Crown of Feathers

by Nicki Pau Preto

  The Rock was a thrust of stone that held the Nest, the name of the palace that had housed the royal line since Queen Elysia the Peacemaker built it when she founded the empire. They said Queen Elysia chose the rocky outcrop because it reminded her of their abandoned home atop Pyrmont. There, the palace was built, and on the flatter ground surrounding it, the public service buildings, courthouses, and temple district. Marble Row, the street of lavish houses where the provincial governors lived while they were in the city, along with wealthy merchants and other people of importance, was situated on the eastern side of the Rock, where they had a view of the harbor and the Fingers where they sliced through the capital.

  Marble Row had been decimated during the battle and had been in a constant state of rebuild for the fourteen years Sev had lived in the capital.

  “And on the Rock is where the war ended. Just as they were born, they died—together,” Trix continued.

  “Who did?” Sev asked.

  “The princesses—the Ashfire heirs. They were False Sisters, you know. Shadow Twins. Siblings born mere moments apart by the same father and two different mothers. It creates a kind of bond, a connection that goes beyond blood. Avalkyra’s mother was queen, a Rider from an old Pyraean line who died in childbirth, and her sister’s mother had been a wealthy Stellan consort—until the death of the queen, when the king decided to marry her next. Even though Avalkyra was the first legitimate child of the king, his second marriage made Pheronia legitimate as well. And of course, no one was sure which princess was born first. The king never officially named an heir, the old fool, so the girls were pitted against each other from day one. She loved her, though, Avalkyra—she loved her sister, but it’s the strongest love that turns into the strongest hate. And hatred wins wars.” She paused. “Usually. In truth, neither sister won the Blood War. Avalkyra’s phoenix, Nyx, was gravely wounded—I watched from a tower window as both Rider and mount fell from the sky. They landed amid the rubble and destruction near the outer walls of the Nest. Before long, the flames engulfed them both.”

  Her voice had gone hoarse, and she cleared it before continuing.

  “Riders are immune to their mount’s fire, of course, but only while their phoenix is alive to protect them. As for Pheronia, the foolish girl left the safety of her tower room—looking for her sister, some say, hoping to make peace or surrender—and was taken by an arrow as she roamed the palace walls. They brought her to me, you know,” she said, and Sev straightened. He had no idea she’d been so closely involved. He’d assumed that as a spy, she’d simply watched from the shadows.

  “Oh yes. I was an assistant healer working inside the Nest, and of course all the properly trained practitioners were busy elsewhere. They brought that dying princess to me and wanted a miracle.” Trix sighed. “The arrow went clean through her chest. There’s no saving someone from that sort of wound. Still, I did what I could for her. . . . People like to talk about the princesses as if they were seasoned politicians, analyzing every fault and misstep. But seeing her there, dying on my table . . . she was just a girl, barely eighteen, alone and afraid.”

  Sev was eighteen, old enough to be considered an adult and allowed to join the military instead of the labor camps for his criminal sentence. It was hard to imagine having the weight of an empire on his shoulders when he could barely keep his own life together.

  Trix’s gaze was distant, as if she were reliving the past inside her head. Finally she seemed to come back to herself and poked at the fire once more.

  “Now we have no princesses, no queen or king. The governors bicker and squabble, back to their old ways, fighting against one another for every scrap of power and control. It’s been sixteen years, and they’ve yet to get a majority vote for someone to succeed the throne. The prudent ones fear a civil war; the power-hungry ones are simply biding their time. Their provincial armies are only just now coming back to full strength, but soon someone will make a move and seize the power that is there and waiting.”

  “Do you think the Phoenix Riders could do it? That they could put someone on the throne again?” Sev asked.

  Trix looked at him sharply, as if surprised by the question. Her eyes were dark, shadowy pools when she replied. “In truth, I don’t know what their purpose is, hidden as they are up in the mountains. But yes, I believe that one day, they could put a Phoenix Rider queen on the throne again.”

