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Wingbound Series: Book Two
In the second installment of the Wingbound Series, four wingless friends are imprisoned on the floating island. Ledger must get home before an assassin strikes at the heart of Balfour. Facing the dangers of land and sky, he must help them escape and lead them home.
But his adopted brother, Tolliver, won’t leave just yet. He is determined to find his winged family, the ones who threw him away at birth. Will they accept him or execute him? Either way, Tolliver intends to try.
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Turn the page for a sneak peek at WINGLESS.
PROLOGUE
TOLLIVER
“Father sent me for you, and Mother said you were out here.” I pause at the sound of rustling in the bushes. Ledger grabs my arm. He’s hiding something. “Wait. There’s something in the—”
“It’s nothing.” Ledger tries to lead me away, but a muffled sneeze comes from the leafy mass.
I knew it! He is doing something sneaky. Knocking my little brother to the side, I crouch, peering beneath the branches. “Hello,” I say.
“Hello,” answers a female voice.
Ledger is sneaking off with a girl? I frown at her. “Who are you?”
She attempts to stand, but the branches are tangled around her. “I am Alouette.”
Ledger politely introduces me. “This is my brother, Tolliver.”
“Who is this?” I ask, confused by the foreign name. “I’ve never seen her before.” I know every face in Balfour. She has beautiful brown eyes, smooth olive skin, and a white smile.
“She is a...visitor.” Ledger’s vague answer piques my curiosity. We never have visitors.
“From where?” I politely offer her my hand as she struggles to get out of the bushes. She accepts it, and I pull her free. Enormous white wings snap out of the shrubs and into the air behind her, vibrant and alarming. A gasp escapes my mouth and I yank my hand away from the enemy. My fists form in an instant.
“Tolliver, I can explain.” Ledger’s voice squeaks with panic.
“She is Ellerian!” Anger spreads through my body like a brushfire. She is an intruder, a spy.
“I know. It’s okay though, she’s not a threat.”
“Not a threat? She is one of them!”
The trespasser leaps into the air above us and off our land.
“Wait, don’t go,” Ledger calls with one hand reaching out to her. “I know she is one of them, but...” He stretches the other hand out to me.
He has betrayed us all. Frustration flares into my tone. “Does Father know?”
Ledger shakes his head with the look he always has when he is in trouble: wide eyes and bottom teeth bared. It irritates me to the core how he is silent, stubborn, and refusing to face facts. I back away, disgusted with him.
“Please, don’t go!” he begs.
What does he think he is doing with the enemy? I square my shoulders and lower my brows at him. “This is unacceptable.”
He looks skyward. “Please stay.”
“Goodbye, Ledger.” The girl darts to the cloud layer. A blanket of navy and gray conceals her.
My fists clench. Someone needs to knock some sense into him. I wouldn’t mind doing it myself.
“Please calm down,” Ledger says.
“How can you do this? Betraying your own people!” I almost call him a cruel name to get his attention and bring him into reality.
“It’s not betrayal. She’s my friend.” His hands shake. He shoves his hands in his pockets and hunches his shoulders.
“Making friends with the enemy is exactly what betrayal is.” I rub my head in irritation. He isn’t making any sense.
“She was only a little girl when we met. She was curious about us,” Ledger explains. “Mother knows, but no one else can.”
Shocked Mother would tolerate this, my fists tense over and over. I bite my tongue to protect Ledger from the furious words threatening to fly out. He’s lucky I sift through it all. He deserves a reprimand, but not ranting, so I groan and walk away.
“Please, Tolliver. No one can know.” Ledger’s voice echoes down the mountains side.
My feet grind pine needles into the rocks as I stomp over the mountain pass to the Hundred Harvest Tree. By the time I reach the clearing, my jaw aches and my teeth are pulsating from the tension.
Blazing through the village, I burst through the door of our cottage, where Mother is darning a black sock. Ledger says Mother already knows, so her face will tell.
“Ledger is a traitor,” I announce.
Without looking up from her chore, she takes a deep breath and lays the sock aside. There is no surprise in her eyes, no defiance of the truth, only sad eyes and downturned lips.
Panting from the trek, I want to yell again, but the way she silently walks to the back bedroom quenches the red-hot anger in my belly. I follow her. The window over the bed lights her movements to the dresser. She pulls open the bottom drawer all the way out and lays it on the floor. She reaches into the dark space and pulls out a leather book with a strap wrapped around it.
Facing me, she says, “Close the door.”
Dread washes over every last ember of anger, throwing me into darkness. I don’t like not knowing what she’s going to say. It’s as if I’ve fallen into a cavern and have to find my way out blind. I push the door shut and sit beside her on the large bed.
“There is something I’ve wanted to tell you for quite some time. I’ve thought of a hundred ways to tell you, but nothing seemed good enough. I know you, son. You jump to conclusions and argue when you’re wrong or unsure about something. So all I ask for the next few moments, Tolliver, is for you to remain silent until I can tell you everything.”
