When Wings Burn

1 | HARPER

Hi lovely readers, thanks for clicking on this one! Just wanted to pop up to say hi and let you know that this is a bit of a long chapter! Had to push in a bit of info before introducing another particular character. Expect shorter more suspenseful chapters in future! Please let me know what you think. B x

It is March third and summer's last fragments are lingering in the west of Arizona, snippets of dry heat finding their way through doorways and cracked windows. Dawn approaches with its usual tenacity. The world is silent save the uniform footsteps of the night guard. Thump, thump, thirteen steps down past the library, eight more to the corner. The guard is melancholy with the hour. He has fifty-eight minutes before he knocks off. His eyelids are heavy but he continues to walk. He glances west, away from town, the direction of the immanent sunrise. He sees the great shadows of the sheltering cliff, a plateau scarce of foliage, and a single house. The house belongs to the widow who lives with her daughter. The guard has questioned before why the two inhabitants would choose to stay in such an unprotected area, when apartments and secure townhouses are plentiful. Tonight he does not wonder. He simply gazes at the lightening sky and wishes for the sun to come up. Beneath this, the house rests silently.

-

Inside the house, there are screams.

Gurgling with horror, hands clawing at bedsheets. I jolt awake, eyes wide and filled with paranoia. I am greeted with total silence. In another room, my mother is murmuring in her sleep. My nightmares are as common as the sunrise.

Tonight's nightmare holds remnants of others. It's all the same. A cycle of heavy footsteps, forced breathing and a stillness so loud it echoes. The air is heavy and hot.

I'm too young to think – and if I could, maybe things would be different. As it is, all I can hear are screeches, bloody in the thick of night. The grass whips at my mother's feet, the air shields away as if we're the ones it should be hiding from. Cold droplets of rain spit on my arms and I close my eyes against it. All of it.

I give my heart time to slow down, allowing the panic to subside. It's a chaotic circus inside my chest, pounding with frantic uncertainty. Yet these days it's all routine. The nightmares, the screams, the waking up with a bloodless face and tensed muscles. It's nothing new. I'm sixteen years old and this is normality for me. I let the beating find rhythm and I breathe, taking deep gulps of the dense air. Cold sweat slips down my face, my body, dampening the skin beneath my pajamas. I sit up, shake my hair back as if it isn't burning dark outside. The night is in its purest form and my lonely horror does not waver. Climbing out of bed, my room a box of shadows, the circumstance is little consolation.

It's that night that I see him for the first time. It's an accident. Maybe fate. I don't ever know why I get up out of bed and curl into the side of my window, watching the eerie serenity like a criminal. I suppose there is something about the night I'm drawn to. The unseen wilderness and the way my world doesn't like it. Is it rebellion or stupidity to be curious about these things, I'll never know to clarify. My curtains flutter softly as I move toward them. The outside is a blank plateau bathed softly by virgin moonlight.

The sun will rise soon, I can feel the glow encroaching on the surrounding cliffs. As my eyes grow accustomed to the sheer white luminosity, I make out the roving clouds above, the ultimate vastness of this landscape, the way the shadows of town are both unwelcoming and ugly in comparison. I pull my sleeves down over my palms. That's habit. For comfort, I guess. Maybe security.

I stay at the window a little while. It soothes me, I guess, the gentle silence of outside, the way it so juxtaposes my churning insides. In some ways, the open skies and shadowed scene is an escape for me, an escape from my stifling nightmares. Maybe that's why I see him. I'm looking for a way out and suddenly...him.

I never forget the initial moment I catch sight of Tate Hawk. He wanders seamlessly across the grasses, tall, imposing and more than a little breathtaking. I can never articulate why the first sight doesn't shock me. I'm struck motionless, enraptured by what I can see. The figure is broad-shouldered, skin milky in the moonlight, hair and clothing dark shadows. This is bad, I think quietly. And I don't listen because I'm in awe. Because Tate Hawk, from moment one, is magnificent. Surrounded by wide plains and stirring grasses, the silhouette renders me speechless with a strangely urgent curiosity. There is something about the man that shouts power. Being in his presence, even from so far away, is something I will forever crave. Curfew, the thought slips into my mind. This is bad. But I don't move a muscle. I'm fastened to the window, unable to move before the scene in front of me. I can't possibly tear my gaze away. I've never seen a man like this. God knows I've never seen a human like this.

Curfew, my conscience screams.

His figure and mine, we stand motionless, my open window the only witness. I don't know if he's seen me, for he shows no recognition. He's a long way from me still. Could a man see me from here? The light is only dim. I can't see his face, only the silhouette, a shape that is now engraved into my mind and body. A slow thought winds its way into my mind.

Look at me.

I would be murdered for such a compulsion. Maybe it's the natural rebellion of my teenaged years. Maybe the heavy rules from the government, the way I must also act just so. Maybe because my mind is already a scattered field of emotion from my nightmare. I don't know why I want him to see me, but I do, I really do. Every fiber of me wants him to look, to see, to open the door to something – anything – that may be more exciting than the life I currently live. A gentle gale scatters dry grass against the wall of my house. In the silence of the night, the sound is deafening as thunder. And then it happens. Dark eyes I cannot yet see dash up to meet my stare, a movement so lithe, a blink would have missed it. I catch my breath. A long time passes. He sees. The moon dips behind a low cloud and when it reappears, the figure is still frozen, tensed in my direction. I hover fleetingly, one arm hidden behind my bedroom curtain and some small voice inside of me pushes the thought, this is it. And without plausible reason, I hold up my right hand, and turn it sideways in the worldwide known salute of human acknowledgement. Do it back, I think fervently. A human will do it back.

Maybe it is a risk. A stupid one. My mother would be devastated, ashamed even. After all her teaching, this is who I've grown up to be. A girl who is flirting thoughtlessly with the possibility of instant death.

And I wait.

What was I thinking. A human salute? The annoyance is beginning to build up inside me, my pride offended at the stranger's delay.

Grasses flitter across the land.

The moon sits high, loftily watching our progress. I want him to see me, I want him to communicate. God, otherwise I may die in this grey and hopeless place without semblance of excitement.

It could be a mistake, I reassure myself. He might not see me. And he could be lost. He may be hiding from the authorities until curfew is lifted at dawn. I find myself watching with desperation, eyes big and unblinking.

Surely he's seen my signal.

And then without warning, movement.
The figure straightens up and the wind slows down to a cease. He is taller than I thought, shoulders broader than I first imagined. The shadow of large hands hang by his sides.

Dark shoulders rise back and his chest, clad in black, inhales in the clear air. He relaxes back in a position of nonchalant authority. My breath cuts in terror. Is he a government official? They are the only ones I have seen in such stature. I can't move. If he is, it is surely death. His hands – left and right – remain obstinately in his pockets. In the dim light, a flicker of a smile glides over his jaw. I freeze. The moon hovers overhead. A wolf cries from the canyons. The air is still; even the dirt holds its breath. I drop my hand.

Who is he.

My heart beats so wildly, I fear my sweet mother will wake. I can't focus, I can't think. What have I done. What have I risked. They will kill my mother too. In the late hours of night, I stand struck with fright as the figure opposite me observes unflinchingly. Above, we are watched, heavy clouds as our appraising audience.