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Aylin’s wings are out again.
She patrols the edge of the camp they share with the rebel True Souls. There’s little shelter to be found in the hills between Reithwin and Baldur’s Gate, and Isobel is grateful despite the danger. After so much shadow, open skies are nothing short of a blessing. The moon wanes overhead, yet the night is flooded with incredible silver light that leaves the land nearly as bright as day. The Tears glitter all the brighter in its wake as if the Moonmaiden weeps for her returned daughter.
Isobel can’t help but take a moment to tip her head back and inhale air fresher than she thought she would breathe again. The season has since crested and now falls into autumn, and the breeze carries the first cool crisp of falling leaves and sweet cranberries. Isobel breathes again, and it’s beautifully effortless to fill her lungs. There are no shadows here.
Yet Aylin still paces beneath the moonlight.
Isobel has to really lengthen her stride to catch up, and only manages because Aylin comes to a halt so sudden she may now be a statue.
Quietly, so her voice won’t carry, Isobel says, “Come to bed, my love.”
Aylin whips around with a glow in her eyes that dissipates the moment her moonlit gaze lands on Isobel. And then she does something Isobel has never once seen her do: she looks away. Her Aylin has always been a bulwark against the darkness, unbowed by the threats of man and god alike. And yet a hairline fracture runs through her now, wings curling around her.
Chin raised, Aylin says, “I was basking in the Moonmaiden’s light.”
She watches to the sky, but a century of loss shadows her eyes. Perhaps less a matter of enjoyment and more of escaping torment.
Isobel knows Aylin has suffered. She cannot imagine—in the depths of the Shadowfell, as far from Selûne as a soul can stray, with only Shar’s cruelty for company. Killed over and over and over to satisfy the Nightsinger’s depravity. And Aylin stands before her now, silvered and shining as befits a daughter of Selûne, yet the moonlight catches on the golden fissures that crack through her skin.
Isobel wets her lips. “Perhaps, then, we can stay a while and enjoy the night.”
Aylin holds out a hand. When Isobel takes it, they settle so her back nestles against Aylin’s broad chest. Moonlight shines over them as Selûne gives all the light she can to a daughter who has known only a century of darkness.
In truth, Isobel didn’t expect to see the sky again.
Aylin’s arms slide around her waist. Isobel runs her fingers over muscled forearms stronger than all the marble in the House of the Moon. Aylin rests her chin on top of her head, holding her close. “You’re safe, my love.”
With her father’s death, Isobel is in no danger—or at least no more danger than anyone else on the Sword Coast. This is more for Aylin’s benefit than her own. Covering Aylin’s hands with her own, she says, “With you? Always.”
Aylin’s fingers twitch against her stomach, and she buries her face in Isobel’s hair. Those great wings fold around them both in a lustrous shield, and Isobel reaches out to stroke her fingers over Aylin’s feathers.
To claim her wings are white is to claim there’s a word in mortal tongues that can capture the radiance of moonlight on mirror-still waters or clouds lit from behind by the sun. With a smile, Isobel revels in the feel of her feathers, softer than anything she’s ever touched, yet there is an incredible strength in them, too. And, at present, a great deal of tension.
Isobel’s motions grows more deliberate. Thinking back to the books she read on avian anatomy, she moves her hands in longer, slower strokes. It wasn’t Aylin’s wings that first draw Isobel’s attention, no matter how loudly they proclaimed her celestial heritage. No, that honour belonged to her eyes, holding all the glory of moonrise. Only days after, with time to think—all right, time to stew in her feelings—did Isobel furtively venture into the library to satisfy her curiosity. Not that Aylin’s wings are so easily compared to that of a bird’s, at least not in her hearing range. Nonetheless, it gave Isobel some sense of each feather’s import and how they interlock to allow flight.
A shiver runs through Aylin’s wings, fluffing out her plumage, then they settle once more. Isobel smooths down her feathers from base to tip to align them once more. The stiff-textured primaries—the largest feathers, if she remembers those books correctly—are as long as blades, protecting the softer down feathers beneath. Isobel slips free to circle around Aylin’s back. Her angel’s wings flex, weight shifting, only to settle once more at a touch.
