Crown of Feathers

by Nicki Pau Preto

  There was barely concealed hostility in the room, and Veronyka couldn’t decide which side was more intimidating: Both had powerful, experienced men and women—and yet the Riders were at their best on phoenix-back, soaring through the open air with bows and spears in their grasp. Here, in a darkened chamber where wax and ink were the weapons of choice, Veronyka couldn’t help but think that the politicians had the true upper hand.

  As she compared and contrasted the opposing forces, something in Veronyka’s mind finally clicked. She understood where she was at last, what she had been dreaming of for years: She was in the heart of the empire more than sixteen years ago, in Aura Nova, and these were the princesses that battled for the throne during the Blood War.

  If the girl across from her was Pheronia, surrounded by her councilors, then Veronyka was occupying the mind of Avalkyra, attended by her rebel Phoenix Riders.

  A heavy silence fell as Veronyka’s dream self twisted a ring on her finger, pressing it into a thick glob of wax on a piece of paper, dark with ink. Her movements were brisk, but Veronyka felt the tremor in her fingers and the hasty, clumsy way she slid the document across the table. The tension in the room reached a crescendo as, with a nod at her advisers, Pheronia tore the sheet of paper in two.

  Veronyka’s dream body leapt to its feet, but her own advisers descended upon her before she could speak or react, gripping her arms and steering her from the room. Veronyka glanced over her shoulder for a last look at the girl who was her sister, but bodies pressed in on her, blocking her from view.

  Shadowy passages, whispered words, and suddenly Veronyka was in a bedchamber. Her people released her at last, and with a command laced with shadow magic, they fled from her presence.

  As soon as the door shut behind them, Veronyka took up a heavy wooden chair and whipped it across the room. It smashed against the wall, shards of wood flying in every direction, but she wasn’t done. She smashed a ceramic jug and tore a silken pillow in half, the plump feathers dancing in the air like snowflakes. Panting, she lurched to a basin of water and splashed handfuls of cool liquid against her hot skin.

  This means war, said a voice in her mind—a voice that was not Veronyka’s.

  As the pool of water beneath her stilled, she dropped her hands and stared into the reflection of the dark bowl.

  Val’s face looked back up at her.

  Veronyka reeled back, casting aside the dream world as the true world came to life around her once more. Birds chirped, grass swished in the breeze, and sunlight beat down.

  Val stood in front of her, so like the reflection in the dream that she felt she stared at a ghost, not a flesh-and-blood person.

  The ghost of Avalkyra Ashfire.

  My heart ripped open, my soul bled, and my very being caught fire.

  - CHAPTER 42 -

  VERONYKA

  “VAL!” VERONYKA SHOUTED, AS her sister turned her back and stepped between the trees.

  Val, Val, Val.

  Veronyka kept repeating the word, out loud and inside her mind, as she chased after her sister. She had the feeling that if she said the word enough times, it would set things right—bring Val back, banish the images from her mind, and give her world equilibrium again.

  But by the time Veronyka was able to scale the rocky hill above the tunnel entrance, Val was nowhere in sight, and Veronyka couldn’t see which direction she’d gone.

  Veronyka tried their mental connection, but it was as silent as the world around her. She squeezed her eyes shut, but it did no good—the Feather-Crowned Queen was there, staring back at her with Val’s face.

  Dread crept up Veronyka’s body like snaring vines, rooting her to the spot.

  Val. Avalkyra. Avalkyra.

  But . . . how?

  Avalkyra Ashfire was dead. She’d died at the end of the Blood War . . . sixteen years ago. Everyone said so. Avalkyra had been burned to death, shot down during the final battle and consumed by her dying bondmate’s flames. But had she stayed dead?

  Morra’s words from weeks ago floated to the surface of Veronyka’s mind.

  All it takes is fire and bones.

  Veronyka stared into the trees, her heart thumping in an uneven rhythm. She had the feeling that Val watched her—and yet she couldn’t unstick her feet, couldn’t seem to follow or call out for her.

  If she did call out, what name would she use?

  Eventually that prickly sensation of being watched receded, and Veronyka made her slow return to the Eyrie, her mind still in a daze. Though she couldn’t remember deciding to go there, when Veronyka climbed out of the cellar, her feet carried her into the kitchens.

  For once, things were quiet in the vaulted room. While the fireplaces that warmed the hall and cooked their food burned hot and bright, the usual dozen or so kitchen helpers and servants were gone, busy tending to other things. Morra manned several large pots that simmered over the flames, while her worktable was covered with bunches of dried herbs and a handful of mismatched jars.

  The room smelled medicinal, and Veronyka assumed Morra was brewing healing potions or sedatives for the people being carted off to the temple infirmary.

  She looked up at Veronyka’s approach, and her smile was full of weary relief. She released the spoon she’d been using to stir and wiped her hands on her apron before limping forward and pulling Veronyka into a warm hug.

