Two silk ribbons, their edges frayed and crusted with sand, trailed like a peacock’s limp plumage down either side of Caine’s wings. It was, at first, hard to tell their color under the wash of moonlight that frosted everything a sickly shade of grey. But the ribbons were cut of the same silk as the king’s bed sheets, Solterran-sewn and Solterran-dyed. Would Solis’ golden coat dare weaken to a ghostly grey under Caligo’s moon? 

Caine clucked his tongue. Of course not. The sun dimmed for no one, least of all its sister moon.

In the monochrome night the gold and crimson ribbons were as stark as bone against his shadow. Gold, he thought as he turned to look at them, like the billowing capes of the imperial soldiers. And crimson, like —

He sighed as he looked at the bloodstain marring the lustrous gold. There hadn’t been time for him to be meticulous. The soldiers assigned to the ration carts were trained to anticipate attacks, no matter how early they took their shifts. Daylight no longer shielded soldiers of the Blood King from the rage of the starving citizens. Attacks on ration carts were becoming almost as common an occurrence as children dropping dead in the streets, skeletons wrapped in skin.

Even under the shadow cloak, after he’d struck the first soldier down Caine had barely managed to leap away from the flash of silver hissing down where he’d stood, its bewildered wielder hacking frantically at the presence he could not see. It had taken him longer to disarm the three soldiers than he’d anticipated. (He’d done more than disarm them. But didn’t he always?) Longer still to drag the stacks and stacks of food crates into an alley, to be found by a Rebellion member who would receive a strange note by hawk early in the morning, its contents limited to a location and a swirling capital V.

He couldn’t remember why he’d taken the ribbons affixed to the cart, marking it as property of the king. But he had, and had used them later to bind a shallow cut on his leg he didn't recall getting.

The events of yesterday night played back like a reel of damaged film, skipping whole scenes and blurring out the rest. The ribbons were an insignificant detail in a strike he'd planned for weeks. The first item on a list two scrolls long of threats to the Rebellion he had to eliminate, Raum's decrees he wanted to sabotage. The result of sleepless weeks walking on glass under the electric-blue gaze of a man more ghost than flesh, until he'd finally had what he needed.

And then he’d been sent to Denocte. His plans had vanished to smoke.

The Arma Mountains stretched out before him like the mouth of a grotesque beast, the cliffs its jagged, breaking teeth, the shrouding mist its putrid breath. Caine’s hooves moved to a mechanical and weary beat as he continued his ascent up the crumbling face. His wings had given out hours before, forcing him to attempt the climb from the ground.

A reedy cough snaked up his throat from a lethal combination of thin air and lack of rest. The ribbons fluttered weakly behind him, batting at his legs, and Caine dully considered throwing them off the side of the ridge. Touting Solterran imperial colors into Caligo’s hostile court was probably a death wish.

It took him too long to notice the girl. 

His breath stilled when he saw the slope of a pale shoulder, the slip of a small hoof. A fragile little shadow leaning into the moon. Quickly, Caine tore the ribbons from where they hung over his shoulders, rolled them into a ball, and threw them into the churning mist below. He didn’t look to see them fall. 

Instead, his jaw clenched as he considered how profoundly stupid he’d been keeping them on him for so long. He’d been careful, he was always careful, and he hadn’t run into anyone else when he’d crossed the borders of Solterra that morning (and he’d been in the air up until a few hours ago) but what if she had seen them? He couldn't rule out the possibility of her being Solterran.

His breath streamed out in a plume of white. What was she doing up in the Arma so late at night? Was she attempting the passage like he, ravaged with a similar aversion to rest? From what Caine could tell through the dark, she looked young — far too young to be traveling alone. 

And, he realized with a start, she was standing dangerously close to the cliff’s edge. Parts of it crumbled away beneath her hooves, tumbling into oblivion, but the girl remained rooted there like a goddess turned to stone. He moved closer, puzzled, and watched her. 

Twin horns of crystalline blue arced through the air, dazzling him with their blinding reflection. He narrowed his eyes and lowered his head resigned to slip past her, he had no reason to stay, until —

Those twin horns pointed down and down and down towards the swallowing blackness hundreds of feet below. Her hooves moved forwards, instead of back. His breath stuck like dry feathers in his throat. Was she going to...

