The emergency exit opened onto a cliff.
Below us was a forest—dense, dark, alive with sounds that might have been birds or might have been something else. The drop was sixty meters.
Maybe more. Certain death for anything human.
The wind pulled at my coat, my hat, my resolve.
Mara looked down. "We can't jump."
I looked at her. "You did it before."
"That was different."
"How?"
"I was stupid. Desperate. I didn't know what would happen."
I almost smiled. The muscles in my face twitched.
"On three."
"One."
"Two."
"Three."
We jumped.
The world vanished. Wind screamed past my ears, tearing at my coat, pulling at my hat. The ground rushed up to meet us, hungry and indifferent. I reached for Mara.
She screamed. Then—something opened.
Not wings. Not completely. Two dark, feather-like structures burst from her back, tearing through her shirt, unfurling like wet umbrellas. They lasted only seconds. Black membrane and bone and something that wasn't quite feather, wasn't quite flesh. But they caught the air. They cupped it, slowed her fall, turned a deadly plummet into a controlled descent.
We crashed into the trees. Branches broke beneath us in a cascade of snapping wood. I hit the ground hard, rolling, my body absorbing the impact in ways that would have shattered a normal spine. I came up breathing hard, my claws embedded in the dirt, my ears ringing.
Mara lay motionless nearby.
I rushed toward her. "Mara!"
Her eyes opened. She whispered: "I felt it."
I stared. "What?"
"Something flying. Something right . Like I'd been trying to remember how to breathe, and I finally did."