Crown of Feathers

by Nicki Pau Preto

  After that . . . she didn’t know where, and she didn’t know how, but Veronyka would find other Phoenix Riders if it was the last thing she ever did.

  That was the day her loss became my victory, and everything changed between us.

  - CHAPTER 9 -

  TRISTAN

  TRISTAN PERCHED ON THE edge of the rocky cliff, staring down at the steep, jagged drop. The sky was vast above him, with barely a cloud to break the endless blue, and below, his phoenix’s scarlet feathers were the only pop of color among a sea of gray stone.

  The other Apprentice Riders, along with their instructor, stood behind him, awaiting their turn.

  Tristan took a deep breath, steeling himself. It was no small thing to leap blindly into the abyss, timing his jump just right so he landed on the back of his phoenix as he soared far below.

  But this, believe it or not, was the easy part. The hard part? Rex, his bondmate, was supposed to be in full flame when Tristan landed.

  It didn’t get much worse than being a Phoenix Rider who was afraid of fire.

  Maybe, Tristan thought darkly, fighting to keep his legs from trembling, being afraid of heights would be worse. Maybe.

  Logically, Tristan knew that, at least when it came to his bondmate’s fire, he couldn’t be harmed—their bond protected him. An animage bonded to a phoenix had a higher tolerance to all fire, though Tristan had yet to test the theory. Would never ever test the theory.

  He squeezed his eyes shut. Focus.

  Rex’s fire couldn’t harm him—that was what mattered. When an animage and a phoenix bonded, their magic intertwined, and their beings became inextricably linked. Emotions and internal sensations were shared, so that when Tristan felt angry or scared, Rex did too. The same was true of certain abilities. Rex’s immunity to fire extended to Tristan, and likewise, Tristan’s use of language and communication expanded the phoenix’s mind beyond what it would become on its own.

  Tristan repeated the reassurances over and over in his head, trying to bury his fear in facts and centuries-old knowledge, but it never worked. Fear, he’d learned, didn’t leave room for logic. It didn’t leave room for much of anything, except mistakes.

  Fear is a luxury.

  It was one of his father’s favorite maxims, lifted from some ancient bit of Pyraean poetry. When Tristan thought about luxury, he imagined fine silks, expensive Arborian honey wine, and gilded furniture. Not a ridiculous fear of fire. But he supposed that while he couldn’t afford those luxuries—not anymore—he could afford his fear even less.

  Rex would try to help, of course, but while their bond would make it easier to time the landing, Rex couldn’t very well stop in midair if Tristan’s muscles refused to make the leap. All their bond would do then was allow Rex to feel Tristan’s terror before he plummeted to his death.

  Calm as the mountain, he told himself, repeating one of the phrases his mother used when he was angry or sullen as a child. She would tell him to look up at Pyrmont and imagine himself as stone, still and quiet and unchanging. He tried it now, pressing his feet into the steady, solid ground beneath him.

  “Whenever you’re ready, Tristan,” prompted Fallon, their instructor, his voice seeming to come from very far away. He was the youngest of the Master Riders to survive the war and something of a hero to a lot of the apprentices. Fallon had both youth and experience—even if he’d been too young to actually fight in the Blood War—and Tristan hated the idea of embarrassing himself in front of him.

  No one knew about Tristan’s fear. They probably thought he was delaying for dramatic effect or trying to one-up Fallon’s demonstration. That was not who Tristan was, but with a Master Rider father who was confident and fearless—and who held the rest of them, particularly his only son, to an impossible standard—many thought Tristan was the same. A hardheaded perfectionist. Serious to a fault.

  “While we’re still young and pretty, Tristan!” shouted Anders from somewhere behind him.

  “When were you ever pretty?” asked Latham, and laughter broke out.

  Tristan clenched his fists. He knew they were only messing around, that they didn’t have any clue what he was dealing with—but their teasing didn’t help things.

  Tristan squared his shoulders, staring at the expanse below, though his vision blurred and slipped out of focus.

