Bonus Excerpt…

His world both ended and began anew with that single explosion. 

A bright flash followed by a quaking boom turned the peaceful home he once knew into a barren wasteland. The shockwave caused an immense and painful pressure in his chest like someone had punched him with the full force of their power. The winged boy stumbled, tears pricking his eyes from the bright flash of light coming through the room’s ruptured windows.

“Keston! Get down!” his grandfather cried, voice barely perceptible over the ringing in Keston’s ears.

Pépé grabbed him and angled him towards the open staircase. Then he was weightless, thrown down the basement steps, stomach in his chest as gravity ripped him towards safety. He was faintly aware of his own screams. 

The younger boy hit the basement floor hard on his side, his shoulder cracking on the landing. His grandfather tumbled down the stairs next to him, his weathered body snapping and breaking with every impact on the wooden steps. His shoulder was excruciating but he forced the pain to become a distant ache as he collected himself and scrambled to his grandfather. Keston barely reached his savior before the older man stood and dragged his grandson away from the exposed base of the stairs. 

Tucked safely in the arms of his grandfather, the winged boy stared at his small view of the open door at the top of the staircase. He continued to cry as the entrance glowed a terrible orange, and a ripping gust sent debris flying like bullets through the opening. Shaking, he covered his ears against the eerie wind that sent even more death and destruction.

In the awful silence following, shock’s painfully cold grip tightened around the boy. 

Pépé squeezed his grandson closer. Keston clung to his protector, his scraped and bleeding palms refusing to release his only remaining certainty. Slowly, Keston looked up at his grandfather’s face, more terror filling his veins at how broken his grandfather looked. Hair covered in dirt, ears bleeding, and glasses fractured, Pépé seemed half dead. 

Keston’s chattering teeth slowed just enough for him to whisper, “Pépé, what happened?” He barely managed that before he broke down into more sobs.

For a moment, Pépé was quiet, his breathing hitched and uneven. When he finally spoke, he struggled to look down at his grandson. “I don’t know.” He sighed. “I don’t know.”

The pair sat there for what felt like decades, huddled together in silence. Pépé’s eyes remained on the ceiling, listening for any sign that could signify hope or certain doom. Keston wasn’t sure what to listen for, but he was too terrified to make a sound. Eventually, satisfied with their safety, Pépé stood painfully slow and cautiously lumbered up the stairs. Each step for the man was laborious, and if the boy hadn’t been frozen in time, he would have rushed to help his grandfather. But he couldn’t move. His limbs refused to listen. 

Panic stung in his chest. What happened to his home?

“Keston, we need to move,” Pépé croaked from the level above. 

The boy shook his head at the demand, the sting in his chest becoming an intense ache. The constant boom, boom, boom as his heart thudded against his ribcage. If he focused too hard on the noise, it sounded like the explosion that had ripped his world to shreds. 

“Now, boy!” Pépé barked again.

The order snapped Keston out of his daze, and he scrambled to his feet. He cried out in pain as he attempted to move his injured shoulder. So much dizzying pain made him want to collapse back to the ground. But Pépé never shouted at him like that, so he couldn’t afford to stop. 

Keston wasn’t prepared for what he saw at the top of the stairs. Spare a few brave remnants of drywall and concrete, the blast had leveled Pépé’s home and holistic hospital. The boy’s amber eyes settled on the crumpled frame of a former gurney, struggling to imagine what level of force would be needed to bend even the stiffest of metals. Pépé’s desk was charred with a few embers scattered across it, still glowing. The sky was ashen and filled with clouds of debris slowly shielding the light of the full moon. Soon, the only light in the town came from the few fires left burning as they fed on the last remnants of houses and buildings.

Then Keston heard the distinct sound of wood splintering and bricks shifting. His ears marked the sound just in time to turn to the remnants of his town’s church. The steeple crumbled and groaned under the explosion’s damage. He barely had time to commit the town’s central landmark to memory before there was one final crack, and the steeple’s brass bell crashed to the ground. A haunting ringing reverberated throughout the leveled town of Mende. 

For the first time, he found a musical note abhorrent.

“Celine,” Pépé gasped his daughter’s name in terror. The older healer looked down at his grandson. “We need to run,” he breathed.

