Free The Last Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff

who walks in a dream.
    “Your friend is beauti— Maker’s breath, you’re bleeding!”
    Jun slipped down from my shoulders with a wince, hand pressed to the shuriken wound at his shoulder, the sluggish flow of blood seeping down the front of his tunic. The gash at his cheek was crusted over, blood darkening to black in the failing light. Concern in the Lady’s eyes, genuine enough it seemed, her hands hovering as if only now she were afraid to touch him.
    “It is only a scratch, Lady Ami, truly,” Jun said. “I am fine.”
    Face pale. Noble facade cracking in the face of the blood, the muck, the filth around her. And yet, that same steel in her voice.
    “I should tend to it.”
    “Gracious Lady, I—”
    “You saved my life, Jun-san,” the Lady said. “I owe you a debt. Honor demands no less.”
    I GO.
    Jun blinked, looking back and forth between the Lady and me.
    Wait, what? You go where?
    CAN FLY TO FOUR SISTERS FROM HERE. RETURN BY MORNING.
    You will leave me alone with Lady Ami?
    SAFE ENOUGH HERE.
    The boy looked to the woman before him, already unfastening the obi about his waist and gingerly pulling the sticky cloth away from his wounded shoulder.
    It is not danger without I fear …
    MUST SEE HOW SKYMEET FARES. SPEAK KHAN, IF NEEDS BE.
    But will your kin listen? You being female and all?
    MY FRIEND. BROTHER WHO NOT BROTHER. RAHH HIS NAME. HE SPEAK FOR ME IF MALES NOT LISTEN.
    But you will come back, friend Koh?
    I looked the boy up and down. Felt the fear lingering in his mind. Without me, he would be blind again. Without me, he would be alone …
    I RETURN. BY DAWN LIGHT. FEAR NOT.
    Sparing a glance for the woman, I turned and bounded into the sky. The disembodied blooms a storm beneath me, whipped into scarlet showers by the rush of my wings. Circling higher, watching the woman and the boy below, together in that field of swaying, rolling red. In the deepening gloom, it seemed for a moment they stood on an island, surrounded by an ocean of blood. Tide rising higher with every breath. Soon to engulf them both.
    I shook my head to rid it of such foolishness, turning my eyes to the silhouette of the Four Sisters against the blackening sky. Wings thrashing, flying hard as I dared, I cut through wind and cloud toward the place of my birth.
    Hours of solitude. Thoughts of my parents, my brother, the black mess they hacked upon the stone in the days before they died. The same stink spilling from the growling swords of those assassins sent for the Lady Ami. I had not a mind for machinations or the politics of monkey-children, but it seemed to me if the ones who made the sky sick also wished the Lady dead, she or her mate must be a danger. And the enemy of my enemy must be my friend?
    Not all monkey-children could be the same. Not all of them as blind or ignorant as others. A revelation slowly dawning, that perhaps we had misjudged them. Blamed all for the idiocy of a few. But could I convince my kind of the truth? Would my Khan listen to a word of it? Or would his fear of the unknown, the burden of his loss, rule him as always?
    Well past the deep of night, I soared over the frozen peaks and valleys of my home. The chill like a welcome kiss against my cheeks, the thrill of returning almost surprising. How I loved this place; the rolling ice, the groaning wind, the fangs of black granite piercing the sky. How I feared the thought of leaving it behind, and hated the ones threatening to take it away.
    Descending to the Aerie, circling above until I spotted him; curled in the crook of a stone cradle, wings pressed tight to his flanks. The brother who was not my brother. Closer to me than kin. The one I would choose when the first flushing pressed upon me with all its insistent heat. We do not know love as you, monkey-child. But that is not to say we do not know love.
    “Rahh.”
    I alighted beside him, a few others stirring at my approach and grumbling as they curled their heads beneath their wings and drifted