Skyhunter (Skyhunter, #1)

by Marie Lu

When you’re fighting a losing war, you are always on edge.

I’m not sure if I can’t speak because of those scars or because of the trauma of our escape, of what I witnessed the Federation doing to our people. Perhaps it’s both. All I know is that when I open my mouth, what’s left is silence.

I always warn him that they do not have the heart he has. He always reminds me that they once did, that before the Federation filled them with poison, they had smiled and laughed and been in love, that real hearts used to beat in their chests.

A rat and a prisoner of war. Perhaps we’re not so different after all.

I stop again to repeat the signs I’d once taught him. “Red. Talin. Friend.” My head feels light. I barely know this prisoner. But I have given him my oath. He has saved my life, there by the ruins, when the Ghosts closed in and I knew all might be lost. I am sworn, until death parts us, to protect him, to lay down my life for him, to be there when he needs me. So I continue on. My hands are empty of weapons. The world around me seems to still and slow. He watches me, his fingers digging against the earth. But he doesn’t move. His wings arc black against the night sky.

“I’m going to beat them, Talin. They think they can take what they’ve learned from the ruins to build their own monsters? I can do it too.

Adena

right now, we are all just young souls in identical sapphire coats, fighting to hold back the darkness. It has bound me together with them, whether they—or I—like it or not.

You’re my Shield, and I am yours, I tell him. It means I always care about everything related to you. It means we will spend every waking hour together, that I will show you how I fight and how I move, and that you will show me the same. It means you teaching me more about this bond. I pause to point between us. It means we are eternal companions, until death.

It is always the gentle ones I fear for the most, those willing to bare their hearts, who grieve for others and feel happy for others’ happiness.

“You should be very proud of yourself. You will soar, Redlen. But in order to do that, you must first be broken.”

A few hundred more dinners here, and you’ll be speaking fluently, I reply. He glances at me, lips twitching with his amusement. I accept, then. A few hundred dinners here with you.

Eyes forward, my Deathdancer. He is giving us his blessing and bidding him farewell.

I can feel the way this has broken us, deep in our bones. Maybe we are all too good for Mara.

This is what the Federation does to us. It plants these horrifying memories in our minds until our hearts have turned hollow.

Mara is the gift she gave me. And I’ll be damned if she did that for nothing. I’ll be damned if I don’t fight for that gift. I’ll be damned if our enemy now spills my mother’s blood on these floors, erases the life from her face.

He thinks he has won, that I am proof of the final defeat of a nation. He thinks he will alter my mind, erase who I am, and dedicate me to his cause. He will cut open my back and peel away the human in me, filling me instead with black steel and bladed wings. He will change me into his war machine, an angel of death. Then he will try to make me forget by showering me with land, wealth, and respect. But conquering people is easy. You break past their defenses, seize their cities, burn their world to the ground. To annihilate us, though, is impossible. A seed will survive. I am not done. I will not forget.