Despite their injuries, adrenaline shielded the pain long enough for the pair to sprint through their town of embers and ruin. Whatever goodness the silver light of the moon once granted that night, the ashes of the fallen town had covered it completely, leaving the frantic pair in demonic darkness. Keston ran next to his grandfather, his young mind finally realizing why Pépé was terrified. Celine’s home may be at the edge of the town, but there was no guarantee that the house had dodged the blast. And his family’s meager cabin didn’t have a basement.

“Mom,” Keston breathed, “Gen!”

The boy ran faster, refusing to believe that a simple choice to help his grandfather sort herbs that night was what separated him from the rest of his family’s fate. Their home was safe, he promised himself. The blast didn’t make it that far. 

He was quickly proven wrong. 

His family’s home. The place where he would practice Chopin with his father, dance the valse musette with his sister, and sing forgotten show tunes from before the Great Disaster with his mother. Now, it was nothing more than a pile of scattered wood and stone, torn to shreds by the explosion’s decimating waves. 

Keston fell to his knees. 

Pépé pulled him to his feet, saying something the boy was too stunned to process. Stumbling, Keston ran the last tenth of a mile to his house. Even the forests beyond their cabin that rested in the grassy meadow were leveled and flattened. Forests he could thank for his stamina that day; forests he used to spend every moment he could spare inside of. 

Ruined.

Keston was little more than a husk as he stared at the house. He was too overwhelmed to help as Pépé began searching the wreckage. “Celine?” The healer cried out. “Genevieve? Celine!” Despite his fractured bones, Pépé continued to wade through the rubble, tears streaming down his ash-coated face, “Can you hear me?”

The boy shook his head, watching the scene. Gone. His family was gone. He could feel it deep in his gut. Was his father buried there, too? Had he returned from work yet? Keston was too overwhelmed to give it much thought.  

His grandfather’s startled cry pierced the ringing in Keston’s ears. The winged boy whipped his head up, eyes going to where Pépé knelt in the wreckage. Before Keston knew it, he was running to the site, his gaze focused solely on one thing: a bloodied hand resting in Pépé’s palms.

“Mom!” Keston screamed. 

Pépé’s shoulders shook as he pulled the limp hand of his daughter to his chest. Keston landed next to him, his lips quivering at the sight. Celine rested face down on the charred ground, her head covered in gore and grime almost beyond recognition. Her light blonde hair was astray, with scattered yellow and blue feathers resting next to the straw-colored strands. 

“Pépé, do something,” the boy whimpered.

As if realizing he wasn’t alone, Pépé turned in shock towards his grandson. The man jumped, quickly moving to shield Keston’s eyes, “You’re too young to see this!” 

But it was too late. Buried beneath the home she had worked so hard to build, Keston’s mother was seared into his mind like the blast marks on the remaining walls of Mende. The boy stared into his grandfather’s palm, the sight of his mother only growing in clarity. Freezing panic smothered him once more and his breathing slowed. His senses narrowed as his teeth started to clench harder and harder.

And in that heightened moment of fear, as the world slowed around him, his young Fera ears picked up on the hitched breathing of a third person. As if possessed, the boy shoved his grandfather away, eyes locking on the spot like an eagle honing in on prey. Suddenly, he didn’t care that his mother wasn’t breathing. In those moments, his only focus was on the person alive beneath her. Against Pépé’s shouts of warning, Keston jumped forward and yanked the wreckage away from his mother, broken shoulder forgotten. 

A fiery strand of hair. Then, two exposed and broken legs. But Keston didn’t let hope fill his chest just yet. He kept digging. Pépé joined in, carefully removing his daughter from under the beam that had ultimately claimed her life. And there, unconscious but still breathing, was Genevieve.

Celine had given her life to protect her daughter from the blast. She hadn’t shielded the younger girl entirely, but her sacrifice hadn’t been in vain. Genevieve’s upper body, though covered in soot and her mother’s blood, was unharmed. Her lower body had borne the damage, but Keston didn’t care. Someone could live without legs.

All that mattered was that his sister would live.

Keston fell next to her. His fingers were cracked and bleeding from his manic digging, but he didn’t care as he raised a shaking hand to run his fingers through her hair. Closing his eyes, he kissed her on the forehead as sobs wracked his body. 

Genevieve’s life was their mother’s last gift. 

At that moment, Keston promised his mother’s ghost that no one would ever hurt their dear Genevieve again.