Other times Veronyka convinced herself that Val was cut off and distant not because of a lack of feelings, but rather because she hid them, forcing the emotions down as a survival technique.
But that was wishful, childish thinking. Val was every callous word spoken and cruel action undertaken. Val was colder than the River Aurys and more hollow than a solstice festival bell. It was no wonder the second egg didn’t hatch, no wonder that Xephyra had chosen to bond with Veronyka. Val was an empty shell and had nothing in her heart to give.
And now, for the first time, Veronyka was seeing her sister clearly.
She shoved Val aside and lurched toward the door. She couldn’t bear to look at Val or to even glance in the direction of the body. Just the thought of it was enough to leave her dizzy and weak. And she couldn’t be weak—not now.
Val followed her as she rounded the side of the cabin. “Veronyka,” she said, her voice wavering slightly. “Veronyka, stop. What are you—” But as Veronyka started piling firewood in her arms from the stack against the wall, Val’s mouth snapped shut.
Veronyka pushed past her, back the way she’d come, her footsteps slowing as she approached the door. Her jaw trembled, but she clenched it tight and forced one foot in front of the other.
Her vision blurred with unshed tears, but she could still see the body.
Xephyra.
She was as brightly colored as always, vivid red feathers and autumn-gold beak, yet somehow smaller in death than in life.
Veronyka stepped around her bondmate and threw the wood onto the hearth. Showers of sparks and clouds of ash billowed up, and Veronyka breathed deeply.
This is not the end.
Movement sounded behind Veronyka as she stoked the flames, but she ignored Val completely, urging the wood to burn hotter, faster.
Like many things, her maiora had taught Veronyka about phoenix resurrection. She’d explained how phoenixes could live forever if not mortally wounded, but if they had grown weary with the world, they might ignite and choose death—or resurrection—instead.
Her maiora had said the eldest female phoenix in existence had been at least two hundred years old.
“Maybe even older!” she had exclaimed. “The phoenix just turned up one day, mind closed tight as a trapdoor, with no hint of her name or her bondmate. She had the longest tail feathers ever recorded, so putting an exact age on her was near impossible—though she was certainly older than the empire. Imagine all she’d lived through, all she’d seen. Maybe she even remembered the Dark Days, before the queendom, before time itself, when Azurec summoned the first phoenixes to defeat Noct and his endless night and bring light into the world.”
“Axura and Nox,” Val had corrected. She’d risen from her place in a darkened corner of the room and joined them by the fire. Their maiora’s stories had always come at night, when the rowdy Narrows neighborhood around them had grown quiet. Their grandmother had had some training as a healer, so in the daytime, people were always coming and going from the back door, sharing gossip or paying for salves and tinctures.
“Your peasant upbringing betrays you, old woman,” Val had continued, her voice dripping with disdain. “These valley nobles claimed our goddesses and made them into men to suit them. Axura is the sun in the sky; she is light and life, wings and fire, and phoenixes are her earthbound children.” Val had snatched a pitcher of water from the ledge and emptied it into the hearth with a smoking hiss, plunging them into darkness. “Nox is more than just night and shadow. . . . She is a void; she is death—she is the end of everything.”
“What happened to her?” Veronyka had whispered after Val stormed off to brood alone. “The old phoenix?”
Though her grandmother had gone stiff and silent in Val’s presence, the light in her eyes had flickered back to life at Veronyka’s question. “Her bondmate died young, some said, and so she loved the hatchlings best. When the Blood War broke out, many of her charges were slaughtered. She fought for them, with beak and talon and flame, but could not save them all. After that she disappeared, and no one ever saw her again.”
“Dead?” Veronyka had said, disappointed at how the phoenix’s story had ended.
“Or reborn?” her maiora had asked, an enigmatic look on her old, wrinkled face. “Where there is will, there is possibility, Veronyka. Remember that.”
Possibility.
Most of what Veronyka knew about rebirth had been in the form of myths and stories, like the old phoenix who loved hatchlings, but no matter the tale, the resurrections all went the same: Phoenixes were born from fire and ash, and phoenixes were reborn from fire and ash. Veronyka understood the basic principle, the concept of balance that had so recently haunted her dreams. A death for a life.
Phoenixes could resurrect by using their own deaths to fuel their funeral pyres—and their new lives. However, the phoenixes were usually alive when they did this. With Xephyra already gone . . .
This is not the end.
Veronyka would have to start the fire herself and keep it burning through the night. During incubation, you needed to keep a fire blazing hot for twelve hours per egg. Veronyka could only hope the same would apply with a pyre.
After putting all their wood into the hearth, Veronyka cast around for more to burn. She added her woven basket, their rolled-up pallet, and even the window shutters. She hauled the heavy stewpot outside and upended it onto the ground next to their door, the soggy chunks of vegetables sloshing across the packed earth. She picked out the joint of meat Val had boiled for the flavor, her fingertips burning as she carried it back inside and wedged it into the heart of the flames. She added the rest of the bones she’d gathered the night of Xephyra’s hatching, the ones Val had deemed unworthy of their fire, and the broken shells of the egg that did not hatch, the phoenix that never was. Val had ordered her to get rid of them, but in a fit of sentimentality, Veronyka had wrapped them in cloth and hidden them on the windowsill, behind the broken shutters. Her face grew hot as she worked, her hair plastered to her neck with sweat.
Lifting the heavy strands, Veronyka unearthed her newest braid. Feeling Val’s eyes on her, Veronyka took up the soldier’s knife and cut the braid with a savage jerk. Then she tossed it into the fire, the last bit of shell she had left.
The last bit of life.
Veronyka feared it wasn’t enough, even though logic told her Xephyra’s body alone should suffice. A death for a life. They had burned dozens of bones for Xephyra’s incubation, though, and only one egg had hatched. Still, she worried time was a greater concern, that the longer her phoenix’s body was allowed to sit, cold and unmoving, the lesser the chances this would work.
And it had to work.
Putting Xephyra’s empty, lifeless body onto the flames was almost more than Veronyka could bear. She flashed back to the moment of the phoenix’s birth, when Xephyra had stood upon hot coals without so much as a scorch mark. Now her body went up instantly, like dry paper. The flames licked across her spread wings, her curled feet, and Veronyka thought she might choke from the desperation inside her.
This was her bondmate. Xephyra’s pain should be her pain, but Veronyka knew the blistering anguish inside was entirely her own.
Val had been standing against the wall the entire time. She didn’t speak a word, didn’t ask questions or point out mistakes. Good. Veronyka had had enough of Val’s advice.