Father Desmond Porter knelt in the wasteland with his collar still buttoned, digging through a pile of sand and jagged scrap for anything the Vael had left behind. He was a priest before the world ended and a priest after, though his current prayer was practical: one more shard of their violet glass, one more humming sliver, and the wings he was building back at the chapel workbench would be finished. Six months ago a shaking trader took his last good boots for a handful of Vael components and called him a madman for the trade. Desmond had smiled and kept digging ever since, because stained glass and Vael tech spoke to each other in a language he could not name but had watched with his own eyes. He meant to forge angel wings from that language and fly out to fight the things that burned the eastern settlements. He found a curved shard the color of a bruise and slid it into his coat. When he stood, the scout was already watching him from the ridge. Small, purple, armored in plates that caught the sun. A single antenna curled above its helmet. It did not raise a weapon. It only tilted its head, lifted one clawed hand, and flicked something small and dark toward him. The bead struck his shoulder and stuck there. Desmond felt it through the wool, a hard pill the size of a tooth. The scout turned and walked back over the ridge, unhurried, as if the work were already done. Desmond understood then that he had not been attacked. He had been marked. He dug his knife from his belt and scraped the bead off his coat, hissing when the blade nicked skin. The traders had whispered about these: adhesive tags the scouts used to call others in. He pressed the bead against a rusted spike jutting from the sand heap and left it there, humming faintly against the metal. Then he ran. Not toward the chapel, because the chapel had his workbench and his half-built wings and the girl he had promised to arm was somewhere on the road to meet him there. He ran toward the hidden cavern instead, coat pulled tight over the violet shard, boots slipping on broken rock. Behind him the wasteland was quiet. Ahead of him, he knew, more scouts were already moving.

Desmond hit the mouth of the hidden cavern at a run. The wind had cut the opening smooth over years, layered sandstone stacked like plates around a dark hollow. He ducked inside and pressed his back to the wall. His breath came ragged. The violet shard in his coat knocked against his ribs. He listened. Boots on rock. Not his. Three sets, maybe four, coming down the slope he had just climbed. He pushed deeper. The passage narrowed and split. He took the tighter fork, the one a grown man had to turn sideways for, and slid through with the wool of his coat scraping stone. Behind him a Vael scout barked something short and clicked. Others answered. Desmond climbed a shelf of loose rock, kicked a stone free behind him to muddy the sound, and dropped into a lower chamber. A shaft of light fell through a crack overhead. He saw a scout pass through that light for one breath, purple plates, curled antenna, the small panel on its belt humming loud enough to hear. He held still until the shape moved on. Then he crawled. He crossed a bed of broken shale on his palms and knees, cut his hand, kept moving. He jumped a black split in the floor without looking down. He hit the far side hard and rolled and came up running. The passage bent twice more and spat him into a wider gallery he did not know. He pressed into a crevice behind a fallen slab and made himself small. The Vael voices moved past his hiding place, close enough that he could count them by sound. Four. They spread out. One clicked twice and the others answered from further off. The humming faded down a side tunnel. Desmond stayed in the crack until his legs shook. When he crawled out, the cavern was quiet. He had not been caught. He also did not know where he was. The passage he had come through forked behind him in ways he could not remember. He had lost the scouts, and he had lost the route to the meeting place where the girl would come looking for him. He wiped blood from his palm onto his coat and started walking, slow now, listening for the hum of a belt panel in the dark.

