She twisted her lips thoughtfully. “I could make good use of a soldier.”
Sev gritted his teeth, the events of the night starting to catch up with him. “For what? What use is a soldier to a bondservant?”
“There are places a bondservant cannot go and things a bondservant cannot access.”
Sev frowned at her. “Like?”
“Like duty rosters, supply lists, weapons . . . ,” she clarified with an airy wave of the hand.
“What if I refuse?”
“Give us a moment, won’t you, Kade?” she said sweetly, and after a breath of hesitation, Kade stomped off into the darkness.
“I thought I made myself clear, soldier,” she said conversationally, turning back to Sev. “Whether you’re an animage or not, I can certainly make you look like one. Cross me, and you’ll have every critter in this forest on your heels. I could make those llamas purr if I wanted to—and they’d do it just for you. They’re a superstitious lot, soldiers are, and you’d hardly be the first person thrown into bondage without proper proof. And when they come for you, I’ll make sure you’re caught with the captain’s gold, silver, and silks, too—just to be certain.”
Sev clenched his fists, his heart thumping in his ears.
“Besides,” she added softly, all hint of threat gone, “you want a way out, and I’m your best chance. Help me, and I’ll help you—that’s a promise, Sevro.”
Sev’s pulse fluttered as he replayed her words. He knew Trix could do all she’d promised—she’d shown him that tonight. Worse, soldiers were the type to act first, think later—and if they suspected he was an animage for even a second, there’d be no going back for him. Add stealing from the captain into the mix . . .
Sev did want a way out. He felt no love or loyalty to the empire or their cause, but he still wasn’t exactly sure how she could be the one to set him free. Unless . . .
“Help you with what?” Sev asked, unease building inside his chest. “What’s your goal?”
Trix smiled warmly at him. “To bring these filthy empire assassins down from the inside, of course.”
It was the death of her mother that ended us. Let me be more specific. It was the death of that regicide-committing, whorehouse-dwelling usurper queen regent that ended us.
- CHAPTER 8 -
VERONYKA
VERONYKA WENT LIMP IN Val’s arms.
Xephyra was dead.
“I did it for your own good,” Val was saying, panting slightly from the effort of holding Veronyka away from Xephyra. “We’ll start over. We’ll get two new eggs and do this together, so I can guide you properly. You weren’t ready—it’s not your fault this happened.”
Veronyka stepped back from her, the silence of the severed bond echoing in her mind. The spot in her heart where Xephyra had burned bright was now a cold, hard lump. With every breath she took, the knot in her chest grew tighter, heavier, until she thought she might suffocate under it.
“You’re right,” Veronyka said, her voice utterly lifeless. Like Xephyra.
Val visibly relaxed, opening her mouth to speak, but Veronyka continued. “It’s not my fault—it’s your fault. You did this. You murdered her!” she finished with a scream. The words ripped from her throat, leaving a raw track of fiery agony in their wake. Her face crumpled, and she had to force breath in and out of her lungs. Xephyra is dead. Xephyra is dead.
And Val had killed her.
“I will never,” she continued raggedly, throat tight with unshed tears, “ever,” she added, needing stronger, better words, but unable to find them in the maelstrom of her mind, “forgive you for this.”
Her hands were shaking. She wanted to hit Val, to make her hurt, but what she did instead was turn away and heave onto the dirt floor at her feet. Painful spasms racked her body, but she hadn’t eaten much that day, and nothing came out except acid regret.
The next thing she knew, Val’s arm was against her back, rubbing circles there. Comforting her.
“Phoenixes died all the time in ancient Pyra, Veronyka,” she said soothingly. “In training, in war, in sacrificial fire dives that set cities ablaze. It’s the animage, the Rider, that matters. Xephyra was just an animal.”
Just an animal. Veronyka wanted to turn around and spit in her face, but she couldn’t make her body move. Xephyra had been more than “just an animal”—more than just a bondmate. She had been Veronyka’s future, her whole world, shattered in an instant.
The last time her sister had tried to “comfort” her had been in the wake of their maiora’s murder.
They’d been running across tenement rooftops and down narrow alleys, until the screams and shouts of the mob faded into distant background noise and then into nothing. Veronyka had finally jerked her arm out of Val’s grip.
“Where are they taking her?”
“To the stars,” Val had said, looking up at the blue sky, where nothing but sunlight shone. It was strange for Veronyka to hear those words from Val when it was her maiora who had taught her that after death the soul rose up into the sky to live among the stars, to be Axura’s light in the darkness of night, where she could not shine.
“Does that mean . . . ? Is she . . . ? Is she . . . ?” Veronyka had faltered, not wanting to know the truth, but needing to hear it all the same.
“She is dead, xe Nyka.”
