Tell me why you wanted it! Veronyka asked, frantic now. There was so much she needed to know, and their conversation had been cut far too short. Tell me why—
“Avalkyra Ashfire?” came a voice, surprisingly near at hand. Veronyka spun around to find Sparrow standing at the open door to Wind’s stall. Her hair was mussed as usual, thanks in part to the raven perched atop her head. She stared just to the left of Veronyka, at the stable wall, unable to actually see her, but instead sensing her location by sound—or by the raven’s helpful instructions.
Veronyka’s heart was hammering—she hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud. “What are you doing here?” she asked, though the stables weren’t exactly private. Sparrow had just as much a right as Veronyka to be here at all hours of the night.
“Just been listenin’ around,” Sparrow answered with a shrug.
Listenin’ around? Veronyka thought, perplexed, but shook away her confusion. “I—I must have nodded off,” she said, hastily crouching down to gather her papers and stuff them back into the box. “It was a bad dream.”
Sparrow nodded, as if she knew all too well the plague of nightmares. It made Veronyka feel guilty for lying to her when she’d been very much awake during the exchange she’d just had with Val. With Avalkyra Ashfire… her aunt.
“I better get to the barracks,” Veronyka said, standing with the lockbox. How she intended to sleep after what she’d just learned… She squeezed the thoughts from her mind. She couldn’t afford to go to pieces now, with her audition for Master Rider the next day.
You wouldn’t need to audition if you told them the truth, came a voice from the back of Veronyka’s mind. It sounded like Val’s—cold and imperious—but Veronyka knew it was her own voice, her own thought. You are an Ashfire. You are a queen.
“A-are you coming too?” she asked Sparrow, trying to pick up the fraying threads of their conversation while swallowing down the panic that was rising like a tide in her chest. She glanced out the nearest window, at the inky, star-spattered sky. How long had she been here?
“Nah. Don’t like the barracks. Might go for another walk with this fine fellow,” she said, stroking the raven’s shining black feathers. Upon closer inspection, Veronyka saw that the bird’s face was slashed by a long scar, blinding one eye and leaving a pale, jagged line down to his chest.
“What’s his name?” Veronyka asked, unable to help herself. Maybe Sparrow had found a new companion to take the place of Chirp. She seemed happier than Veronyka had seen her since the attack. She actually looked taller, too, and even her clothes—though dirty and torn in several places—seemed to fit her better, the short, scrawny, half-wild girl Veronyka first met several months ago slowly fading away. Well, partially, anyway. She still had a bird tangled in her hair, after all.
Sparrow snorted. “Won’t tell me. I think he likes it best when I call him ‘fine fellow,’ ” she said.
Despite her distraction, Veronyka laughed. “Nice to meet you, Fine Fellow,” she said, and Sparrow grinned. “I’ve gotta go,” Veronyka said, scanning the ground to make sure she’d gotten all her papers before they exited Wind’s stall together.
Got to, came Val’s imagined reproach inside Veronyka’s mind. Val. Avalkyra. Sister. Queen. Aunt.
Sparrow strolled in the direction of the village gate, and Veronyka wondered idly if she sometimes slept outside or in the stables rather than in the servant barracks. Veronyka didn’t know for certain, but she suspected that Sparrow had been homeless before she’d come here. She’d likely slept in far worse places than Veronyka and Val ever had, and she did so with a smile.
Veronyka clutched the lockbox to her chest. She wished, for the first time in her life, that she was the same nobody she’d always thought she’d been.
When our father died, I learned
what it was to stand together.
- CHAPTER 15 - AVALKYRA
THERE’S NOTHING FAINT ABOUT my heart, Avalkyra Ashfire!
Veronyka’s words rang in Avalkyra’s ears long after she’d broken off their contact.
With a frustrated curse, Avalkyra forced the phoenix she’d been riding to land. It was dark and she couldn’t see, but she trusted the creature enough to make sure they didn’t die on the way down.
They landed—roughly—and the instant she stumbled from the phoenix’s back, Avalkyra fell to her knees and retched.
The phoenix squawked and skittered several feet away, shaking out her wings and tossing her head.
“Be silent,” Avalkyra said, voice ragged. She was too spent to use what little energy she had left on more shadow magic commands. It had taken everything she had to speak to Veronyka through their bond just now, and even then, she’d feared she might lose control over the creature beneath her and fall from the sky to her death.
She sighed. Veronyka had discovered the truth. Avalkyra had known it was coming…. As soon as Veronyka had taken the lockbox, she’d known it was only a matter of time.
Now Veronyka knew who she was, and still she remained tucked away safe inside the Eyrie, out of Avalkyra’s reach. If the realization of her true identity wasn’t enough to draw Veronyka out, Avalkyra feared nothing would be.
With a shaky breath, Avalkyra took in her surroundings. A quiet copse of trees with moonlight streaming through the leaves, and no sign of human habitation. She let her head droop. They should be safe here, for now.
It had taken Avalkyra several days to figure it out, and even now that she thought she had a handle on it, it didn’t make what she was doing easy. Putting a shadow magic bind on a phoenix was no small thing. Phoenixes and humans communicated through animal magic, not shadow magic—except that was exactly what Avalkyra was doing.
It didn’t make sense and it shouldn’t have worked, and yet it did. This was no ordinary phoenix, old as she was, and Avalkyra was no ordinary shadowmage. They said shadow magic was born of death; her mother’s death gave her shadow magic in her first life, and her own death gave her shadow magic in her second. Two deaths. Did that make her magic twice as strong? She wasn’t sure, but she’d had decades to hone and master her dark gift. She might as well make use of it.
Avalkyra thought back to the first time she’d seen the phoenix, standing there among the ruins. Something about her behavior—her speech and mannerisms—had seemed strange to Avalkyra. Strange, and oddly human.
The phoenix had lived for centuries, Avalkyra guessed, her tail feathers longer than Avalkyra was tall. The creature had lived, and lost, and seen much. Too much, perhaps. Avalkyra thought about it often, about how much a single soul could endure. How much she could endure.
That was when she realized why she thought the creature seemed human.
It was her sadness.
A Morian priestess had explained to her once that shadow magic was a communion between minds of equal intelligence. That was why it worked only on humans and not animals, who were less intelligent.
Avalkyra had known there and then that while the priestess might study shadow magic, she certainly didn’t have it. Forgetting the fact that phoenixes were highly intelligent, her statement had still rung false. First of all, Avalkyra could use her shadow magic on any fool without the natural mental instincts—or instruction—to defend against it. And second, she’d come to understand the connection not as a meeting of like minds but as a meeting of shared experiences. Not necessarily in a literal sense, but all humans shared a certain understanding about life and death that most animals never could. That was, after all, the primary distinction between human and animal: awareness of mortality.