"You're a deadwing?" Calum reeled as the memory faded. "You're...you're a deadwing."

"I," Idris Opaling shook where she kneeled, "will not allow this to happen."

She slammed her palms into the ground and cracks spread throughout the invisible surface. Calum's wings snapped out as he fell to the ground, pain ripped through his shoulder. The scenery flashed before him at a rapid rate. He was pushed aside as trees sprouted from the ground and rocketed through adolescence. What he thought were clouds or fog, he realized were people moving so fast he couldn't see them. Light and dark flickered like candlelight in the breeze as years passes in mere seconds. The air was filled with a dull roar, he was hearing the stars scrape across the sky.

"You're a deadwing." Calum said above the roar. "You're a traitor to your own kind."

"How dare you say that to me," she growled, her blonde strands fell in front of her eyes. "My own kind?"

A figure flickered in the distance, a man. Then it was night. Calum and Idris were on a white tiled floor just like the one in the room she'd brought him too. Calum might have thought they'd returned to the present if the moon hadn't been full and shining and a young, blonde, Idris Opaling wasn't standing in an archway a few feet away. Loose threads of Calum's breath caught on the back of his throat. Dragging against the floor behind her were two pure white wings, glistening in the moonlight.

Young Idris turned at the sound of footsteps. The man was there. He was her age, and wore the same ceremonial robe.

"You can still come with me, Idris."

The young welven woman pursed her lips and the possibility of escape flashed before her eyes one last time. The flame was immediately snuffed out by cold breeze that rolled in with her clenched fists.

"I can't just leave, I'm the only one who can save us, idiot."

"Idris," his eyes were dark, and soft, "you've never believed what the High Welf told you our whole lives. They'll be no one left for you when we go, no friends, no happiness. I can't understand what happened. Why now?"

Her lip trembled, she bit down on it. "I thought you meant it when you promised you wouldn't leave me alone. I thought making friends here would be different once I tried to be nicer."

"We're still your friends, nothing's changed."

"That's the thing." Idris's hands fell to her sides. "Nothing changed when I came here from the territories, I thought it would be different. It wasn't. I still have-I'm still allowed to play the game in order to survive, and I don't want things to change. It's not like this is the only life I've known. I tried it your way, I was nice to your friends, I didn't report their treason for reward."

"But you changed." The man stated. "It's your treason too."

"I suppressed my true nature," the feathers along her spine rose and ripples like hackles on a stray dog.

His brow curled in frustration. "Why don't you want to do the right thing? Why don't you want to go where deadwings and welves can live in peace?"

"Because they deserve it."

He was taken aback. "They?"

"I'm not one of them," she panted, "you wouldn't understand, I've wanted this my whole life. I owe it all to the High Welf. I owe her everything."

"Idris..." He took a few steps back. "I'm sorry."

"I'm not."

Young Idris snapped her fingers and light flooded the tower. The High Welf materialized from the air with her hands outstretched. The man screamed as his body flailed uncontrollably. He struggled until he was brought to his knees, the tower guards surrounding him.

Calum could still hear his desperate shouts as the High Welf pulled Idris aside.

"I'm proud of you, everything I promised is yours and more if we can catch the other traitors."

The young deadwing beamed. "It's my honor to serve the colony."

Present Idris let out a scream as she struggled to keep her grip on the past. The tower shattered into fragments and Calum watched her memories flashed across each one. He watched Idris take a knife to her back before the fragment was washed in red. He saw her wingless, staring at her reflection and scowling at the picking marks across her shoulders. Her watched as her blonde hair and stubby ears melted away. He watched as she murdered and dissected hundreds of deadwings, most of them children. He saw the river of blood that had been poured over the great granite form of what used to be a powerful dragon. The scenes slowed down and Calum saw Edwin's fragmented, thirteen-year-old face, covered in blood and tears.

"I want it to be you!" Idris's voice screamed from no discernable direction or body.

Then she was in front of him, looming over a shirt-less Tarif. Her dark hair pulled loose from its intricate braid and dancing wildly in front of her face like fire. One hand was around Tarif's neck, the other above her head clutching a silver knife.