Desmond walked with one hand on the wall. The stone was cold and damp. He heard water somewhere ahead and followed the sound. The passage opened into a tall slot where a canyon wall rose above him, streaked with slow trickles that pooled at his feet. Light fell from a crack far above. He knelt at a pool and drank from his cupped hand. He was washing the cut on his palm when the humming started behind him. Not one panel. Three. He turned and saw the passage he had come from was the only way out. The water ran down a sheer face he could not climb. He had walked himself into a corner. He drew the violet shard from his coat and held it in his good hand. He set his back against the wet stone. The first scout came through the gap fast, curled antenna twitching, black eyes catching the light. Desmond swung low and drove the shard up under the plate at its throat. The scout dropped without a sound. The second came over the first and clicked hard. Desmond took a blow across the shoulder that spun him against the wall. He felt something tear. He kept the shard. He kicked the scout's knee sideways and stabbed down through the joint of its neck. It fell into the pool and the water went dark. The third scout stopped in the gap and raised a short rod. Desmond threw the shard. It struck the scout in the eye and the scout went backward into the rock and slid down. Desmond crossed the pool and finished it with a stone. He stood in the water and shook. His right arm would not lift above his belt. He pulled the shard from the third scout's face and wiped it on his coat. He cut the humming panel off the belt of the nearest body and held it in his palm. It buzzed against his skin the way the components on his workbench buzzed when he laid stained glass over them. He understood then that he was carrying two working pieces now, the shard and the panel, and that the Vael would keep coming while he carried them. He did not put the panel down. He tied his coat sleeve tight around his shoulder with his teeth and started back the way the scouts had come. The route to the meeting place was gone. The wings were still in the chapel. He had to get there before the next group found the bodies in the water.

Desmond climbed out of the cavern into hard sun. His shoulder burned under the tied sleeve. He kept the shard in his good hand and the humming panel in his coat pocket, pressed against his ribs. The chapel lay across the flats. He walked fast because the Vael would come again once the bodies were found. He crossed broken ground and passed a dry wash, and then he saw the ruin ahead. A weathered building leaned on a heap of rubble along its left side. Its door hung open. Bricks lay scattered in the sand. Black scoring ran up one wall. The fight was recent. He smelled cordite and something sour under it. He drew up behind a low stone and watched. Nothing moved. He counted to twenty, then crossed the open ground with the shard low against his leg. He found her in the rubble by the door. Brown hair, matted with dust and blood. A cut ran from her temple into her hair. Her leg was pinned under a fallen beam. She was breathing. He knelt and said her name low, though they had never spoken face to face, only through the trader chain that carried messages between camps. Elina Cross opened her eyes and did not know him at first. He showed her the shard and said the word they had agreed on. She nodded once. He braced his good shoulder under the beam and lifted. She dragged her leg free and cried out through her teeth. The leg was not broken clean. He tore a strip from her sleeve and tied it above the worst of the bleeding. He got her up. She could put weight on it if he took the other side. He put her arm across his bad shoulder and made himself carry it. They left the ruin and started across the flats toward the chapel. He watched the sky for scouts and the ground for tracks. She asked about the wings. He said they were still on the workbench. He said if she could walk another hour they would both be inside the door before the Vael came back. She walked. They made the chapel by late light. He shut the door behind them and slid the bar across, and the humming panel in his pocket kept buzzing against his ribs.

Desmond dropped the bar into the brackets and turned back to the room. Elina leaned against the wall by the door, her bad leg out straight. He helped her to the pew nearest the workbench and eased her down. He fished the humming panel from his coat and set it under an iron bucket in the corner. The sound dulled but did not stop. He lit two candles at the bench. The scattered glass caught the light and threw color across the boards. His shoulder had stiffened on the walk. He rolled it once, hissed through his teeth, and picked up the pliers. "They were waiting for me," Elina said. Her voice was flat. "Two of them, in the rocks past the dry wash. I saw the first one too late." Desmond bent a strip of lead came around the edge of a blue shard shaped like a feather. He did not look up, but he was listening. She said the scout had thrown something small at her chest. She had brushed it off before it stuck. The second scout came from behind and put her through the wall of the ruin. She played dead until she heard the beam crack above her. After that she could not move. She did not know why they left her there. Desmond thought of the panel under the bucket and said nothing. He fitted the shard into the frame and soldered the joint. The iron trembled in his good hand. He set another piece, then another. The wings took shape on the bench: two long panels, ribbed with lead, filled with blue and green and one violet shard at the base of each. He tightened the last joint and set the iron down. He stepped back. The wings lay flat on the wood, finished, catching candlelight along every seam. He did not lift them. He did not fit the straps to his shoulders. He looked at the bucket in the corner, still humming, and at Elina on the pew with her leg stretched out, and he knew that the moment he stepped outside wearing the wings, the Vael would find this door. "Not tonight," he said. He covered the wings with a cloth and blew out one candle. Elina watched him. "Then when?" He sat on the bench across from her and rested his hands on his knees. "When you can walk out first. And when I know what that panel is telling them." He picked up the violet shard from the workbench edge and set it in her palm and closed her fingers around it. Outside, the wind moved across the boards of the church. Under the bucket, the panel kept its steady, patient sound.