  It doesn’t even hurt, he told himself firmly, sensing as Rex swooped back around, leveling out his flight and building his heat to prepare for Tristan’s jump. Even when Rex was blisteringly hot, fire rippling across his feathers, it felt like nothing more than a tingling sensation—like pins and needles, strange and a bit uncomfortable at times, but not painful.

  So what was Tristan afraid of?

  Rex was making his final approach, his focus and determination helping to break up the building terror in Tristan’s mind. His bondmate knew he could do it, and so he knew it too.

  Only, he didn’t.

  It happened the way it did in his dreams sometimes, when he’d see himself in the middle of a battle. The fear would take hold of him, and he’d freeze, unable to move, even to save his own life. His muscles would lock, his heart would stutter, and he’d stand there, immobile, as the world burned around him.

  Rex sensed Tristan’s faltering resolve, throwing his wings out wide to slow his pace, but it was no use. As if time itself had seized, Tristan watched in slow motion as his bondmate floated past while he remained still as a statue on the cliff above.

  A gentle wind disrupted the stillness, ruffling Tristan’s hair and bringing with it the scent of smoke, ash, and defeat.

  Heart heavy with disappointment, Tristan slowly faced the others, pretending not to notice as the other apprentices whispered and muttered behind their hands. Fallon clapped encouragingly, telling him he’d get it the next time—but Tristan barely noticed.

  His father was there, standing next to Fallon, in the space that had been empty moments before. His arms were crossed over his chest, his expression utterly unreadable.

  Tristan’s stomach dropped.

  His father must have arrived while Tristan’s back had been turned; he had seen his son’s failure firsthand.

  And failure—like fear—was something the Phoenix Riders simply couldn’t afford.

  They had been struggling to rebuild for years. After the war, those who weren’t killed or captured had gone into hiding, and even after his father reunited with other survivors, they’d had to scout locations, find resources and funds, and recruit new Riders, all without drawing notice from the empire. It had taken more than a decade to get them where they were now—fewer than two dozen Riders hidden in the wilds of Pyrmont—and they still had so far to go.

  Too far, Tristan thought desperately. Only with a strong Rider force could they hope to defend their lands and protect their people. Tristan had to do better.

  As the next apprentice stepped up, Tristan walked to the back of the group. He tore off his armguard and threw it to the ground. Next came his other armguard and the straps across his chest. One piece after another, Tristan shed the fireproof armor he hadn’t needed because he hadn’t jumped.

  He slouched onto the ground and stared at his clenched fists.

  There wasn’t some devastating story, some horrible event that had led to Tristan’s phobia. It was a little thing, a memory from when he was a child. He’d been quite young—maybe five or six—and playing in his father’s library. He wasn’t allowed in there, of course; the room was like a museum, stuffed with rare art, draped in fine fabrics, and populated with expensive furniture. While playing with a carved onyx figurine of Damian, first King Consort of the Golden Empire—and Tristan’s distant ancestor—he’d accidentally knocked over a candle. It had landed on a rug, and in seconds the small flame had spread, tearing hungrily through the fabric.

  He’d known a singular moment of terror as the flames leapt toward him—fear for himself, but also for the rug, for the books and scrolls stacked three deep in the fine wooden shelves. He
wasn’t supposed to be in this room, and in the space of a few breaths, he’d imagined the whole place burning up with him still inside.

  But it hadn’t. One of the servants had come running, lifted him out of danger, and easily stamped out the rug. It was rolled up, replaced, and never mentioned again.

  Tristan and his father had left that house—a country cottage on the outskirts of Ferro—soon after, all their properties confiscated as they were banished from the empire following his mother’s death. That burning candle was Tristan’s last clear memory of his life before, when things still made sense. After that, his father had become even more distant, always locked away or gone on business, and Tristan had spent more and more time alone with the servants.

  Somehow that moment in his father’s library had become embedded in his mind, laced with a terrible fear—of the burning rug beneath his feet, of his father’s wrath, and of that crawling, spreading, devouring flame.

  He was fine with fireplaces and lanterns and candlesticks. He could even shoot flaming arrows—but there was always a breath of hesitation, a stutter where his body refused to obey his mind. And when that fire leapt free, skittering over dry brush in a forest fire or licking across the scarlet feathers of his bondmate? Something shook loose in him, something he’d not yet been able to fix.

