I found the door, though I wish I hadn’t.

  -Atherinon, Taker of Secrets

  The trip to the upper third proves my need to go. Getting there requires us to take four different elevators, walk down or up eight ramps, shove our way through three bridges, and eventually have a porter take us up to the final platform for a silver nickel. You only find the porters in the upper third, their ships are nothing more than circular platforms that they fly up and down the city for a steep price. The worst part is that when they bring you to a platform, they just barely overlap the end of their ship with the lip of the stone street. I can’t help but imagine people falling off all the time, splatting on one of the platforms further down, one that juts out more from the wall. I’ve never seen it happen, but it surely must.

  The upper third, especially the platforms belonging to the guild and nobility at the very highest points of Grim, are sculpted with a painter’s touch. The stone of the platforms themselves are made of an alabaster that catches the light, and every inch that isn’t reserved for buildings or roads is given over to a vibrant grass that has never known a weed. Great manor homes overlook the wide-open air, their architecture showy, their statues nude and proud, their windows filled with scintillating glass, the frames around often plated with gold or silver, and all of their lawns competing with one another to be the most grand. Parks connect the manors, lazy sidewalks that roll this way and that, not caring for a straight line. As Dovik leads me on, we pass a fountain decorated with statues of fish spitting sparkling water into the air.

  He leads me down a final bridge, this one made of solid marble instead of the usual oak and rope found throughout the city, which opens into a huge platform dominated by a single building.

  “That is the guild hall,” Dovik says, pointing up to the tower of white stone and decoration that looks more like what my brother described a cathedral to look like than an administration building.

  As I step onto the platform itself, I can almost feel eyes peering from giant circular windows set into its face, looking down at me, appraising, judging. The rest of the platform is given over to a park as well, the main feature being a pond far larger than any I have seen, a little bridge of white wood stretching over the narrowest point. Willows dangle their long fronds toward the water, creating shade that is used by more than one group: an afternooning couple, a woman reading and eating her lunch, a man snoring away the day beneath a tree. Dotted throughout the park are squares of sand, divided from the grass by huge logs. We pass a group of three men inside one, two jabbing at each other in the middle of the sand, while the third sits on a log, watching with a sandwich in his hands and sheathed sword leaning against his knee.

  Dovik looks back at me as we walk, noting the clear awe on my face. “It’s nice, isn’t it?” he says. “I spent some good days out here just sleeping in the sun. You only really get the good light in the upper-third. Most of everything below is too shadowed.”

  He is right about that. With how close together the platforms in the middle-third are clustered, direct sun is a fleeting thing. Most take breaks during the few minutes of the day when they can get it, crowding outside to bask in the momentary warmth.

  “I just didn’t think that it would be so big,” I say.

  “We have to keep up appearances,” he says, affecting an air that makes it clear he is quoting someone. “Come on. The spot we are looking for is just over there.”

  We pace down the sidewalk that curves this way and that around the artificial hills built into the guild’s park. As we pass around a tree whose leaves are a vibrant purple color and bend away from us as we approach, I see the spot he is talking about. It is a sand pit, much like the others scattered around the park, but with an interesting addition of a scaffolding climbing high up with a single, long board attached. A diving board, if I am not mistaken.

  “There’s Cindy,” Dovik says, pointing up toward the top. “She’s not a lot to look at, but she has a tendency to let men down, hard.”

  I stare up at the tower of wood and the platform atop it. “People just…jump off of that?”

  Dovik shrugs. “Most that need to learn how to fly are those that have reached the third rank. Falling from that far would not injure most of them, unless they were especially frail. Sometimes, a magician will gain that power earlier, and in such cases, Cindy is used along with a healer to make sure no lasting damage occurs.”

  “Did you bring a healer?” I ask, shading my eyes against the sun as I stare up.

  “It must have slipped my mind.”

  “Did you develop any healing abilities when you reached the second rank?”