By morning the panel was still humming under the bucket and Elina's leg was worse. Desmond peeled back the strip of cloth above her knee and saw the skin gone dark. She did not flinch when he pressed it. That scared him more than the color. He set the cloth back down and went to the workbench. The wings lay under their sheet where he had left them. He pulled the sheet away and started again from the beginning. He laid the humming panel next to the wings and turned it in his hands. He looked for a seam, a port, a place to feed a wire. He found nothing. He tried the panel against the lead frame at the shoulder joint. He tried it against the base of each violet shard. He held it flat to the ribbing and waited for something to answer. Nothing did. He set the panel down and pressed his palms to his eyes. His shoulder throbbed. Behind him, Elina's breathing had gone shallow. "Desmond." Her voice was thin. He turned. Her head had slid against the back of the pew. Her eyes were half open. He crossed the room and lifted her onto the cot by the wall. Her hand was cold. He said her name and she did not answer. He said it again and got nothing. He stood over her with the panel in one hand and the wings on the bench behind him, and the same idea came at him that had come on the chapel roof six months ago. Not a prayer. A push. Put the panel to the wings. Put the wings in her back. He did not argue with it this time. He carried the wings to the cot. He pressed the humming panel flat against the lead spine where the two panels met, and the hum climbed and locked into a single clean tone. He turned her onto her side. He set the spine of the wings against her shoulder blades and held it there. The lead softened under his hands. The violet shards at the base lit from inside. Thin threads of light ran out from the frame and into her skin. She arched once on the cot and went still. The dark line above her knee faded as he watched. Her breathing filled out. The wings settled against her back as if they had grown there. Elina opened her eyes. She sat up. She stood off the cot without favoring the leg. She looked at her hands, then at him, then at the barred door. She crossed the chapel, lifted the bar, and stepped out into the light. Desmond followed. She stood in the dirt in front of the church with the colored panels spread behind her and looked east. "They are coming," she said.

Elina stood in the dirt with her wings spread wide and the colored glass throwing shapes across the ground. Desmond stepped out behind her with his spear in one hand. The east was empty for a breath. Then he saw them. Six shapes coming fast over the ridge, low to the ground, purple armor catching the sun. More than he had ever counted in one place. He set his back against the chapel wall and gripped the shaft tighter. "Stay by the door," Elina said. She did not look at him. She bent her knees and pushed off the dirt. The wings snapped open and she was up, ten feet, twenty, the shards throwing hard color across the chapel roof. The Vael broke pace when they saw her. Their heads tipped back. One raised a weapon and she dropped on him before he could fire. The sharp edge of her left wing came down through his shoulder and out below his ribs. He fell in two pieces. The others scattered. That was the mistake. Elina turned in the air and drove them apart with hard, low passes, forcing them toward the chapel wall. Desmond saw one break from the group and cut for the corner of the building. He stepped from the door and set the spear low. The scout came around the boards fast and ran onto the point below the throat. Desmond drove his weight forward until the shaft stopped against bone. He worked the head free and let the body drop. His hands were shaking. He backed against the wall again. Elina killed two more in the open. She hit them from behind, wings tucked, then flared at the last second so the edges caught. A fifth tried to run. She overtook him in three beats and came down on his back. The last one turned toward Desmond with a shard raised. Desmond met him with the spear point up. The scout swung wild and Desmond took the shard across his forearm. He drove the spear into the scout's belly and pushed him down into the dirt. Elina landed beside him. She put her boot on the scout's chest and finished it with the edge of her wing. The yard went quiet. Six bodies in the dirt. Desmond's arm was open from wrist to elbow, bleeding into his sleeve. He sat down against the chapel wall. Elina folded her wings against her back and knelt in front of him. She looked at the cut, then east again. "More will come," she said. "They heard the panel. They know where we are." Desmond pressed his hand against the wound. The chapel was not a hiding place anymore. It was a mark on their map.