  Rex tried to comfort Tristan as he circled back around, coming to perch next to the rest of the apprentice mounts on an outcrop nearby, but Tristan was in no mood to be comforted. How could Rex possibly understand his struggle? Rex was a firebird. For him, heat and flames were a part of his personality. Whenever Rex was angry or excited, he would grow hot, the same way a human might flush or feel their pulse pounding in their veins. Fire was a phoenix’s lifeblood, and it was their greatest weapon.

  And for Tristan? It was his greatest liability.

  He glanced at his father, hoping for some encouragement or reassurance after his dismal performance, but his father seemed to have forgotten he was there.

  Tristan sighed, watching from the back of the crowd as another apprentice started the exercise.

  Maybe fear of fire wasn’t the problem. Maybe fear of his father was.

  She had changed, but I had changed too. Bloody vengeance and righteous murder will do that to a person.

  - CHAPTER 10 -

  VERONYKA

  THE PROMISE OF FINDING another egg was all that sustained Veronyka during the long, dark walk. She tried not to think of Xephyra, but every now and then her body would wilt, folding in on itself, and a gasp of sorrow would work its way out of her throat. There was a hollowness, a gaping chasm inside her, and it seemed only to grow as the night wore on. The place where Xephyra had been felt oddly numb, and Veronyka’s mind was filled with terrible, ringing silence. Her bondmate had become a part of the way she lived and experienced the world, and now she felt blind, cut off, and vulnerable. She knew she should probably call an owl or night creature to help guide her, but she couldn’t muster the strength or the magic.

  The idea of starting over, of seeking a new bondmate when her first had only just died, made Veronyka’s stomach churn. But it was all she had, the one thing in her life she could cling to. Without it Veronyka feared she would lie down in a ditch and never get up.

  But then she’d think of her maiora’s words and keep on moving.

  Where there is will, there is possibility.

  Veronyka wanted—needed—to be a Phoenix Rider, but not a Rider on her own, isolated and shut away, as Val would have had her. She would be a Rider in a flock, one of dozens, maybe even hundreds, soaring through the sky on flaming wings. Together they would make right the wrongs that had plagued their people since the war. She couldn’t undo what had happened to her maiora and countless others, but she could be a part of the change that made the world safe for them once more.

  Veronyka crossed the bridge into Vayle just before dawn, her legs aching and her throat dry. Villagers were out and about already, fishermen readying nets and boats for a day on the water, while lights glimmered inside the bakery.

  Though Veronyka longed for sleep and the sweet oblivion it would provide, she couldn’t waste her head start. Eventually Val would realize where she had gone and come after her. Veronyka kept looking over her shoulder, expecting to see Val burst from the bushes to drag her home or to berate her for her foolishness. The shadows moved, the trees whispered, but there was no sign of her sister.

  Vayle grew gradually brighter as Veronyka wandered its quiet streets, individual buildings distinguishing themselves with every step she took. Outposts were always on the highest ground available, and Vayle was a village perched atop stony bluffs and rocky hills, each street stacked above the other. The sound of the river helped Veronyka keep her sense of direction through the winding alleys, and by the time she reached the high street, she could actually see the water below, rushing underneath the arching bridge and disappearing down the mountainside.

  Veronyka looked around as she caught her breath after the steady climb. She had a decent view of the surrounding landscape, but of course, most of Pyrmont was rock or tree and not much else. Was she imagining it, or could she see the clearing where the cabin was, just barely out of sight?

  Veronyka turned resolutely around. She didn’t need to look back and down. She needed to look forward—and up. Ahead of her was a row of fine houses, larger than most village cottages, their window boxes bursting with flowers and their shutters coated with fresh paint. Everything looked blue-gray in the predawn, but Veronyka knew the houses would glow in bright pastel shades in the daylight. Behind the houses was a copse of trees rising higher than all the land around it. Veronyka squinted, looking for a stone tower, but the forest was dense.

