Silver

Chapter 9

My lungs. Were. On. Fire.

Siena had me shooting through the air faster than I think I've ever moved in my entire life.

We had started this whole training session with my attempt at cutting a tree with my wing. Turns out I undershoot the tree literally every single time. I have bruises all over my arms and shoulders from nailing into a tree at 70-something miles per hour. I guess I'm lucky that the trees here are as massive as they are, otherwise I probably would've been crushed under one.

Then, she had me hover about 30 feet away from her as she chucked knives at me.

Knives.

I know you're probably thinking "oh well, she probably didn't start with knives".

Nope. Wrong. She did.

After a few deep gashes on my arms, I got the hang of that though. All I had to do was either pull my wing in front of my body as a shield, or pull my wings in close and somersault out of the way. And even as she got faster, throwing them so fast you could hardly see them, something inside me just clicked and I knew when to move. So, that one, I didn't mind as much. And turns out, you heal a hell of a lot faster as an Angel. The cuts were gone after a few minutes.

But we hadn't even gotten to "the fun part" yet, as she called it.

"The fun part" was when she decided I hadn't had enough and wanted to spar with me. And Siena was fast. When she decided to throw a punch or slice through your arm with her wing, she did it so fast I couldn't even tell I'd been hit till I felt blood dripping. That's where we were at now. And we've been at this for hours. Without a break.

"You're moving too slow, Jordan, do you want to get hit?" She raised an eyebrow, soaring up to me and pulling her wings in close to spin, throwing out a roundhouse kick at the last second towards my head. I swerved out of the way, breathing heavily.

"I think-," I panted,"- you're forgetting-I'm not- an Angel yet."

"How do you think you're gonna become one if you can't even dodge a right hook?" She shouted back, her wings stretching out to her sides and beating down in a large gust, blowing me off balance. The muscles in my wings ached as I struggled to rebalance myself. We've been flying for hours. Didn't Grey say something about not overexerting myself? Did he happen to mention that to Siena?

Doubtful.

"I just learned-how to fly-," I breathed heavily, "-yesterday, Siena!"

"And whose fault is that?" She rolled her eyes, hovering a few feet away as she waited for me to recover. She hadn't waited earlier, something about "do you think the Fallen are going to wait for you to catch your breath?"

My wings were trembling as I forced them to keep me in midair. I glared at Siena and she sighed, folding her arms across her chest. "Look. I'm just trying to help you prepare. It does nobody any good if you can't defend yourself. The Fallen will not go easy on you. And neither will Lucifer when he gets the balls to come fight you again himself. You beat him once intellectually. Don't assume you can beat him physically," she explained.

"I'm not, I'm just asking for a little grace period. I've just started learning how to control these things," I motioned to my wings.

"We don't have time for a grace period. Grey's contacting the Angel that's meeting us at Bryn Athyn because we're leaving within the next two days. Heaven needs us gone. Every second we spend here is another second that Hell has to figure out how to re-Pledge you. We don't have anymore time, Jordan," she clenched her jaw slightly, hovering a little closer and scrunching her eyebrows together in concern. "Trust me when I say I know how hard this is. I was once a human too."