  After directing Veronyka onto a nearby stool, Morra held her shoulders for a moment and surveyed her for damage. “You’re all right,” she said, half to Veronyka, half to herself, before leaning back against the table for balance. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost—not surprising, after your first battle—but you’re all right.” She paused, staring at Veronyka’s face. “Aren’t you, Nyk, lad?”

  Was she? Veronyka didn’t know, but she nodded anyway, struggling to find the words to reassure the woman.

  Morra limped away, returning with a hot cup of tea for Veronyka to drink. It smelled of sticky-sweet honey and mottled herbs, and as she sipped, her head began to clear.

  “Morra . . . what did you mean when you said you were looking for resurrections after the Blood War?”

  Her stories about the Mercies had stuck with Veronyka, though she hadn’t been sure exactly why—until now. When Morra had said she was certain she could find someone, Veronyka had thought it was a strange way of phrasing it. As if she hadn’t been talking about phoenixes at all, but people.

  Morra frowned at her before hooking another stool and dragging it over, taking a seat next to Veronyka. She scratched her chin thoughtfully.

  “Phoenixes can be reborn. This you know. But if they are bonded, phoenix and Rider can do the same.”

  Veronyka stared at her. She should feel shocked, completely and utterly bewildered, but after what Val had just shown her . . .

  “It’s a complicated magic,” Morra continued, “and it’s happened only a handful of times since the First Riders. It takes intense magical power, a bond that neither fear nor death can shake. But if done properly, a bonded pair can die a glorious warrior’s death and be reborn together from the ashes.”

  Veronyka drank her tea with a shaking hand, trying to wrap her brain around the idea. Phoenixes were magical, and their ability to resurrect was well-documented—her own bondmate had done it. But the idea that a human could do it was unbelievable.

  Or at least, it would be . . . if Veronyka hadn’t just seen evidence of it with her own two eyes.

  While she’d always had strange dreams, when Veronyka looked back, she realized that those dreams—the ones that featured the two girls—had always been unique. Even as other frequently seen people and places would follow her for weeks, only to disappear, never to be seen again, these girls always returned.

  Veronyka had just assumed they were stubborn memories, clinging to her mind and resurfacing during moments of exhaustion or weakness. Maybe they kept coming back because they puzzled her, so crisp in detail and yet disconnected from Veronyka’s own life. It had never o
ccurred to her to look around the real world for answers.

  To look at Val, the person who always slept by her side.

  Now that she thought of it, Veronyka hadn’t dreamed about the two girls once on her journey to the Eyrie or in the weeks she’d spent training with Tristan—even while other, more mundane dreams beset her. But the night of the solstice festival, the night Val arrived, she’d seen the king’s death.

  Veronyka mentally rifled through all the shadow magic dreams she could remember having in her life—the ones that featured the two girls. This latest vision told her that they were the sisters Avalkyra and Pheronia. Veronyka had seen them study together, walk together, run and play together. She’d seen their father die in his sickbed, while the empire elite like Commander Cassian looked on.

  And she’d seen the dissolution of their attempts at peace and coexistence, thrusting them into the final conflict of the Blood War. What had Val said to Veronyka right before leaving her at the bottom of the Eyrie?

  Then I hope for your sake, Veronyka, that you’ve chosen the right side.

  Sides . . . was that how Val saw things? Since Veronyka wasn’t with her, she was now against her? Was Val still fighting the Blood War, or was she trying to start a new one?

  As Veronyka came back to herself, she realized Morra was scrutinizing her closely. “Has something else happened?” Morra asked, frowning. “It’s not Tristan, is it? Or one of the other Riders? Cassian told me they’d all made it back.”

  “Tristan’s fine. Everything’s . . .” Well, everything was most certainly not fine, but Morra already knew that. “It’s nothing. I just . . .”

  “It’s natural to wonder about resurrection and rebirth, when there’s so much death about,” Morra said, somewhat mollified, though she still seemed troubled by Veronyka’s behavior.

  Before she could say more, several people bustled in, looking for ointments and salves and herb tea. Morra got up to attend to them, and Veronyka slid off her stool and went back outside.

  She offered assistance everywhere she could—to the healer’s helpers who’d retrieved the medicine from Morra, to the builders and laborers who were putting out fires and clearing away detritus, and to the guards who were trying to reestablish a watch and ensure there were no further attacks forthcoming—but everyone turned her away. Even Jana, who had an arm in a sling and was covered head to toe in dust and dirt, insisted that everything was well in hand. People kept telling her to lie down, to relax, to take the opportunity to rest.

  As if her entire world hadn’t just been upended.

  With nowhere else to go and nothing to do, she had no choice but to try.

  The barracks was quiet as she entered, save for the steady breathing of several others who’d managed to slip away for some sleep. Veronyka supposed it made sense to split up the work, to allow some people to rest now so they could relieve the others later.

  She sat on her hammock, swaying gently as she reached into her pocket for her braided bracelet. When she lifted it out, something clanged to the ground and rolled several feet away.

  Veronyka dropped lightly onto the floor, spotting a fat golden bead attached to an auburn braid.