  The sun was breaking free of the jagged mountain skyline by the time Veronyka crested the hill, practically dragging her leaden legs. Dusty white beams of light sliced the countryside, and she came to a stop in front of Malka’s outpost.

  Or at least what remained of it.

  There was nothing left but a circle of crumbling stones marking the base of the once-tower, with tall shoots of grass and skinny saplings poking up between the ruins. Part of a spiral staircase lay on its side, while other bits of wall or broken statuary dotted the ground.

  “No,” Veronyka whispered, her voice faint with exhaustion. “No.”

  She fell to her knees and squeezed her eyes shut, forcing herself to think. This wasn’t destruction from war or raiders—no major battles were fought this high up Pyrmont, and no bandits or thieves had the machinery required to bring down stone buildings. This must have been deliberately dismantled for materials or because the crumbling tower was no longer safe. Eggs were usually hidden at the highest point of the structure, preferably somewhere reachable only by phoenix. This meant any eggs that might have been here were long gone.

  Veronyka searched anyway.

  She rolled heavy stones and dug through dirt. She hacked at mortar and scraped fingernails into every crack and crevice.

  Despair welled up inside her, crowding her throat. She didn’t remember when she’d started crying, but soon she was so blinded by tears that she was forced to stop her search and sag against a piece of cold granite wall.

  She couldn’t stand it, this gnawing ache. It wasn’t just Xephyra that was missing. It was the part of Veronyka that had bonded with the phoenix, the part she’d willingly given—gone forever.

  Veronyka embraced the emptiness, let it surround and consume her. The exhaustion she’d been fighting off since she’d left the cabin washed over her, and she slumped down onto the grass.

  She was asleep before her head hit the ground.

  When Veronyka woke, the late-afternoon sunlight was hot against her cheeks—and there was a cool obsidian blade pressed against her neck.

  She fought the instinct to jerk away and blinked furiously against the blazing sun, her gaze traveling along the rough shaft of a spear and coming to rest on a young girl. Veronyka relaxed slightly—she’d expected it
to be Val—until the girl slid the flat edge of the weapon along her jawline, expertly applying pressure that forced Veronyka up off her back and onto her hands and knees.

  “What you doin’?” the girl asked. Her voice was surprisingly husky, yet her tone was blunt with the kind of self-assuredness that comes only with youth.

  “Sleeping,” Veronyka said, unable to keep her irritation from leaking through.

  The girl cocked her head, not looking directly at Veronyka, but instead focused somewhere in the middle distance. “In the toilet?”

  Veronyka reared back, horrified. Her gaze flicked around, but there were only indistinct lumps of stone and nothing to suggest that this particular patch of grass was used as a latrine.

  “I don’t . . . It’s not . . . ,” Veronyka stammered, and the girl grinned.

  Her smile was impish, making her seem young again, though Veronyka suspected that only a few years separated them. Her hair was a tangle of honey blond in the warm sunlight, and though tiny objects were visible among the strands, Veronyka was quite certain these items had gotten stuck there by accident and had not been braided in on purpose. Her suspicions were confirmed when she spotted a skein of cobwebs tangled near the girl’s right ear and a live sparrow perched by her left. She must be an animage.

  The girl lowered the spear and straightened from her aggressive stance, letting the weapon dangle carelessly from her hand. “Not a toilet no more,” she said with a shrug. “Still a strange place for a snooze.”

  She jerked her chin in the direction of the stone wall directly behind Veronyka. She hesitated a moment, wary of the girl’s weapon, before turning. The bit of wall behind her had a face carved into it, just barely visible beneath climbing vines and decades of dirt. Veronyka had noted it during her desperate search of the ruins but hadn’t paid much attention to the details. Now she saw that it was a woman’s face, upturned, and in her arms was a round bowl. It was a water deity, Veronyka suspected—they were usually depicted carrying bowls, jugs, and other vessels that held liquid. The inscription was obliterated, but bits of colored glass protruded from the dirt beneath Veronyka’s hands, suggesting the kind of tiled floors common in bathhouses. It must have been a part of the outpost complex.