He’d begun to rebuild his life, to rebuild himself. Piece by piece. Day by day. Like I had. Like I still did. This feeling was a part of me, but it wasn’t all of me. I couldn’t just will it away, but I could learn to work through it, and I had. With the help of my friends and family, I had.
Maybe together, we could actually do it.
I am more.
More than this feeling of darkness. More than the urge to give up. More than my pain and my past.
I let out a soft breath. Estrel was alive.
It still didn’t feel real, even as my insides felt as though they’d been carved out with a jagged knife. Somewhere, deep beneath the pain and confusion that had threaded through me, relief flickered. She was alive.
Alive, and waiting for me in Trendell.
Ten
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Kiva asked again as I emerged from the barrack office dressed in my flying leathers.
I gave her a flat look, but I couldn’t really blame her. She’d been there for me through a lot the last few months, and she knew me better than anyone.
“Honestly, not completely, no,” I replied. “But I will be, and for now, that’s enough.”
Once, the news about Estrel would have towed me beneath the current. Now, with Kiva here, with Caliza and Caylus and Res, with all that I’d worked through in the last few months, I knew I had the support to find my way through this too.
Res hopped along beside me, trilling excitedly. He kept “accidentally” buffeting Kiva with his feathers and urging me on with the tip of his beak. I latched on to the elation thrumming through our bond and let it fill me as we entered the main lobby.
Caliza waited with a bridle and leather saddle bundled in her arms and a smile on her face. “I’m so happy I get to see this!”
“What?” Kiva asked. “An adolescent duck falling on its face?”
Res snapped his beak, the only warning Kiva had before her shadow reached out to trip her. I caught her before she could fall, grinning. “Don’t pick fights with the magical crow, Kiva.”
She glowered at Res, who puffed up in response.
I waved away the mild alarm on Caliza’s face. “Come on. Let’s go outside.”
The main training courtyard looked little like I remembered it. What had once been designed for flight and crow training had been transformed into something vaguely reminiscent of the training grounds in the castle at Sordell. Sparring rings, sword practice stations, and archery targets all filled the arena. But remnants of the complex’s old purpose still persisted. A line of massive hoops hung suspended overhead for practicing aerial spins, massive T-shaped perches below them for landing, and the crowning jewel of the training complex: the drop wall.
A massive stone slab four times the height of the nearest building, it’d been formed by earth crows ages ago for flight practice. Steps zigzagged across its flat face, a platform jutting out at each switchback so crows could practice at increasing heights. Normally, a fledging would start by attempting various types of flights on their own, but Res had long ago learned the feel of the wind. Now he just had to account for me.
I took the bridle from Caliza, spinning eagerly to Res. He let out a loud caw, stepping back.
I sighed. “If I lean left and you go right, we’re both in trouble. When we get more comfortable with each other, we can go without it.”
Res eyed me as if he were considering the multitude of heights he could drop me from.
I lifted the bridle. “Is it okay?”
Something like a dramatic sigh grumbled down the link, but in the end, Res lowered his head, allowing me to slip the bridle around his head and beak before securing the saddle on his back. My hands quivered as I worked, and he squawked when I pulled the girth too tight. I winced. “Sorry.”
Res and I walked along the grounds for several minutes, letting him get used to the feel of the leather against his feathers and readjusting anything that wasn’t comfortable for him. Then we climbed onto the highest platform, well away from the edge. Though it seemed the riskiest, starting so high, it was actually the safest way. It gave Res plenty of time to adjust to my weight and correct for it.
Nearly a hundred feet below us, Caylus, Kiva, and Caliza waited.
I looked to Res. “Ready?”
He straightened, puffing out his chest and lifting his head.
I grinned and, with my heart hammering, slid a foot into a stirrup. With a familiar ease, I swung onto his back, settling lightly into the saddle.
Everything stilled. I forgot the whisper of the wind through the trees, forgot the warm caress of the afternoon heat, forgot even the war looming on the horizon.
In that moment, there was only me, and there was Res.
Our bond thrummed. I closed my eyes, letting the feeling fill me. Slowly, the touch of the wind came back, the brush of sunlight against my skin like warm fingers.
Kiva let out a loud cheer, and the rightness of the moment filled me in a rising tide.
After so much loss, after so much pain and blood and death, we were both still here. Resyries was here.
And I was a rider.
I laughed once, loud and sharp. Res flared out his wings, releasing a piercing call. I leaned forward, keeping my weight centered, my knees clear of his wing joints, a thousand of Estrel’s past refrains echoing in my mind: Trust your crow to do the flying. Lean with them. Don’t lead them. You must move as one.
Go. I sent the word down the connection in a flutter. Res leapt, clearing the platform with ease, his wings two massive shadows stretched wide. They caught the current, holding us steady.
I let out a whoop as Res glided smoothly through the air. The wind poured over me in a caress, an old friend I never thought I’d know again. Res’s joy swept through our bond, filling me in rushing waves. It rebounded inside me, paralleling my own, two emotions made one.
I felt the wind brush through his feathers as if they were mine, felt his wings stretch and press against its power. He shifted beneath me, tilting and readjusting, compensating for my presence. But he didn’t falter, not once.