  “Not a one. You?”

  “No…” I blow out a long sigh, looking sidelong at him. “Turn around.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I need to change my clothes,” I say.

  He studies me for a moment. “I kind of like what you have on now.”

  “Dovik!”

  He holds up his hands, turning his back on me.

  My inventory window opens in the air in front of me, and I scan through the boxes. Making a final check to make certain no one is looking our way; I stash my blouse and coat inside as quickly as I can–it’s a little too warm up here in the upper third for the layers anyway– and retrieve a shirt that I have taken knife and needle to. It is airy, a bit thin, an eye-catching red, and I have slit the sides almost down to the waist. I checked it before to make sure that my new wings won’t make this blouse explode when I bring them out, and they hadn’t, at least not yet.

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  Dovik turns back around when he hears the sound of my hands slapping against the rungs of the ladder. “That looks…breathable.”

  “I don’t need comments,” I yell back down to him. From the top of the platform, I find the tower much higher than it looks from the ground. The square bit of wood is barely enough room for me to stand on, and the board leading off of it is narrow. Crouching at the top, holding on tight to the sides, I find that this might not be the best idea after all. “What do I do now?”

  “How should I know?” Dovik calls up to me.

  “What?”

  “I’ve never flown before. I’ve just watched people fall and splash into the sand, or they don’t, but that is no fun to watch.”

  Inwardly, I curse the man, but then again, what did I expect? “Tits and Honey.” I send a slip of my concentration out toward that new part, grafted onto or grown from my soul; I don’t know. A wash of magic runs out from me, and a weight settles onto my shoulders as two glorious wings of vibrant crimson spread out to my sides. The change in weight pushes me to lean hard on my hands grabbing the platform, but it is not so bad as it was that first time. I stand, my balance shifting, and I need to push my hips forward to keep from wobbling. Checking my shirt, I am satisfied to find that it has not been torn into pieces to drift away in the wind. That would be quite embarrassing given where I am standing just this moment.

  “I knew it.” Dovik points up at me from the ground. “I knew it! You have the Red Dragon Essentia, don’t you.”

  That is the second time someone has mentioned a specific kind of dragon essentia to me. Would those be better than my plain Dragon Essentia, or worse? “I’m not sure what you mean?” I say, being purposefully coy, which Dovik would of course take as an open admission. I suspect that the man lives in a world of coyness, that’s just his way.

  “I had not heard that Gale had a red dragon in it. It makes me more excited to see it.”

  “Just wet fields and grass,” I say.

  Finally, I find a good balance on the platform, standing tall and letting my new wings stretch out to my sides. There is a sense of power in it, as if the spans of leathery, crimson scales make me three times larger than I was before. I can’t help but look down at the ground, seeing the legs of the tower I stand on shrink together as they race toward the sand. Bad idea maybe.

  Then, I am stuck at a decision. Do I jump forward into the open air, or do I try to flap the wings as I did before? That had not worked before. Jump it is.

  “What are you–” Dovik’s words are cut off as I crash into the sand sideways, screaming all the way down.

  I gasp on the ground, a shooting pain running up through my left leg from where I landed on my foot poorly. The ankle begins to reknit itself in seconds, but those few seconds are awful.

  “Funny enough?” I hiss up at him. He stands on the outskirts of the sand pit, looking down at me.

  “Would you hurt me if I said yes?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Then I won’t.” Dovik steps over the perimeter logs and helps me to my feet. “Maybe using actual wings is a bit different from how magicians normally fly.”

  “Kendon and Samielle managed it,” I say. Then, just hearing the name again, I feel an awful pain in my gut. Samielle, such a kind and strong man. I had killed him, hadn’t I? I can’t remember it, but I know that it was me.

  Dovik rolls right past that. “That they did. You are much smarter than them, I am sure. Keep at it.”

