Out in Blue by Sarah Gilman

palms to a tree.”
    He rubbed his own hands and began to pace. “Lark was there, whispering into her ear. I thought he was there to help her, of course, so I ran right to them. I didn’t see the strike, he moved so fast. One second I was reaching for Mother, the next I was face down on the forest floor, held down under Lark’s weight. I fought, but I was ten, and he was a seven-foot demon. The pain was excruciating as he dug the blade into my back, pulling my wing with one hand and cutting with the other.”
    Wren twitched from the flood of bitter regret. At age ten, his psychic talents had recently manifested, but Lark had known and had prepared. He’d worn leather gloves and a jacket despite the summer heat; no skin contact, and Wren’s ability was mute. Otherwise, Wren could have ripped the life from Lark right then and there. If only. If fucking only.
    “The leaves scattered around me, and I saw my father’s wings out of the corner of my eye, then Lark’s weight disappeared from my body. I twisted around and saw Father and Lark fighting. Lark is a legendary warrior, but Father was holding his own. Lark actually stumbled, something I’d never seen before. Father yelled at me to run. The distraction cost him; Lark buried a knife under his ribs.
    “I ran, if you can call it that. With the injury, I could barely move, but I kept going until I found help. No cell phones in those days. By the time the Guardians got back here, my mother, my father, and Lark were gone. Feathers littered the clearing and blood splattered the trees, so much blood, no one doubted that both my parents were dead. They did doubt my assertion that Lark was the perpetrator, until they found my mother around dawn the next morning, with a message from Lark claiming responsibility.”
    “I wouldn’t have believed it, either,” Ginger whispered. “ Why did Lark do this? I had assumed it was the money he’d get for the feathers. But this is too much, too personal to be simple greed. He was a Guardian …”
    Wren flicked his wings. “It’s definitely personal. But I honestly don’t know why. I was a kid. I don’t remember any change in Lark’s behavior, no sign that anything was wrong.”
    Ginger shook her head. “I think children are more perceptive of such things than adults.”
    “I trusted him. Lark saved my parents’ lives and mine only months prior, when Sanctuary was attacked by a large group of extremists. Growing up, he was like a big brother to me, another member of the family. Even seeing him with my mother pinned to that tree didn’t make me think twice. It took the knife in my back to make reality sink in.”
    Wren stared hard at Ginger, wanting to see her rather than the images swirling in his head. No pity showed on her face, to his relief, nor the disgust of someone who couldn’t handle it. But she wouldn’t have a weak stomach, wouldn’t be fragile or naive. She’d grown up in the colonies. She knew the reality all nonhumans faced, even if she’d never before been in the middle of an archangel’s struggle.
    “Thank you,” she said. “It means a lot to me that you were able to share that.”
    “I shouldn’t mean anything to you, Gin.”
    “But you do.” She stepped forward. “How I feel about you is not something Lark has the power to change.”
    “Then you are a very brave, foolish woman.”
    “I can live with that.”
    He pulled her close and kissed her, lingering, giving her all he had, driven by a desperation brought on by the last rays of the sun that glinted over the mountain. Goodbye would come any minute now, with the arrival of Devin.
    And Wren would absolutely not give in to his desire to keep her near. The more he felt for her, the more he had to keep her safe. That meant letting her go, even though the sense of impending loss threatened to crush him.
    When he released her, he took each of her hands in his and ran his thumbs over her fingers. He leaned forward and touched his forehead to