Rosstair stretched out before us like the white sands of an Ambriellan shore. Distant figures stopped to stare, hands lifting to point. Indistinct voices echoed with excitement. I relished being so high up, where the weight of the world dropped away and all that remained was this flight, this moment.
The familiar feel of the wind threading through my hair and nipping at my skin made me feel lighter than I had in months. As we flew in lazy circles, the gentle rise and fall of Res’s body with each wingbeat lulling me into serenity, I closed my eyes and simply let that feeling fill me.
For the first time in a long time, everything felt okay.
Until Res landed. I forgot to keep my weight back, and he went tumbling headfirst into the moist earth. I toppled over his head, landing on my back in a rush of expelled air and staring up at a very disgruntled-looking crow.
The moment the breath returned to my lungs, I laughed.
Kiva appeared with a grin above me. “I could have sworn the goal was to stay on the bird.”
Res swatted her with a wing, and she laughed, offering me a hand that I took. Caliza arrived in a panic, but upon finding me okay, she pressed a hand to her lips. “That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” she said.
I grinned.
* * *
By sunset, Res and I were both sore and exhausted. We’d run through a series of exercises from varying heights, practicing takeoffs, landings, turns, and banks. Once, we’d narrowly avoided running into the drop wall, and another time, he’d flown so close to the trees outside the complex a branch had almost snagged the reins, but we made it through without any broken limbs or feathers.
The first time we dove, I nearly shrieked. Res barely snapped out his wings in time, and it unbalanced him, leading to a
nother tumbling landing. The next time was better, and the next after that, almost passable. I guided him with my knees, helping him learn when to open his wings.
The retired wind crow rider Jenara had told me about joined us partway through the day, but with Res’s wind experience through his storm magic, there was little he could offer besides techniques for fine-tuning Res’s summoning and control when a storm wasn’t already present.
After, we gathered for a quiet dinner in the complex’s mess hall, Caylus tossing Res pieces of chicken while Kiva broke down our escape from Illucia for Caliza bit by harrowing bit until I pointed out that she’d turned as pale as her napkin.
The simple normalcy of dinner with my family and friends stood in stark contrast to the looming future. We were out of time. Come morning, we would leave for Trendell, and I wished so badly Caliza could go with me. But Rhodaire needed her in Aris. Even this trip down to see me had been a luxury we could hardly afford, though I couldn’t express how much I’d needed it.
My world had felt so very far away from me for so long. I was happy to have a piece of it back, if only for a little while.
As Caylus and Kiva cleared the table, Res hopping along beside them for any scraps, Caliza pulled me aside into the empty lobby.
“Are you ready for the alliance meeting?” she asked, fingers already seeking her hair. She wound the strands around and around.
“I have to be, don’t I?” I folded my arms, locking my anxiety inside. “If I can’t convince them, Rhodaire will fall.”
Caliza regarded me with assessing eyes. “You don’t believe you can do it, do you? Why not?”
I started to respond, then stopped. My fears had always felt like shadows waiting to be given shape. If I spoke them, they’d tear free from the darkness and suffocate me. It was so much easier to keep them close. To hold them tight.
But that had only ever made them stronger.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I said. “I’m not a leader, and I don’t have any experience with politics. I’m not you, Caliza.”
Her fingers stilled in her hair. Tentatively, she reached for me, sliding her hand into mine. I let her. Our relationship had always been a volatile thing. So often, we’d wanted the same thing—to excel at our chosen paths, to earn our mother’s respect, to protect Rhodaire—but we’d gone about it such different ways.
Where I had turned to the crows, Caliza had become the perfect princess, then queen, and we’d struggled to understand each other’s decisions. It wasn’t until after Ronoch, after our mother’s death, that we’d realized she was not what had held us together but what had forced us apart.
We’d had to learn to be sisters again. We were still learning.
“You walked into one of the most dangerous kingdoms in the world and faced one of the cruelest, most conniving people I’ve ever met, and you survived.” Her voice was the low rush of a river, gaining momentum. “You hatched a crow beneath her very nose, organized the beginnings of an alliance unlike anyone has ever seen, and turned the heart of the Illucian prince himself.”
Her hand tightened on mine, and I let her pull it to her chest, holding it as gently as a tiny bird.
“You might not be a politician, Thia, but you’ve proven you don’t need to be. I told you once before and I’ll tell you again: you are a tempest of lightning and thunder, and people cannot look away from you. There is a strength to you that lifts others up, and that’s what this world needs right now. Not another politician. You.”
She smiled, the action crinkling the corners of her eyes, and at once I saw our mother in that smile, and also someone else. I saw myself. I saw myself the way Caliza saw me. Powerful. Unyielding. Strong. Because I saw the same things in her.
“You give me strength, and you will do the same for them.” She pulled me close, and for a while, I just let her hold me, safe in the embrace of someone who I knew loved and believed in me.
Who made me believe in myself.
Her voice softened as she spoke again. “Be prepared when you see Estrel. Ronoch damaged her deeply. She lost everything that night too.” She hesitated. “Try to remember that if you can.”