  Sev wanted to ask if she thought they should, but he held back. Surely it would mean more fighting, more wars, and he couldn’t help but feel that the struggle might not be worth it . . . that the Phoenix Riders would return only to be wiped out once more.

  “And what about . . . what happened to your phoenix?” Sev asked hesitantly. Whatever had happened to Trix’s bondmate, it couldn’t be good, but curiosity got the better of him.

  She stared at the flames. They’d burned quite low, only just gilding the bottom of her face. “Her name was Bellatrix.”

  I’d like to be called Trix. She was silent for a long time, and Sev thought the conversation was over.

  “We survived the fighting in Aura Nova,” Trix began, her voice heavy, “because we weren’t in it. I was already positioned inside the Nest and had to maintain my cover. Bellatrix was with the youngsters at Avalkyra’s home base on Pyrmont. It was terrible to be apart, but as I watched the phoenixes drop from the sky, I was grateful. Sick with cowardice and grateful all the same. In the days and weeks that followed, we tried to keep the rebellion alive. I fled my post, but I couldn’t risk leaving the capital—everyone traveling in or out had to provide travel papers and identification. Laws were passed; friends were executed as traitors. To exist was an act of rebellion. Even in Pyra, we were not safe. Avalkyra left nothing in place, no precautions in case she did not return. We were leaderless, all our best warriors dead or imprisoned. Raiders wreaked havoc on our borders, and animages were chased deep into the mountains. But hope lived. She lived.”

  “Who lived? Your phoenix?”

  Trix stilled for half a heartbeat, pain flickering across her face before tossing her stick aside. “Yes. She lived, for a time. She begged me to run away with her. There were still safe places for people like us, deep in the wilds. But I couldn’t.”

  Trix was speaking steadily faster, the words pouring out of her in a rush.

  “I have a duty to my queen, and my work is not yet done. I told Bella that, again and again—she had to remain in hiding, lest she give us both away. When she railed against my orders, I commanded it, with all my might and all my magic. She didn’t listen. Bella was a stubborn old thing,” Trix said, aching tenderness in her voice. Then, in the blink of an eye, her tone went hard. “When they found me at last, they dragged me to the city square. I must admit that I was afraid. I was a spy, so I was always prepared for my own death—but facing it is an entirely new beast. And facing Bella’s? That, I was not ready for. She came for me, wings blazing, shrieking her fury. A dozen soldiers were dead before they managed to hook her with a net and drag her down to earth. I could hardly see, for the tears in my eyes. Bella called to me, and her fear was like fire in my belly. Before I could do more than cry her name, they raised the ax and cut off her head with one fell swoop. A phoenix that’s been beheaded cannot be reborn. That death is final. There was blood everywhere. . . . It sizzled as it spread across the cobblestones.”

  Sev stared at her, unable to banish the horrible image from his mind. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Say nothing,” she said briskly, clearing her throat. “It was years ago now. Water under the bridge. Ashes in the wind.”

  “I’m sorry, Trix,” Sev said eventually.

  “Ilithya,” she corrected. “That’s my true name. Or at least, it used to be. Ilithya Shadowheart. It’s about time you knew it.”

  Sev felt the weight and significance of that name and the fact that she’d given it to him. Thya was short for Ilithya, and Trix was short for Bellatrix.

  There’s so much in a name.

&n
bsp; “I’m sorry, Ilithya,” he corrected.

  “You know what? I prefer Trix,” she said, and gave him one of her wide, mad-looking smiles. Sev found it oddly comforting.

  “Time for sleep, I think,” she said, getting creakily to her feet. “Nothing like tales of the bloody past for a bedtime story. Sweet dreams, Sevro.”

  She squeezed his shoulder, then puttered off to bed, leaving Sev alone by the fireside.

  He wasn’t at all ready to sleep. He wouldn’t be surprised if Trix really did think the history of the Blood War made a good bedtime story, but Sev did not. His mind was racing, filled with images of battles and blood and death.

  He put another log onto the fire and stared into the growing flames.

