A warrior. A Phoenix Rider.
Veronyka’s heart swelled at the sight of her—of a woman—at last.
Then Veronyka noticed that Morra leaned heavily on a wooden crutch to support her left leg, which had been cut off from the knee down. And as the woman moved past, Veronyka saw that Morra’s phoenix feathers were black on the ends—dipped in ink and ash, to honor a fallen bondmate.
Her stomach clenched. She’d had Xephyra too briefly to gather a feather, and with her braids gone, there was no evidence that she’d ever had a phoenix at all—no way to openly respect Xephyra’s memory or commemorate their time together.
Even with her short height, Morra somehow managed to look down her nose at Veronyka, surveying her from head to toe. Despite the woman’s humble appearance, when she edged around the table, Commander Cassian hastened to give up his seat to her and took a position standing in the corner next to the boy.
Morra indicated that Veronyka should take the chair opposite, and she did, perching on the edge and gripping her hands tightly together under the table.
They sat in silence for a moment. Who was this woman, and why did she do the commander’s questioning?
A heartbeat later she had her answer.
A finger of magic prodded against the natural barriers of Veronyka’s mind, testing the strength of her defenses. Fear sluiced through Veronyka’s body.
Morra was a shadowmage.
They called me the Feather-Crowned Queen, my brow decorated with phoenix quills, my right to rule written across the stars in fire. They called my sister the Council’s Queen, for she was nothing more than their puppet.
- CHAPTER 14 -
VERONYKA
VERONYKA CLAMPED DOWN ON her panic and schooled her features into her best impression of Val’s emotionless mask. Of all the things she didn’t want to reveal about herself, her possession of shadow magic was high on the list. If they didn’t trust her now, how would they react knowing she had the ability to see into and manipulate minds?
Morra wasn’t inside Veronyka’s head—not yet, anyway. She’d merely taken a cursory glance, and already she was receding, drawing her magic back in as she contemplated her next move. Her magical pressure was nothing like what Val was capable of, which probably meant her ability wasn’t as strong—or not as well honed. It was such a rare skill that even in the Phoenix Rider glory days they hadn’t tested people for it or educated them in its use. Val must have gotten so good because she used it constantly and because it was in her nature to want to control. Luckily, Val’s expertise had trained Veronyka well in how to defend against it.
If she was very careful, she could show Morra enough to prove her answers truthful without opening her mind entirely. Everything she didn’t want Morra to see, she’d lock up in her safe house. If it worked on herself and on Val, it would work on Morra.
With a soft exhalation of breath, Veronyka relaxed her mind. She often pictured her mental defenses as a wall of stones in the middle of a swirling river, the water surrounding her on all sides.
Veronyka stood inside that wall, and within it she was protected from outside influence. Whenever Val would tell her to guard her mind, Veronyka would imagine strengthening the wall, filling in the gaps with small rocks and pebbles, until nothing could get in or out.
When Veronyka’s defenses were at their strongest, the wall was watertight, but she couldn’t show Morra a mind as well protected as that, or she’d become suspicious. Veronyka had to loosen the stones, allowing cracks and crevices between them. This was her mind’s natural state, and as Veronyka opened herself up to external influence, she felt water streaming in through the openings—the thoughts and emotions of the humans and animals nearby.
Veronyka had to ignore the influx of information—the commander’s cold indifference and the boy’s resentful impatience, not to mention the fiery haze in the distance that was surely the phoenixes.
Focusing on herself, Veronyka let her head fill with safe, harmless thoughts, the half-truths that would confirm her answers.
She allowed them to float to the surface of her consciousness, easy for the picking, before turning her attention to that dark corner where her safe house lived, solid and impenetrable. There, with her memories of Xephyra, she could hide the truth of her gender, her own shadow magic, and the source of the dagger. After burying every compromising memory, she reinforced the barriers, walling it off from the rest of her mind, hiding it in plain sight.
“I’m Morra, and I run the kitchens here,” the woman said, drawing Veronyka back to the world around her. “What’s your name?”
As she spoke, Morra’s magic came back—harder and more insistent than before. Veronyka fought her instinct to draw herself inward and trusted that her safe house would hold.
Shadow magic only revealed active thoughts and feelings. . . . Morra couldn’t find what Veronyka refused to think about. All a shadowmage could see was the surface of a person’s mind—their current preoccupations. That was why Morra was questioning her rather than just taking what she wished from her mind.
“Nyk,” Veronyka whispered, pushing the word through her tense lips.
As long as Morra found the truths she sought, she’d have no reason to suspect deception. She was Nyk. She let the truth of it fill her up—and the fact that Nyk was short for Veronyka was unimportant.
Seeming satisfied, Morra pulled back. “How old are you? Twelve, thirteen?” she asked.
“Sixteen,” Veronyka corrected indignantly. She was used to people thinking she was younger than she was, and it was automatic to quickly—and somewhat defensively—set the record straight. In this instance, though, she wished she hadn’t been so rash. Surely it would have been easier pretending to be a young boy than a young man.
The apprentice in the corner snorted in disbelief at her response, further proving Veronyka’s theory.
“Where do you come from, Nyk?” Morra asked, speaking over the boy’s reaction.
“From lower down the mountain, miss. Just outside Vayle.” Again this was a truth, even if the full truth was that Veronyka was born in the valley, in Aura Nova. That, too, was hidden in her safe house. She knew, somehow, that any mention of the valley or the empire would compromise everything.
“Why, then, do you not speak with a Pyraean accent?”
Veronyka swallowed. “I . . .”
“Pyraeans on the lower rim speak with a certain lilt,” Morra continued thoughtfully, “and have a tendency to draw out their vowels. It’s very distinctive. Of course, there are more and more now living in Pyra who weren’t born or raised here. Traders and travelers, refugees . . . spies . . .”
Veronyka clenched her fists. Her maiora had spoken in a rough Narrows accent, and her years of education with the Riders had never quite cured her of it. Val had insisted that Veronyka speak properly—like the noble classes of the empire, without accent or dialect—but it had never occurred to her how that would stand out in a place like this. A hundred excuses sat on the tip of her tongue, but she feared a trumped-up lie would raise more suspicion than the truth.
“My grandmother raised me, and she was educated in Aura Nova.” She had been the one to teach Veronyka reading and writing, but Val was the one who’d drilled pronunciation and syntax into her, making up for what she saw as the old woman’s shortcomings.