  And I do. For the next few hours, until the sun begins to set behind the high wall of Grim, I climb up the tower over and over again, leaping off or trying to flap away. If I didn’t heal from the falls so quickly, I doubt that I would have made any real progress. By the time that the shadows begin to grow long, I am at least competent enough to glide off the tower under my own power, and most of the time I can even gain a bit of height without losing my balance. This is a new avenue that I need to pursue. Gods, it seems like those just keep opening up before me.

  “This has been a good day,” Dovik tells me as I plop down on a log at the perimeter of the sand pit. He lays in the soft grass, looking up at the sky above that is still a bright blue despite the shadow of the wall having already fallen over the city. Days in Grim are much shorter than anywhere else.

  “Didn’t accomplish much,” I say, pulling my newish coat out of my inventory and slipping it on to keep off the approaching chill.

  “I don’t measure my days by what I accomplish,” he says. “This is nice. I’ve felt it, you know, my soul growing taught. These last few months have helped it relax, becoming springy once more, but I don’t believe I am ready to start pushing hard again. Not just yet. I will though, so I will enjoy this time.”

  There is a thrum in my chest that matches his words. Some sleepless nights, sleep is more of an indulgence to me now, I have stared at the shifting forms of my own soul, trying to puzzle out its geometry. For the last few weeks, I have felt that tightness he talks about, a resistance in my very being against changing. Arabella warned me that there was a limit to how quickly one could progress, how fast one could push reinforcements on their soul. In the last few days it has loosened, just a bit. I still need more time.

  “What was it like,” I ask him, coming to sit in the grass next to him, “growing up in a city like this? This is the first city I have ever seen, and it doesn’t seem like many others. I imagine that you lived in some kind of luxury, separate from normal people like me, but you act just like some other boys I knew. Why aren’t you more different?”

  “I find myself pretty unique,” he says. “I find you unique too. Maybe that’s why I liked you right away. You’re different, Charlene.”

  “Sometimes I feel different,” I say. “But sometimes I feel so plain.”

  I catch him looking at me, his face more serious, considering. He breathes out a sigh, looking up at the sky where a bird passes by high overhead. “It was…difficult,” he says after a moment. “The difficulty wasn’t in not having things. That is the trouble most people have, a worse trouble than what I did, I know. Gods, how could I even find room to complain. I really did want for nothing, not for food, clothes, or even attention, but when I think about my childhood, growing up, there is this tightness inside.” His hand rests on his chest.

  Then, he tells me. He tells me about his siblings, an older brother and two sisters, speaks about watching them as he stalked through the halls of his home, goes to length about how magnificent they are. He sees light in them, I can hear it in his voice, such powerful radiance. He talks about exploring the city, escaping his minders, making short trips out to some towns where he met and spoke to other children, something he so seldom was allowed to do, but it always comes back around to his family, the accomplishments of his siblings, the kindness and grace of his mother, the power and righteousness of his father. There is a strain in him as he speaks, love and tension. He doesn’t see what I learned so long ago, that if you stand so near to beautiful fires, the winds they throw off will keep trying to snuff out your own little candle.

  I feel like I really see him then, see myself in him. I have known that shadow cast by lights too near.

  So, when he runs out of breath, the sky above turning a pale orange, I lay in the grass next to him, and tell him about my own story, holding nothing back. I tell him about the orchard, living life beneath the rule of the elves, trying to remember the good times as best I can. With how much I have learned recently, the bad keeps crowding in. I tell him about Halford and about Corinth, sharing my own feelings about my brothers, how much I admire them, how much I envy them. I feel heat on my face by the time I finish, the beginnings of tears welling at the corners of my eyes, and for the first time I realize just how much I miss home.

  The sky overhead is dark and black now, a mishmash of twinkling lights sparkling in the dark. A hand settles on mine, and I smother the urge to pull back. When I turn my head, I find Dovik there, looking at me, and I can’t help but smile.

  “Yeah. A good day.”

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  Have a magical day!

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