“Are you sure?” Veronyka whispered, tears blurring her vision at the realization that she’d abandoned her grandmother to that fate. When Val didn’t answer, she’d taken it as an affirmation. “But who will burn her body?”
Val had knelt in front of her then. “Do not cry for the dead,” she’d said, stoic as ever as she’d mopped her sister’s wet face. “Cry for the living—cry for us. Things will be harder from here on out.”
“But . . .”
“Soldiers die all the time, Nyka, and no matter how much she liked to play nursemaid, your maiora was a soldier. We survived. That’s what matters. It’s what she would have wanted.”
Now, in this cold cabin, rage reared up inside Veronyka. Val knew the motions, understood the gestures and the words that were expected, but she performed them like a poor player reciting an epic poem—the moves studied and unnatural.
Val had never shed a tear, said a prayer, or even spoken fondly of their grandmother. Sometimes Veronyka wondered if it was because she wasn’t technically related to them. Their “grandmother” had been their mother’s mentor and dearest friend, and as the war had grown desperate, she had sworn to protect Val and Veronyka if the worst should happen. It had—both of their parents had died during the Last Battle of the Blood War.
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.
She settled on her knees and stared into the flames.
This is not the end.
The sun set.
Dawn came.
Went.
Shadows moved across the ground, and the bright sky outside their window bruised with the coming twilight.
She had kept the fire burning for twelve hours. Then twenty-four, using every scrap of wood from the stack outside.
But just as the fire dwindled, so too did Veronyka’s hope.
She was cold. Bone-chillingly cold. The steady heat that had warmed her all night and all day was gone, the fire nothing but a pile of ashes, softly stirred by the evening breeze.
Her tears had stopped, her eyes so dry that Veronyka didn’t know if she’d ever be able to cry again. They were itchy and swollen and heavy with sleep, but Veronyka continued to watch.
She watched until the last flickering ember went out. It echoed something inside her, some lost piece of herself that Veronyka knew she’d never get back.
Is this what the end feels like?
As intently as Veronyka had watched the flames, so Val had watched her.
Now she put a hand on Veronyka’s shoulder and opened her mouth to speak.
Veronyka jerked away and gathered her belongings. She felt stiff and disconnected from the world, numb in a way that had nothing to do with the cold outside and everything to do with the cold inside.
“Veronyka,” Val said, her tone measured. “Talk to me.”
Veronyka ignored her, tugging on her warm leather boots and grabbing her cloak from the hook by the door.
“Xe Nyka—you need me. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“I do not need you,” Veronyka snapped, her voice raw from the smoke.
Val bristled. “Oh, yes you do. This cabin, that food—the clothes on your back. All of that comes from me.”
Veronyka glared at her. Despite Val’s sharp tone, her eyes were glistening with unshed tears. The sight made Veronyka’s fists clench. Val had
no right to sadness, not in the face of what she’d done.
“Fine,” Veronyka said, kicking off the boots and flinging the cloak onto the dusty ground, leaving behind anything Val had given her. She stood in nothing but the threadbare, undyed tunic and pants she’d been wearing since the previous day—clothes she had made herself. Val called them “farmer’s dreck” and hated the practical worker’s attire. She preferred scraps of expensive silk and faded embroidery, no matter how old, dirty, and worn-out.
“Veronyka, you’ll freeze.”
“No I won’t,” she said, marching over to the edge of the cold hearth and picking up the soldier’s knife from the dirt. “This,” she said, holding it outward and causing Val to stop in her tracks, “does not belong to you.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing!” Val shouted to her retreating back, following Veronyka as she marched out the door.
“Yes I do,” Veronyka said, whirling around. Val stood on the threshold of their home, looking strangely small and forlorn. Veronyka was repulsed by the sight of her. “I’m getting away from you. As far and as fast as my feet will carry me. I would rather die than stay here one second longer.”
Val’s face twisted with rage. “Where will you go? Off searching for Phoenix Riders?” she sneered. “They are gone, Veronyka, and not even your foolish hope will change that.”
“Nothing about hope is foolish,” Veronyka said, turning her back on her sister once more. Val was a determined person, almost to the point of obsession, but one thing she’d always lacked was imagination.
Veronyka couldn’t see the end of the long winding path before her, but she could see the first step. The rest she’d make up as she went along.
“If it’s eggs you’re after, you won’t find any without me,” Val called out, almost desperately, as if searching for some way to slow Veronyka down or make her turn around.
You’re wrong, Veronyka thought, her mind locked tight as she pressed on. About everything.
First she would go to Vayle and Wise Queen Malka’s abandoned outpost. If Val didn’t want her to be able to find an egg on her own, she shouldn’t have told her exactly where to find one.
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