Sky Knights Read Online Free Page A

if you say it, then you've just admitted it, and an admission can be court marshalled."
    "See? You're worried about me, right?" Dounia asked, making a sharp gesture with both hands. "I'm worried about Tanya. She could get hurt! She doesn't know what she's getting into."
    "Neither did you when you first joined up," Meow pointed out.
    Dounia heaved a heavy breath and looked at the ground. "Who could have ever expected this when we volunteered to fight? Nothing could have prepared us for the sights we have seen or the things that we have done in the name of the motherland."
    "And you do not want Tanya to have her eyes opened to this," Meow finished.
    "No, these eyes have seen too much, and I want her to be spared," Dounia said, peering back around the corner to watch Tanya talk to her fellow aviators. "Look at them all, they're congratulating her. How could they? She is going straight into the mouth of hell. It looks bad enough from the air."
    "She is not a child. It is her own choice, as it was yours. She's the same age now as you were when you first joined."
    Dounia didn't say anything, because Meow was right. She had no right to keep her sister from doing exactly as she herself had done when women were first admitted to the Soviet forces.
    "I want to know what they are saying," Dounia said. "Will you let me listen, brother?"
    Meow flattened his ears, but agreed begrudgingly. "I should not be enabling you in your avoidance manoeuvres, but maybe if you could hear what they were saying, you would cease to act so foolishly. It is a good thing I love you, solnyshko , or I would refuse to put up with this tiptoeing around."
    Meow padded off, and Dounia sat down and leaned back against the wall behind her, closing her eyes and concentrating. Or, rather, not concentrating. She had to let her mind free, set it loose to wander and it would be drawn to Meow's head like a moth to flame.
    She and Meow shared blood, after all.
    Sometimes they could see or hear through each other's senses. She'd gotten Meow's night vision and his ears. Meow had gotten her vocal chords and colour vision. No one who had taken part in the experiment had thought their blood would mingle so much, and it was agreed that they wouldn't try again on a human subject until they were sure it would work as planned.
    It was a good thing that Meow was a witch familiar. Who knows what would have happened if they'd used an ordinary cat. What if their brains had been switched? A familiar had similar intelligence to humans and sometimes formed empathic connections with their chosen witch. Meow was the only proof ever uncovered that familiars actually understood the human language.
    Meow's mind glowed green and violet in her mind's eye, and she followed it until they connected. Each time Meow blinked, the scene around him came more into focus and sound filtered in slowly. She was next to Ira's feet, encased in over-large combat boots worn out from numerous night missions.
    "I've tried everything, Ira, and nothing is working. Any time I get close to her, she runs away and hides."
    That was Tanya's voice from somewhere above them.
    "You have to be patient. She likes to be chased you know. But if you pull away from her, then she'll come to you," Ira said.
    "Is that how you got Dounia, in the end?" Tanya asked curiously.
    "Of course. All the chasing around in the world, and my Dounia was reticent as ever. As soon as I turn away and start ignoring her, she comes to ask why I'm not interested anymore. Of course, I never stopped being interested. And you still want to talk to her, but you must let her come to you."
    "If she would just come back, I would tell her that if she really wanted, I would ask to be reassigned," Tanya said with a sigh and shake of her head. "But she must ask me, I am not just going to do it because I know she wants me to!"
    "Both so stubborn," Ira shrugged. "I have done what I could, but now Dounia is avoiding me as well."
    "And me," Meow grumbled, and his