  Sev knew there was a chance he wouldn’t survive what was to come—that Trix and Kade might not either. But if Trix’s plan succeeded? He and the others would be free. Sev could go anywhere, do anything, with no soldiers left to drag him back to the empire. As much as that was exciting, he ached to have a place to belong when all this was over. To have “friends and loved ones” like Trix. Now that he’d had a small taste of it, he wasn’t ready to let it go.

  “Can’t sleep, soldier?”

  Sev squinted into the darkness, and a second later Kade appeared from the shadows. Sev hadn’t heard his approach, which made him wonder how long the bondservant had been lurking there, just out of sight.

  “Have you been eavesdropping?” he demanded as Kade lowered himself onto a log opposite him.

  “There’s nothing Ilithya could tell you that I don’t already know. Besides, I didn’t want the old woman interfering.”

  Sev settled back into his seat, wary. Kade’s presence always put him on the defensive. “She prefers to be called Trix.”

  Kade snorted. “She’s just being difficult. When we first met, she asked me to call her Princess Pearl.”

  Sev found himself smirking, and Kade grinned too.

  “Are you sure you’re up to this, soldier?” Kade asked eventually, his smile gone. His hands were knitted together in front of him, and he spoke to the flames, not to Sev.

  “You don’t want me involved,” Sev said, not at all surprised by the fact, though still put out by it. He had thought, when Kade argued against his dismissal after the llama incident, that Kade was looking at him differently. That maybe he’d wanted Sev around after all—or at least saw value in his skills. But Kade made no move to deny his words. He took up Trix’s abandoned stick and jabbed angrily at the fire. Obviously Sev was wrong.

  “Well, you don’t have any other choice,” he said bitterly. “So you’re stuck with me.”

  “We can figure something else out,” Kade said, shifting onto the log next to Sev’s, leaning forward as he spoke. “We can find another way.”

  Sev continued to prod at the fire, but he wasn’t really seeing it. “I know I’ve made some mistakes,” he began, trying to keep his voice steady, “but I can do this.”

  “We can’t afford mistakes, soldier. People’s lives are at risk.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” Sev asked.

  “You’re not thinking this through. You realize you’ll be poisoning your fellow soldiers, looking them in the eye right before you turn around and stab them in the back.”

  Guilt gnawed at Sev’s stomach, but he refused to let Kade’s words dissuade him. Of course what they were doing was terrible, but they didn’t have any other options. Besides, if Sev didn’t do it, someone else would.

  “Why can’t you see past it?” Sev demanded.

  “Past what?” Kade asked, his brow furrowed.

  “The fact that I’m a soldier. It’s not who I really am.”

  “Did you see past it before you were one of them? Did you see past it when hundreds of them marched on your family’s farm?”

  “Shut your mouth,” Sev snarled. “I am what the empire—what those soldiers—made me. A motherless, fatherless animage with nowhere to go and no one to trust.” He tossed the branch into the fire and lurched to his feet, stepping over the log and making to stride away.

  Kade stood in front of him, blocking his path. “Do not make the mistake of thinking you are the only person here who’s had a hard life. That you’re the only ‘motherless, fatherless animage’ to be found in this camp.”

  Sev stared at him, at Kade’s rising and falling chest. Was Kade a war orphan too?

  Before he could ask, Kade huffed an exasperated breath and continued. “I understand that life has been hard for you, but people can only judge you by what they see. By your actions.”

  “And what have my actions told you?” Sev demanded.

  Kade shrugged and looked away. He was attempting to stay calm, Sev knew, but the strain was evident in the tense cords of muscle in his neck and the way his jaw clenched. He ran a hand over his short hair, then cast Sev a sidelong glance. “You’re a liar. You’re selfish and reckless. And you care nothing for our cause.”

  Sev couldn’t deny the first three things. He’d lied about being an animage since he was four, and for years he’d only ever looked out for himself. If his two escape attempts weren’t reckless, Sev didn’t know what was. He used to loathe those parts of himself, the same as Kade, but Trix had changed that. When she looked at Sev, she saw all his negative qualities as his greatest potential. She saw someone capable—someone with hidden talents and a dark past.

