Read Online Caprion's Wings by T. L. Shreffler - Free Book Online Page A

face fell, and his heart plummeted
with it.
    “Why are you here, then?” she asked
cautiously. Her eyes narrowed. There it was—the face of an
assassin, surprisingly cold and calculating.
    The look gave him
pause. She’s still a
demon , he thought. You can’t trust her. But she
appeared firmly chained to the wall and he couldn't imagine her
breaking loose. She couldn’t attack him, and she was still young,
far from a full-fledged assassin. And perhaps…perhaps she knew
something that could help him. Don’t be a
coward, he thought.
    “I'm looking for answers, I suppose,”
he began softly.
    She gazed up at him, completely
focused. “Answers to what?” she asked curiously.
    Caprion decided to tell her the truth.
"I am trying to earn my wings, you see,” he said, watching for her
reaction. “But I keep having the same dream. That's why I'm here.”
He described it as he had to Florentine that morning. The girl
didn't ask what a Singing was, nor why the dark voice bothered him,
and he wondered if she truly understood.
    When he finished, she sat quietly and
lingered on his story, or perhaps thought of something else
entirely, he couldn't know for sure. The lizard chose that moment
to escape from her hand. It darted agilely up her wrist into the
sleeve of her shirt, and she snatched it with her left hand through
the fabric. With a slight grimace, she pulled it out of her sleeve,
then set the lizard back on the ground, allowing it to scurry
away.
    Caprion stared. Her hand moved so
fast, he hardly even saw it.
    Then she answered him. “Since I came
here, I’ve heard a voice, too.”
    Caprion paused at her words. On
impulse, he knelt down to her level, bringing them eye to eye. “A
voice?” he asked. “Like what I described?”
    She nodded. “Yes,” she said. “It comes
from deep in the earth.”
    “What does it say?”
    She looked troubled. She
shifted, her chains clinking. He had to wonder, briefly, if she was
lying. Her face remained a perfect mask, impossible to read. “It
calls to us through the shadows,” she finally said. “It says find me . I’ve only heard
it twice; I haven’t been here very long. But perhaps it’s the same
voice you hear.” She hesitated and gave him a searching look, as
though deciding if she could trust him. Finally, she said, “The
voice isn’t natural. I don’t trust it. I think…I think it’s a
demon."
    Caprion sat back with a sigh. “Well of
course,” he said. “These halls are full of the Sixth
Race.”
    “No,” she said abruptly.
“I don’t mean an assassin. I mean a demon . Don’t you know
anything?”
    Caprion looked at her
questioningly. Her words reminded him of the conversation between
the Harpy soldiers. A demon in the
crypts. He didn’t know where the crypts
were, but by the soldiers’ words, they had to be deep
underground.
    The girl struggled to keep her stoic,
close-lipped facade of the Sixth Race. But she couldn’t maintain
it; perhaps she was too young for that. “We are children of the
Dark God,” she finally said. “Inside each of us lives a demon, a
shard of the Dark God’s power. We train long and arduously to keep
the demon under control, but sometimes, we let go, we lose
ourselves… and the demon comes out….” She hesitated. “Some
assassins choose to become the demon. They embrace its dark and
violent power—and the human part is lost. Do you understand now?”
she pressed. “This is a demonic voice.”
    Caprion understood—as much as he was
able to. He had learned this before, but he hadn’t studied the
Sixth Race in several years, not since graduating from the Academy.
He hadn’t realized the assassins and the demons were two separate
entities, somehow contained in the same body. In his mind, they
were one and the same.
    He thought of the demon’s sibilant
voice and its threats against his race. His mind worked quickly,
considering his possibilities. If he went to Sumas with his
suspicion, his brother would call it a poor