted my attention, and with a glad cry I collapsed against the drake’s side. It nuzzled my back, forge-clean breath gusting over my sticky coat.

“Finally,” Ivy said, dropping into the circle made by its forearms. She peered over its elbow to watch Chester directing Amhric into another such hollow, beneath one of the drake’s wing arms, then beckoned to me. “See, he is safe. So you can rest with me, where I can finally be certain your appendages are all in the right places, and not leaking.”

I slid over the drake’s arm into the space beside her. “I promise I am bruised and weary but not missing anything important.”

She grinned. “Are you sure? Shall I check?” At my expression she bleated a laugh into my shoulder, and I pulled her close, glad of the warmth of her, and the humanity of her after too many hours watching the desecration that was an army of animated corpses, rent of their spirits and personalities. I pressed my nose into her hair, breathed the scent of her skin past the sweat and blood scent, and sighed to ruffle it.

“All right,” she murmured. “I admit, I don’t have the energy to make good on that threat.”

“Good,” I replied. “For I have no energy to respond to it.” My eyes caught on the gleam of her hair, wondered that I might find the gleam strange. “I... believe the sun is up.”

She lifted her head, blinking bleary eyes. We looked east, and there a thin ray pierced the cloudcover, gilt the edge of the city’s ruined towers and bridges.

“Oh,” she whispered. “Do you know, I half believed we’d never see it again?”

“Me neither,” I whispered. I drew her closer and she rested her cheek on my chest, and together we stared east as more and more light parted the clouds, scattered their ragged remains, and limned the entire city in gold until it shone. I wept at the sight, long trails of painless tears that clouded my eyes and gathered the effulgence into beads on my lashes that spangled the world in brilliant gauds.

As much as we needed sleep, we needed that sight more: the blessing of light after too long a darkness. With a sigh of repletion, Ivy turned into me and closed her eyes, and I felt her body slacken. I remained awake a little longer, watching the sunlight gleaming in hair the color of tea, and I thought of home and believed, briefly, that we would see it again.

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