The primaries connect to the smaller secondaries and tertials, and Isobel takes her time ruffling Aylin’s feathers to shake loose any dirt before smoothing them back into place. When Isobel reaches the base of Aylin’s wings, she feels more than hears her soft inhale.
“He cut off my wings.”
Isobel’s hands still.
“That wretched Balthazar,” Aylin continues, low and vicious. “He made a great game of it, testing which of his implements were most efficient against the child of a god.”
The joints beneath Isobel’s hands are warm and alive, wrought in flesh and bone where they seamlessly join to her shoulders. More of those golden fissures split through the skin at the base of her wings, running like lightning in all directions, and for one nauseating moment, all Isobel can see is the flash of a scalpel.
Even as the horror folds over her, she has a moment of hideous gratitude it wasn’t her father who did it.
Wrapping her arms around Aylin, Isobel hugs her from behind. As tightly as she can manage, her face buried between Aylin’s shoulders. For a long time, Aylin doesn’t move at all. A breeze rummages through the shrubs before fading again to nothing while the crickets hum in their unceasing chorus. At last, her hands settle over Isobel’s as she looks up to the moon. She does not speak.
“Never again.” The viciousness of her own voice takes Isobel aback. “He’ll never hurt you again. Him or anyone else. I swear it.”
“I healed,” Aylin says, voice empty. “Over and over and over.”
Did you?
In the sense of flesh, yes. In the sense of soul, chained within Shar’s own blackened heart, as spear-lances shattered her ribs and morningstars crushed her skull and fine blades pierced her throat? As Balthazar carved her into pieces?
Bile rises in Isobel’s throat, cooking into a hard mound with the heat of her anger. Shar, Balthazar, her father—curse every last rotten one of them.
Pressing her lips to the top of Aylin’s head, Isobel prays: Moonmaiden, hear me. Protect this woman we both so love. Bathe her in your loving light and heal the places I cannot reach…
“Never again,” Isobel reiterates, and her voice trembles. “You’re here with me, where we can breathe sweet air and turn our faces to the moonlight.”
Aylin turns enough to look at her. “Aye,” she says quietly, then the corners of her eyes crinkle with arch amusement. “And now I know why I found tomes on bird anatomy in your fair bedchamber.”
“Aren’t you glad I did?” Isobel teases.
Aylin gazes at her with such aching softness that her face eclipses the moon behind her. “Greatly so.”
Isobel kisses her shoulder. “Come to bed, my love.”
“As you wish.”
Tilting her face up, Isobel’s heart fills with such love and longing her eyes heat. She whispers, “Then I’d greatly wish for you to stay with me.”
“For every day that we have.”
Taking Aylin’s hand, Isobel leads her to their tent. Aylin pauses at the flap for such an infinitesimally small moment Isobel can’t be sure she even does hesitate, then the canvas catches as she muscles her way inside. As it happens, it’s rather difficult to find space in a tent filled by two people and a pair of wings. Isobel watches her pillar of an angel crouching over their bedrolls, wings folded tight against yet still pushing against the walls, wearing an expression of such disgruntlement it might be funny in any other circumstance.
Isobel reaches out to cup her cheek. “Rest with me.”
Aylin covers Isobel’s with her own, eyes falling closed. She drags in a breath. Then a silvered shiver runs over her body, and her wings disappear. With a smile, Isobel scoots closer to kiss the top of her nose, fingers searching for her belt buckle. Once they’re down to their undergarments, they settle together on their bedrolls. Aylin tucks Isobel’s head under her chin, shielding her with her body, but Isobel can feel every breath that trembles through her.
Isobel drags her hands over all the skin she can touch, caressing her back, and Aylin’s marbled muscles slowly loosen.
Soft lips touch Isobel’s hair. “I love you.”
Smiling, Isobel nuzzles her throat. “I love you, too.”
They leave the tent flap open so fresh air and moonlight—the first in a century—can reach them.