She turns her brown eyes toward me, pleading and full of worry. They are wrinkled at the corners, and her brows pinch together with a question. Will I remain silent?
“Yes, Mother.”
Her expression softens, and she purses her lips. I have no idea what she is going to say.
“You are Ellerian.”
The words ignite me. My mouth drops open to argue. I want to reject it.
“Tolliver,” she whispers, reminding me of my promise.
She knows me, my nature. Ashamed that I’ve dishonored her, I wait for her to continue. I’m better than that.
“Each year Ellery returns, and on the second day of battle, I journey to the lake. I meet an Ellerian guardian carrying a package. The midwives of Ellery must, by law, dispose of any child born without wings. The king commands them to throw them off the island wherever they are, but many mothers cannot bear the thought of their children being lost to the wind like criminals. So the midwives devised a plan to bring them to Balfour. On rare occasions, the delivered package is crying. Most often they are not. When they are not, I walk over the next ridge beyond the lake and bury them beside their kin.”
She stops, wipes a tear, and continues. “But when they are crying, I feed them, swaddle them, and carry them back to Balfour. That is how you came to be in our family.”
A torrent of emotions makes my head ache. I press two fingers to my temples. How can this be?
She glances at me again. “You were the tiniest child I ever held in my arms. You must have only been hours old or weeks too early. I loved you from the moment I saw you. I was able to hide you in that drawer.” She points to the askew drawer on the floor. “After the Harvest Festival, your father went on a two-month hunt in the North Mountains. I tucked a small pillow in my skirts as if I were pregnant, then bigger and bigger pillows. When enough time passed, Balfour met you for the first time as the blacksmith’s son.”
A deep breath fills my lungs, drawing in everything she is saying. Doubting thoughts reel through my mind. My mouth clenches shut to keep from denying it aloud. No. I am Tolliver, son of Fergus. I am Balfourian. I will be an elder one day and lead our army against—
“I know you have questions, so you may ask them now.” She wipes both of her eyes and lays her hands over the small book in her lap.
I ask the first thing that comes to my mind. “Does Father know?”
She abruptly looks at her hands. More tears flow as she says, “No, he does not.”
I am taken aback. I want to yell at her for the lies, but I don’t understand. “How can he not know? He is your husband. Wouldn’t he have seen? Or heard?”
“I would have told him, had he seen. But he was not accustomed to living with a woman when we were first married. He didn’t know how it all worked. Then the hunt was planned, I had the perfect opportunity. I told him I was due the week after he was to return. He promised to be back in time. So I made sure to bring you forth before his return. When I presented you to him, he was so proud and full of love for you. It didn’t matter to me that you came from another woman, another father, another land.” Her voice trails off.
Another woman. This small woman at my side is not my real mother. Someone else is. Someone with wings.
“She is a midwife.”
“Who?”
“Your mother.” Grief shows on her face as the confession spills out. “She was one of the ones who would send the wingless children as the women birthed. I wasn’t always the one who would receive them on the ground. There was another before me, who handed me the responsibility when she was unable to make the trip anymore. This was done years and years before me. We even buried winged children because families sometimes exceed the allotted number of children permitted by Ellery.”
The more she shares, the more horror must be evident on my face. “It’s okay, Tolliver. I give them a proper burial and honor them, when the Ellerian king thinks it’s right to throw them out like spoiled vegetables.”
“What am I supposed to say to all this? It seems too crazy, too unbelievable. I cannot possibly be Ellerian.” My head won’t stop shaking back and forth. It can’t be true.
Mother opens the tan book in her lap. She flips through many pages, to the middle. It appears that each page is dedicated to one child. A small sketch with a baby’s face, rounded cheeks, closed eyes, and a tuft of hair fills half the page. A name is at the top: Lilstar. A date, probably birth date. A list of attributes: girl, wingless, pale skinned, blonde, blue eyes. Another date: deceased. My chest constricts at the thought of the dead child. She was only a month old when she died.
She turns the page slowly, and my name appears on the next sheet: Tolliver. With a completely different name below it.
Tylanu?
The weight of it all presses down on me until my neck aches, so I rub and stretch the tight muscle.
“You were so small.” She strokes the sketch. Eyes open, hairless, wingless, and alive.
She gives me the book with shaking hands. “I need you to know, you can tell your father if you choose. I will not stop you from being who you truly are.”
“And who is that?” I don’t mean to sound angry, but the pain shoots out of my mouth like a dart from my soul.
“Whoever you choose.”
My pointer finger touches the birth date. “This isn’t right.”
“It is the real one.”
I shake my head, realizing how long she had to wait to bring me out of the drawer. Four months. Can this be true? My head throbs against the only reality I’ve ever known, raging against this new truth. My throat constricts as fear and anger choke the air from me.
A tear drips onto the page.
I am a wingless Ellerian.