Her eyes were sunken into her face, rife with a hunger, a desperation. There was no magic in this place. Her chest heaved up and down, as if she were trying to pull in anything of substance. As if her body desperately craved something only Tarif could give her. That's exactly how it happened.

"You're in so much pain, you want me to relive it." Tarif gasped, there was no fear on his face.

"You don't understand," she sobbed as her arms shook violently, "I can't think straight anymore without wanting to hurt something-someone-it's not fair. It's not fair I can't join you in the Hunt."

"I understand more than you know, but darling," Tarif's colorless eyes were glazed over, "it's not the same for you. You should be safe from the curse if you're a dea-"

Idris Opaling let out a raw, animalistic scream, and brought down the knife. She brought it down again, and again, until her sweat joined his blood spattered on the ceiling and the walls. She didn't stop when she grew breathless. She didn't stop when her body forced her to vomit. She didn't stop even as Calum's tolerance broke. He collapsed to the ground, yelling with his hands clasped over his ears and fighting back against the urge to rip his hair out.

Even in death, Tarif gazed upon her as his god.

Calum gasped as ice water was thrown into his face.

They were back in the High Welf's tower. Idris, with her long blonde hair and wingless body, was scowling at him, holding an empty bucket. He stayed there, shivering and damp, until the waves of nausea calmed down. Calum was only vaguely aware of his fingers buried in the feathers of his injured wings. The dull ache brought a chilling clarity to his thoughts.

"You killed him."

She paused, her back turned, Calum hated how he could see lumps of muscle underneath her robe. "He gave me something I needed; I was just returning the favor."

He couldn't process what she was saying, he couldn't begin to understand.

She gave him no time to start. "You've seen my memories. I'm not worried about what you'll do with them, because I got what I wanted. I'm going to give you a choice Calum. You're going to agree to sacrifice yourself to Woden or I'll kill your delikiae for him and then come back for you."

"I die either way."

"You're the one who submitted to Hostia Law."

"You promised not to hurt him. That's how the law works."

A disconnected smile spread across her face. "No one will care about my crimes when I lead us in a new age of victory over the deadwings."

Calum shivered, wrapping his arms around himself as if that would help. It didn't. The worse part was, this was the end of the line. He couldn't figure out a way out of this. The hot, tempting pressure of tears built up against his cheekbones. He missed his mom.

"If I do what you say, you'll at least give him a head start, right?"

Calum had decided he wouldn't get out of this alive, but he wouldn't let himself die in vain.

"Even if I said I would, you really think I would keep my word with a deadwing?"

"I think you'll keep your word with the moxut moriatur." He had no idea what it meant but Calum had gotten fairly good at guessing with little context.

Something flashed back at him from her face in the way wrinkles appeared at the corners of her eyes and mouth. "Very well. He'll receive a Reaping's head start."

Calum relaxed, letting his shoulders sink. It was only then he realized how much pain he was in. Every bone in his body carried its own weight. Every drop of blood carried its own sins. He had carried his ancestors this far, he liked to think they were proud of him. They would understand his decision, maybe even praise him for it. There was no honor in submitting Idris, at least there wasn't in either of his cultures, but perhaps there was in his family.

"Do what you want with me then," he stared at the ground, "I'm ready to die."

She smiled wide enough to see every tooth.

Idris hadn't bothered to redo her disguise spell. It crossed Calum's mind that in the haze of his surrender, she hadn't noticed. Her blonde hair gathered dirt and grime when she bent down to tie his hands behind his back. She didn't bother tying his wings. He was blindfolded, bound, and before he realized what was happening, shaved.

"You'll arrive at the circle as all your ancestors have before you." Idris whispered between the snips of scissors.

Calum felt his fiery curls fall to the floor, that was when he finally cried.

His head felt cold and naked when the winter air outside braced against him. They received gasps and stares he could feel on the back of his neck as she paraded him across the city once again. She was receiving just as much attention as he was. The word would spread faster than a wildfire, Idris Opaling was not who she desperately thought she was.

Not a single word passed between his lips during his final journey. They probably walked for hours without stopping. Calum was too tired to keep track of the time or the number of his steps. The clock in his body told him he'd have blisters tomorrow. Calum would look forward to that.

