“I need the birds,” she said quickly, pushing through the empty tavern and past a burlap flap whose deep color had faded over their years spent in hiding. She entered the storeroom and glanced around the familiar shelves packed full of spirits, wine, tankards, and salted meats. Jumping on top of the stool, she reached over the bottles of wine on the top shelf and extracted a yellowed journal she hadn’t touched in years.
Her brother had followed her into the storeroom. He stood just beyond the burlap flap, staring up at her with pinched brows and a furrow that was all too familiar. He had used it on her many a time before now.
“The birds?” he asked. “Why do you need the birds?”
“It’s time we end this, Mavis,” she said gravely. “It’s time we stopped cowering in the slums. We need to help our people.”
“Mar,” he said hoarsely, his eyes flicking from her face to the journal she clutched tightly against her chest. “You’re scaring me.”
“Aengus killed another royal today,” she said. “That’s the fourth in only a matter of weeks.”
He stared at her for a long moment before throwing up his hands. “That’s none of our concern. It stopped being our concern when the Selkirks killed our entire family and drove us out of the castle! Why do you think we’re still alive, Mar? It’s not because they spared us. It’s because they think we’re already dead.”
“The truth is they don’t think of us at all,” she said quietly but forcefully. “But they will.”
He shook his head, and then threw his arms toward the packed shelves. “We’ve built a good life here. I know it’s a pit of filth out there, but we have a good thing going on in here. You want to help the people? We do. We give them somewhere warm, safe, and happy to go anytime they need it. We don’t need to stalk the streets and dispense justice to help our people. And we certainly don’t need to go charging into the castle, reminding everyone that the Dalais family built this city and that they’re still alive. Aengus is killing traitors, yes? What do you think he’ll do when he finds out we exist?”
Mariel smiled. “He will welcome me with open arms.”
Mavis blinked. “You’ve truly lost your damn mind, Mariel. He will have you killed on the spot, unless he decides to make a spectacle of you like all the rest.”
“He won’t.” She continued to smile. “I have a plan. All I need from you is the location of the birds.”
“You’re actually serious about this.” Shaking his head, Mavis crossed his arms over his chest. “I will not help you with this. I will not be a party to my sister’s death.”
“If you don’t help me, Mavis, then I will merely find the birds from somewhere else,” she said with a dangerous edge to her voice. “And that is less likely to be as safe.”
He ground his teeth together. “Damn you, Mariel. Damn you to the Court of Death. You will be the death of the both of us. You know that, right?”
“No,” she said, smiling. “I will be our rebirth. Prepare yourself, big brother. Once I’m finished with Aengus, no one will ever utter the name Selkirk again. We’re going home.”
Her brother had been very fond of birds when he’d been a boy. Their mother had never approved, but that had not stopped her from supporting Mavis’s strange obsession. She had bought him a flock of birds from the Empire of Fomor, said to live as long as the fae. He’d spent hours nurturing them, training them, loving them. When the Selkirks had sacked the castle, Mavis had cried all the way through their escape, terrified the birds would meet the same bloody fate as the rest.
But the birds had escaped, and they’d found him, despite it all. They were the best trained birds on the continent, or so her brother said. Mariel believed it was far more than that. He’d bonded with the birds. They loved him.
But he could not keep them, not if they wanted to survive in the slums unnoticed. Gutter rats did not have flocks of fully-trained birds.
Instead, he’d hidden them away somewhere safe. He’d never even told Mariel where he’d taken them. Until now.
“I should have known,” she murmured, glancing up at the looming yew trees of the Witchlight Woods. Above, a dozen golden birds perched on the thick branches, the sun glittering off their luminous feathers. “You never would have left them in the hands of someone else, not in the city.”
“Of course not,” he grunted. “The poor get hungry. They’d sooner eat them than feed them precious grain.”
“And you’ve been coming out here all this time?” she asked, arching her brow. “Every single day?”
“Not every day. Once a week, unless things are busy at the tavern.”
“You’ve been giving me so much stick about getting caught, and yet, you’ve been coming out here all this time. If anyone had spotted you…”
“It’s not the same, Mar, and you know it. No one ever comes out here. The Selkirks don’t like these woods, not like we did. They don’t understand it. They think it’s full of darkness and dread.”
But still, if someone had seen him, they would have realized he was more than a mere low fae, though she could not find it within her heart to argue with him. Her brother’s birds were alive and well and thriving from the looks of it. No doubt they preferred the canopy of green to the stone walls of the castle tower. They were free now, like Mariel and Mavis. But Mariel would not be free for long.
“You’ve been eating the sap?” she asked him. No one but Mariel’s family had ever known about the sap. It had left Mariel feeling young when every fae around her had begun to wither and die after the Fall.
“Of course. And you have, too. I can see the glimmer in your eyes.”
“You might have told me,” she scolded but only gently. “I’ve tried time and time again to bring some to you.”
He let out a heavy sigh. “You never asked, Mar. You’ve been so focused on vengeance and death that you didn’t think to ask me what I’ve been doing to stay sane all these years. Well, here you are. This is how.” He gestured up at the woods. There was yearning in his voice, in his gold-flecked eyes. He missed this place just as much as she did, and she’d never even realized.
“You said you liked the tavern life. That we had a good thing going on in the slums.”
“I cannot lie. Those words were truth. But it did not mean I don’t miss home.”
Squaring her shoulders, Mariel nodded. In his attempts to convince her to stop, he’d only added more fuel to the fire in her gut. She knew her brother wanted nothing more than for her to give up this plot and settle in at the tavern, where they would live out their lives without intrigue, and murder, and war. But the war would come for them, whether Mariel did a damn thing about it or not. So, she would make certain they were on the winning side.
“Call them down,” she said. “I’m ready.”
Mavis sighed and let out a low whistle. Two short bursts of high-pitched sound followed by a single low blow. Instantly, the birds pushed off their branches, wings flapping against the strong wind. A million golden feathers filled the air as the birds swooped toward the ground.