Elina Cross's Arc

Chapter 1 of 5

Elina Cross came in low over the wall at sunset, wings tilted against the last red light. The stained glass threw color across the sand below her—reds, blues, a green like river water. She banked once to check the ground for heat shapes, saw none, and dropped inside the fortress gate. Her boots hit the packed dirt between the two lookout towers. She folded the wings tight against her back. The left edge caught the light and showed the line she kept sharp enough to cut a Vael arm clean through. She had promised the man who built these wings for her that she would use them well. Tonight she had used them to count roads and watch for dust, and she had come home with nothing solid to give her people. Virginia was already crossing the yard toward her. The older woman had a wrench in one hand and her glasses pushed up her nose. She stopped a pace away. "Mendez and Riley aren't back," Virginia said. "They should have been back an hour ago." Elina looked past her at the archway. The sky behind the scrap wood and sheet metal was going purple. "I flew the north track. I didn't see the jeep." "You didn't see it because it isn't there." "I know." Elina kept her voice even. Fourteen people in this fortress were hers to move and feed. Mendez and Riley had gone out because there were four days of food left. She had let them go. Boots came fast behind Virginia. Thomas pushed between them, breathing hard. His shirt was open over the undershirt, one hand still gripping the doorframe of the shack he'd come from. "Emmy's gone," he said. Elina turned. "Gone where." "Not in the bunk. Not at the well. I checked." He wiped his mouth. "The jeep. She talks about the jeep. She was watching them load it." Virginia closed her eyes for one second. "She stowed away." "You don't know that," Thomas said. He knew it. His hands were shaking. Elina looked up. The first star was already out. Vael hunted by heat, and at night a person on the ground was a candle. From the air she would see nothing but black sand and her own wingtips. "I can't fly it," she said. "Not now. I'd pass over them and never know." Thomas's face broke. "She's twelve." "I know how old she is." Elina put a hand flat on his chest, not to comfort him, to hold him where he stood. "If I go up blind I lead the Vael straight to whatever fire she's near. We wait for light." "Wait," he repeated. "First gray. I'll be in the air before the sun." Virginia nodded once and turned back toward the gate to close it. Thomas didn't move. Elina stayed with him while the yard went dark and the generator lights came on above the towers, and the desert past the wall filled with things she couldn't see.