41

TALIN

The pain is worse than any experiment Raina put me through during my transformation. Worse than the nights I spent trembling and sweating. It feels like my body has split into two, like someone has taken a sword and jammed it into my back, then ripped out my bones.

My mind goes blank from the trauma. My eyes widen and my mouth opens in a silent scream. I arc backward as the pain rips through me in a violent wave. My balance suddenly feels off—part of me feels too light, lighter than the rest. The girl releases me, and I feel myself falling. From somewhere, I hear an anguished cry.

Red? Is he here?

As I hit the surface of the roof, I glimpse the two other Skyhunters. Vaguely, I realize what must have happened to me. They have torn off one of my wings.

The forceful hand seizes my back again. I have no strength in this moment to defend myself. My body is swimming in too much pain. All I manage to do is look out across the roof to see Red racing toward me, shouting my name, before the Skyhunter grabs my remaining wing and tears the metal from my back.

Stars explode in my vision. I crumple to the ground, tasting blood in my mouth as my lip scrapes hard against the stone. Constantine’s voice comes to me from somewhere.

It’s the end, Talin.

There is real grief in his voice, as if he regrets losing something he had worked so hard on. I clench my teeth and, through my swimming vision, look to my side to see the second Skyhunter rush to crouch beside me. She arcs her wings and reaches out to seize me, as if to pull me forward and impale me on her bladed feathers.

I don’t know what I do. Sometimes the mind is a curious thing when it tries to protect itself. But as she pulls me toward her, I manage to twist around so that the Skyhunter at my back is forced to move with me. My body is slick with my own blood, turning me slippery. As I go, I slide out of her grasp and throw myself flat on the roof.

Her wing, instead of impaling me, stabs straight into the chest of the second Skyhunter.

A shudder wracks him. He drops the bloody wing he had ripped from my back, then stares down in dumb shock at the steel feathers of his Skyhunter partner that have entered his chest and exited through his back.

For the first time since I came up here, I feel a tremor of surprise and anger come from Constantine. It’s all I manage to grasp. Over me, the impaled Skyhunter drops to his knees as his partner pulls out her wing in stunned surprise. Then the hurt Skyhunter falls heavily. He stills. Blood pools underneath him.

Who was he? Who are his loved ones that he’d been forced to fight for?