“Hey,” his voice struck out, lightning on rock. “It’s not my place to interfere, but you won't find anything of value down there.” Something wound tight and panicked in Caine's chest. His pupils constricted to slits as he threw his telekinesis out towards her, pressing cold as a knife against her chest. Do not, it said, though his lips remained tightly sealed, his breath heaving clouds of winter snow. 

Nothing. Nothing is there.

And then, as soft as a confession, he murmured, “I checked.”


"Speaking." @Sabine breaking my heart

When the glass-boned girl pitched forwards with a startled “oh!”, teetering, teetering (like a little fairy on the lip of a rose petal, he'd later recall)—

For a moment, he didn't know it had been him. His intrusion that had pushed her cartwheeling over the edge, blue eyes wider than all the skies. His words that had loosened the stones beneath her hooves, pitching her afloat into crisp mountain air.

A horrific, bone-crunching fear lurched through the space between Caine's ribs when he realized. Blue-eyed fairy toppling over the edge!

Where were your wings, little fairy?

She — “You’re — !” She was going to die.

As a child, Death had been Caine’s constant, closest companion. Who else could've promised him solace, brought him the praise he so desperately sought? Only when fed with ripped-out life had his curse calmed. Only when singing his dagger along the curve of a throat had Agenor smiled. Death had pressed a child-sized scythe into his child-sized grasp, painted his pale eyes shut with scarlet blood, and in return —

It had only asked for his morality. Served fresh every evening, like a cut of tender lamb. For children, morality was a very small price to pay.

But something had changed, along the way. He didn't know what. Only, as he leapt into frantic motion, useless telekinesis grasping for the slippery ends of caramel hair—

Solterra—blood-borne Solterra, golden-duned Solterra, silver-skinned Solterra—had cut it’s heart out for him, and filled the holes eaten away.

He had learned how to be afraid.

(Later, after reconstructing his memories of the event over and over, ripping apart scenes and sewing together conclusions, he would remember most strongly: Time had not stood still.)

Caine knew he had only moments. Thinking became secondary as his limbs sprang into motion. Assassins lived their lives in moments.

He began counting.

One: black wings extending, black hooves following. (Two glass horns, darkness swallowing.)

Two: panicked breath heaving, panicked heart screaming. (Four little hooves, pulled down pleading.)

Three: ‘was I this far?’ pounding through his brain. (One slender body, swirled down the drain.)

He stopped counting when he dived, because all he felt was weightlessness (fear). All he knew was darkness (fear). Until —

Crash! A slender body slammed down upon his left wing. A shout. Hers? His? Both. He’d caught her.

But—he couldn’t slow their descent. Blood flooded his mouth as his teeth sliced open his tongue. He didn’t even taste it, because now the girl was slipping, and his left wings, crushed to the cliff walls, torn and bloodied, shook with the effort of bearing her weight. His right wings pushed down gallons and gallons of air, but he was tilting he was falling he was—

When Caine realized he couldn’t hold her, dread swallowed him whole and spit him back out like a marrow-sucked bone. Panic kills no one, Agenor crowed. Caine understood. Panic saves no one.

He had one choice. He looked at the girl, at those ice-blue eyes. He looked at the ground, so far below.

He said: “I’m going to drop you.”

And he dropped her.

The instant his left wings were free, down he dove after her ribbon-sleek tail. This time, he waited until his nose was almost even with her flank before flaring out his wings, wrapping his inner ones tightly around her body, and beating his outer wings with the fury of hell snapping at his heels.

Slowly, miraculously, they began to rise.

When they spilled back over the edge like drowned sailors dragging themselves to land, Caine heaved out a sticky mass of blood and spit and flipped onto his back, gasping for air.

The girl—where was she?

“Hey,” he called hoarsely, just as he had when she fell. “Little fairy. You alive there?” Punctuated his question with a dizzy, aching laugh.

So this was why he’d been given double wings, he thought. To save cliff-diving girls.

"Speaking." @Sabine AHHH