A Court of Wings and Ruin

We would need more of that in the days to come—on the long road ahead. To a new world. One I would leave a better place than how I’d found it.

But for now … this moment, with the city below us, the world around us, savoring that hard-won peace … I savored it, too. Every heartbeat. Every sound and smell and image that planted itself in my mind, so many that it would take me a lifetime—several of them—to paint.

Rhys leveled out, sent a thought into my mind, and grinned broadly as I summoned wings.

He let go of me and I swept smoothly out of his arms, basking in the warm wind caressing every inch of me, drinking in the air laced with salt and citrus. It took me a few flaps to get it right—the feel and rhythm. But then I was steady, even.

Then I was flying. Soaring.

Rhys fell into flight beside me, and when he smiled at me again as we sailed through the stars and the lights and the sea-kissed breeze, when he showed me all the wonders of Velaris, the glittering Rainbow a living river of color beneath us … When he brushed his wing against mine, just because he could, because he wanted to and we’d have an eternity of nights to do this, to see everything together …

A gift.

All of it.

There are more tales to be told in the land of Prythian …