Demon Marked

lifted her face to it, soaking in the warmth.
    The birds must have been enjoying the sunshine, as well. Though usually quiet, today they were twittering away in the trees around her. Grizzly bears inhabited this area, but she hadn’t seen one yet—she supposed they were all in hibernation at this time of year. Ash was almost sorry for that. She’d have liked to have heard one, as she often heard the wolves.
    A continuous, almost rhythmic thud was coming from beside the shed—Nicholas, chopping wood. Ash had volunteered to do it instead. She didn’t tire, and strong as she was, the effort would go more quickly, but he’d grunted something that apparently passed for words in man-chops-wood language, looking disgruntled and almost offended, and so Ash had left him to it. From her vantage point, she could only see his back. He hadn’t turned around yet, hadn’t seen her climb the tree. Probably a good thing.
    Oh, and now she was just delaying. She glanced down at the clearing, trying to choose the best landing spot. Tracks crisscrossed the deep snow, mostly from their training sessions, and she tried to recall if any one area had seemed softer than the others. Even if it wasn’t, maybe it didn’t matter. The demon had dropped her from a similar height, and it hadn’t hurt too much. Of course, he’d also broken her neck, so she hadn’t felt anything at all.
    And maybe that wasn’t the best thing to think about right now.
    Anyway, the point of this experiment was not crashing into the ground. Her instincts should kick in, her procedural memory should take over. All right. She filled her lungs with a deep breath, and gave a small prayer that it wouldn’t be smashed out of her at the bottom.
    Gathering her body, using the tree trunk as a spring, she leapt out over the clearing . . . and began to fall. Quickly. Oh, shit. Something needed to happen here, her wings needed to pop out and—
    The muscles of her back suddenly locked. Ash cried out in surprise. Sensation exploded through her, strange and new, in places she’d never felt anything before. Places that hadn’t been there before. Cold air rushed over wide expanses of skin. New muscles strained against the onslaught of the wind. From the corner of her eye, she saw one of her wings. Black and leathery, it stretched over a thin frame, like a bat’s wing.
    How did she move them? Why weren’t they flapping? Ash rolled her shoulder, tried to flex the new muscles. Pain ripped along the frame. She’d pushed something the wrong way, and like a fragile kite folding beneath a strong wind, her wing seemed to collapse. Unbalanced, she flipped over, went into a flat spin.
    Oh, God.
    Ash slammed into the snow. White erupted around her, a bit of a cushion but not enough. The impact smacked the breath from her lungs in a painful slap, a punch to the belly, and she didn’t want to fly anymore but just curl up and not move again for a while, but she couldn’t even manage that yet. Everything still spun and she couldn’t quite focus.
    Now the cold surrounded her. The pain wasn’t the same but she could almost hear the screaming—
    No. Not now. She wasn’t going there.
    More rhythmic thuds. Nicholas? These were different, not the sound of an axe, but boots smashing through the snow toward her. Dizzy shock began to fade into awareness.
    Strong hands gripped her shoulders. “Ash!”
    Her wings had already vanished again. Moving still hurt too much. So did breathing. She groaned an answer instead, and Nicholas swore.
    “I’m going to turn you over. Tell me if I hurt you.”
    He didn’t hurt her. Everything just hurt. He pulled her against him, half-propped up against his leg, and she opened her eyes. Tiny snow clumps clung to her lashes, framing her view with white flakes before they melted from the heat of her skin. His face taut, Nicholas brushed more snow from her hair, her jacket.
    “What the hell were you doing? Trying to kill yourself?”
    “No.” Her voice came out thin and hoarse, but her chest was working again. “Trying to fly. But I only managed the worst belly flop ever.”
    He didn’t laugh. His lips thinned, paled with anger. “Do you have any idea what it was like watching that? I can’t even—God.”
    His fingers tightened in her hair. He stared into her eyes, wild emotions chasing across his expression, each one too fleeting for Ash to catch.
    Then he bent his head, and captured her mouth in a kiss.
    Surprise held Ash motionless, then