* * *
We said goodbye to Caliza early the next morning with a promise to send a letter when we arrived in Eselin, then rejoined Samra and the crew on the Aizel.
It was a fine Rhodairen autumn day, sunny with a fading chill, and it buoyed the rising hope inside me as we embarked amid a crowd of cheering people.
I slid onto Res’s back, and we leapt from the side of the ship, sailing low over the water before soaring up above the crowd. Res called out, releasing a final thunderclap of goodbye, before we circled back to the ship.
“Show-off,” Kiva muttered as I dismounted.
I grinned. “It makes them happy.”
“And it gives them hope,” Caylus added.
“I wish it could do the same for him,” I murmured with a flick of my eyes toward Onis. The scraggly crewman stood tying off a length of rope, eyeing Res indiscreetly with a sour look.
Kiva clapped me on the back. “Forget him.”
As I turned, the ship’s healer, Luan, approached me. She proffered a letter. “One of the crowd asked me to give this to you, Princess.”
I took it with a frown. “Who?”
“Someone who’d been paid to deliver it. Apparently, it’s been chasing you through the towns you’ve visited.” She shrugged one slender shoulder and retreated.
I tore the letter open with growing apprehension.
My mother knows where you’re going.
I stilled. Ericen.
My head snapped up, and I searched the retreating shoreline for him, but the milling crowd had dispersed into a frenzy of movement, and the white stone buildings were already growing smaller. If he’d ever been here, he was gone now. I returned to the letter’s crisp writing.
Shearen overheard some of your crew discussing it in Isair. I’m sorry, Thia. I didn’t know he’d followed me, and I had to keep up appearances once he was there. I convinced him afterward that I’d wanted to capture you myself, but I’m not sure my mother believed me. She suspects me, but I intend to stay with her to help you any way I can from this side.
I know you don’t trust me, but I’m on your side. I’m sorry it took me so long to say it.
Take care of yourself,
Ericen
The letter crumpled in my closed fist.
A few moments later, Kiva, Samra, and I stood deliberating the letter in Samra’s office.
Aroch had clambered onto Kiva’s shoulders the moment she’d entered and refused to budge. “I don’t believe him,” Kiva said.
“Surprise,” I muttered, and she batted my shoulder. I held up my hands. “I know, I know. I trust too easily and all that. But what if he’s not lying? What if we’re sailing into a trap?”
“He’s the trap!” Kiva exclaimed. “Razel’s probably hoping we’ll abandon whatever we’re planning or turn aside for Aris or somewhere else predictable.”
“Or he’s genuinely remorseful for what happened and trying to help us.”
“What part of he betrayed you don’t you remember?”
“The part where he let us escape!”
Samra stood abruptly, interrupting our debate. “There’s nothing to debate here. Whether the prince’s warning is true or not, we have to get to Eselin. We’ll just have to deal with whatever we find there.”
Her words cooled my annoyance with a sharp chill.
Whatever we found, it wouldn’t be good.
* * *
The trip to Eselin was charted to take just over three days, two at sea and a final day and a half inland to the capital. Res and I spent the first one flying every chance we could. We’d ditched the bridle and begun practicing using his magic while in flight, something that thrilled Caylus but only
inspired more muttered curses from Onis.
On the second day, Caylus pulled me aside to show me some drawings he’d done with modifications he suggested to the saddle make it more lightweight, flexible, and comfortable. He also had a list of critiques. Apparently, if Res adjusted the angles of certain turns, he could gain more momentum through them, thereby conserving energy. Caylus had even drawn diagrams with a series of numbers and arrows I didn’t understand but that he promised were very important.
He’d barely finished speaking before I was back in the saddle, putting it to the test.
It was out on one of those flights that I noticed the clouds. Thick and steely gray, they gathered on the horizon with alarming speed, carried by a rising wind.
Res and I banked back toward the ship, which we’d left a few miles behind with an aim to test his endurance on long flights. By the time we alighted on the deck, Samra was already shouting orders to her crew, the storm visible from the ship.
“Can Res do something?” she asked as I joined her at the quarterdeck.
“We should be able to turn aside the worst of it,” I replied. “But full-blown storms usually take more than one crow to control. You should still take whatever precautions you normally would.”
As the crew prepared the ship, Caylus aiding them, Res and I joined Kiva at the bowsprit to face down the impending storm.
“It’s strangely fitting, isn’t it?” she asked.
“I love a good storm as much as the next person, but I could have done without this one.” The timing of it felt portentous. I glanced up at the snapping flag of the Aizel, a slither of unease unfurling.
The wind came first, tugging at the tied-up sails and lashing waves against the hull. Then the storm enveloped us. What had been a metallic mass of gray clouds when I first spotted it had darkened into something black and raging, as if the very sky warned us to turn back. Rain began to fall in a curtain, and thunder boomed.
Then light split the sky open.
Keep that off us as best you can, I told Res, keeping my thoughts calm even as my nerves jittered. There was a stark difference between a crow controlling a storm they created and controlling one formed by nature. A real storm had a life to it, almost a soul.
The Crow Rider Page 8