When Idris finally peeled the blindfold off his face, Calum faced a dazzling sight.

He was kneeled in the center of a stone circle. It was completely level, and had the exact same carvings and divot in the center as the reaping circle near the Black Hunt Campus. Except here, curled around half of the circle like moonstone clambering for reflection, was a massive stone dragon.

Its head was turned inwards slightly, its eyes closed. The dragons' arms were tucked neatly under its body and its wings were folded tight against its back. The tail thinned and a hefty triangular barb sat at its close, nearly reaching the dragon's nose. It was massive, Calum could easily have sunk between its toes like a parasite.

He knew it was just a statue, that didn't stop his body from shaking.

"Who...?" His voice rasped.

"This is no statue, this is Woden himself." Idris said his name with bitterness. "Has no one told you the legends?"

It's a long story, Holly had said. He remembered his first ancestor, running from the cave with a parcel and an earthquake on his tail. Calum remembered the golden eyes he'd spotted in the avalanche before everything faded to black. The shape of the hill they stood upon suddenly seemed sickeningly familiar.

"It's said that in a time of great sickness, two welves took it upon themselves to steal a dragon's heart, the cure to all illness. Woden, one of the last dragons, woke just as the evil act was committed. He demanded justice, the welfling responsible would be allowed to take the heart for something just as precious in return. He refused, and so Woden faced with a cruel, selfish creature, made so that anyone in the welfling's image would bear that same disease. That cowardly welf would not make the ultimate sacrifice for his colony, so Woden promised as long as the deadwings lived in selfishness, all welves will suffer. All will eventually die, and there would be no one left to remember us."

The last sentence struck a chord of annoyance in Calum, but he bit his tongue. "That's not going to work, you don't care about me."

"No, I don't, but I've made my sacrifices already."

She unwrapped a parcel and presented him with an ancient looking knife. Calum swallowed dryly; suddenly thankful he hadn't eaten all day. The blade was made from the same dark metal he used at the scrying bowl and covered in curly welven font. His mind was flooded with the image of a red-tailed hawk, do not fear death when she offers her hand, the bird had told him. His palm had glowed red with the triangular symbol.

"I have to do it," he rasped.

He could see her eyes reflected in the blade as his fingers grasped the handle.

"Do I," his body felt numb, "do I need to...my heart?"

"What does your blood tell you?" She whispered quietly, taking a few steps closer and hovering over his shoulder.

"Shut up. Just tell me what to do. I don't know what to do." His voice felt very small, his hands looked child-like on the handle of the knife.

The finality of his situation set in like being thrown into the sea. He wanted to see Edwin one last time. He couldn't remember if he'd said goodbye. Maybe one more hug would make his stomach stop eating itself from the inside out. He...he wanted his mom. He wanted to be a small child again, wrapped in his parent's arms. Everything was alright and they were together. They would keep him safe. He wanted to feel safe. He'd been hurting for as long as he could remember.

Calum started to cry.

His knees shook. Earth and stone grasped at his body and he found his arms resting against the face of the beautiful, terrifying dragon. Flecks of darker color appeared were his tears and spit fell against the stone. He thought of the hawk that gave him its blessings. He thought of Edwin's face when he would learn of Calum's death. He thought of his mom and dad, and the sacrifice they'd made for him to live. He started to collapse like the rock around the monster's horrible golden eyes.

"I can't do it." His body was rocked by sobs. "I'm a failure. I'm sorry. I'm sorry this happened. I'm sorry it made you suffer."

Idris Opaling's face pinched. She picked up the knife where it had clattered to the ground. For a moment, she just held it in her hands and studied him while he broke down. For a moment, Calum thought she was going to change her mind. For a moment, he thought she held out a hand to help him up.

He was so tired, he just wanted to feel safe.

"Coward," she whispered under her breath.

He felt the cold sting of metal in his back for just a moment before warmth blossomed across his stomach. Calum looked down, and saw the deep, wine-colored stain spreading across his white shawl. His vision began to swim with flashes of white light and consuming black holes. His body cried out with a sudden, overwhelming exhaustion, it begged him to lay down and close his eyes, just for a moment.

The dragon underneath him started to shake.