  Someone just like her.

  “I didn’t care, at the start,” Sev admitted, addressing Kade’s last comment. Or rather, he hadn’t wanted to care. Life was easier when you didn’t care—or so he’d thought. He’d spent so much time afraid of hurting, of losing everything again, that he’d forgotten life wasn’t worth living—worth saving—if you had nothing to live for. “But that’s not true anymore.”

  “What changed?” Kade asked, hand dropping to his side. “You all but begged to be done with this mission.”

  “I don’t know. I . . .” Sev swallowed. Sure, he felt guilt over messing things up, for disrupting Trix’s plans and getting Kade punished—but that wasn’t what had changed for him. The circumstances hadn’t changed, but Sev had. “I’m not sure how things changed, but they did. And I’m not quitting,” he said, shaking his head resolutely.

  Kade stared at him, an odd expression on his features, almost indiscernible in the flickering light of the fire. Was he surprised that Sev was fighting back . . . or maybe pleased?

  “What about you?” Sev asked, carefully avoiding Kade’s eyes. “You hated me at the beginning. Has that changed?”

  “I never hated you,” Kade said quickly—too quickly.

  Sev forced out a rueful laugh. “Now who’s the liar?”

  Ignix was the world’s first phoenix, a female, and Cirix was the first male. Just as they were a mated pair, so too were their Riders.

  Cirix was bound to Queen Nefyra’s lover, Callysta. When she died, Cirix promised to join her, if only for a moment, before coming back to bond with her daughter. And so he did, again and again, remaining in Callysta’s family line for many generations.

  Ignix, on the other hand, has no death or resurrection on record. It is believed she lived through all the ages of the queendom until the founding of the empire, when she was finally lost to history. Most believed she remained in Aura, forever haunting those golden ruins.

  Despite her long life, Ignix never bonded again.

  —Famous Phoenixes throughout History, Princess Darya, published 12 AE

  There is strength in unity, it is true. The bond of blood, the bond of magic. And love, the most powerful bond of all.

  - CHAPTER 28 -

  VERONYKA

  VERONYKA WATCHED, NUMB, AS Val made her way toward them. The crowd parted for her, as Veronyka had known it would—she wouldn’t have been surprised if the very mountains moved to make way for her sister. The bow in Veronyka’s hand fell from her slack fingers, and the sound of it hitting the packed dirt echoed in her ears as if from very far away.

  S
he wanted to run. She wanted to scream. She wanted to scrape that cold, impassive look from her sister’s face.

  “I have to go,” Veronyka heard herself saying, the words slightly muffled as she forced them through unmoving lips.

  “Nyk?” Tristan said, but Veronyka was already pushing past him, through the open gate of the training yard, and intercepting Val before she could enter.

  “What are you doing here?” Veronyka whispered angrily, grabbing Val’s arm and steering her aside. The familiar sight of her sister was unwelcome, wrong here in this safe place Veronyka had found for herself. All she could think about was what Val had done to her. All she could see in her mind were Xephyra’s eyes bulging as she’d fought for life. The memory of the poison was fresh as spring blossoms, and the dizzying, heartbreaking betrayal was like rot in her belly.

  “I go where I please, Ver—”

  “Don’t call me that,” Veronyka snapped. She was leading Val back out the stronghold gates and through the village—she’d have marched Val all the way to the switchback stair, but Val finally planted her feet just outside the metalworker’s quiet shop and refused to move.

  “What shall I call you instead? Nyk?”

  Veronyka reared back slightly. “How did you—”

  Val rolled her eyes. “Look at you. If I hadn’t heard that boy say it, I’d have figured it out when I saw you.”

  Veronyka forgot that Tristan had called her name before she’d abandoned him inside the training yard. A pang of guilt surfaced at the way she’d left him, but she didn’t have the mental space to dwell on it.