  Fingers trembling, she picked up the piece of hair, knowing it was Val’s. When had that gotten inside her pocket? Veronyka flashed back to when she’d woken up alone with Val, after fainting outside the enclosure. It would have been easy enough to put it inside her pocket when she was unconscious.

  The bead was familiar, yet Veronyka had never really looked at it closely before. Though Veronyka was usually the one to brush and braid Val’s hair, Val was particular about her beads and embellishments, insisting on knotting them in herself. Veronyka had always assumed the golden trinket was fake, some painted piece of wood or stone, but it was heavy in her hand. Turning it over, she realized it wasn’t a bead at all but a ring, knotted into the strands of hair to keep it in place.

  Clutching it tightly, Veronyka climbed back onto her hammock, carefully unweaving the braid and holding the ring up to the light filtering in through the window.

  It was a thick band, though it slipped snugly onto Veronyka’s finger. The face was flat and unadorned, except for an emblem carved into the surface, like a seal.

  Or a signet.

  Veronyka marveled as she recognized the familiar design—spread wings wreathed in flames, with two A’s at its center: the sigil of Avalkyra Ashfire. She’d seen it before, stamped into bits of leather for sale at back-alley markets or painted onto phoenix dedications on the very outskirts of the empire. And, of course, she’d seen it in her dreams.

  Veronyka called up her most recent vision, the moment when Avalkyra pressed her golden seal into the document that her sister then ripped in two.

  Could this be that same ring?

  Slipping it off her finger once more, Veronyka noticed a further engraving on the inside of the band, so small that it was difficult to read, but she managed to pick it out.

  Avalkyra Ashfire, the Feather-Crowned Queen

  B: 152 AE–D: 170 AE

  The numbers were written in the same way they recorded years in the empire—AE stood for “After the Empire,” and the dates ranged an eighteen-year span. Not her supposed reign, then, or even the length of the Blood War. It was a lifespan. Birth: 152 AE. Death: 170 AE.

  Veronyka’s heart thumped as she noticed a second set of numbers below the first.

  RB: 170 AE–

  RB? What could RB stand for? But even as the question popped into Veronyka’s mind, the answer landed on the tip of her tongue.

  “Rebirth,” she whispered. Morra said it was possible, and it would explain a lot about her sister, about her extensive knowledge of history and magic, weapons and warfare, language and politics, as well as her sense of privilege and obsession with control.

  Their conversation from the solstice festival surfaced in Veronyka’s mind, when Veronyka had asked Val why Ignix wouldn’t have revealed herself if she was still alive.

  Maybe she is afraid. Maybe the world has changed too much.

  Val was Avalkyra Ashfire. Veronyka felt the truth of it deep in her bones, in her heart—the certainty of it as strange and wondrous as her bond with Xephyra. But for some reason Val kept this secret to herself. Why?

  Not completely to herself, Veronyka realized, sitting up straighter. Her maiora knew. Ilithya Shadowheart had served Avalkyra Ashfire in the Blood War and had continued to serve her after her resurrection. That was why she had always deferred to Val, always let her rant and rave and spit cruel words. Ilithya was a soldier, and even as a child, Avalkyra Ashfire was her queen.

  Was Morra looking for her fallen queen when she’d been ambushed and lost her leg? Did Ilithya find Val, or was it the other way around? The memory of the day with the snake reared up again, and Veronyka understood why Val had seemed a stranger to her in that moment—because she had been. Ilithya had stood up to protect Veronyka until she’d recognized Val as Avalkyra, her dead sovereign. Val must have used her shadow magic to seek out other animages, trying to find friends and allies, trapped in a child’s body and burdened with the secret of her true self, waiting, searching for her chance to be a Rider again, to be herself again. Val would want to announce her identity from a position of strength and power, not as a penniless, powerless peasant girl. She’d most certainly have been hunted by the empire if she came forward, and besides, she had no bondmate. What kind of Rider queen could she be without a flaming phoenix beneath her?

  Val was as stubborn and prideful as they came, and she might well live and die in anonymity rather than admit who she was and how far she had fallen.

  It had already been sixteen years. Clearly Val had lied about being seventeen, if she had indeed been born the night of the Last Battle. How much longer was she planning to wait?

  Even as the theory started to ease the confusion in Veronyka’s mind, a spool of doubt unraveled in her chest. If Val was the supposedly long-dead Ashfire heir . . . then who was Veronyka?
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  The younger sister, Pheronia, didn’t have any magic, and so therefore had no bondmate and no means of resurrection. Besides, Veronyka didn’t have memories of some past life; the visions she’d seen in her dreams, they were Val’s, from Avalkyra’s point of view, not Pheronia’s.

  Veronyka threw herself back onto her pillows, the signet ring clutched tightly in one hand. Though exhaustion had turned her limbs to lead and her thoughts to water, sleep eluded her.

  Instead she stared at the ceiling, watching the shadows shift and grow and lengthen, until darkness swallowed the room. When she couldn’t stand being alone with her thoughts for one second longer, she went in search of a distraction.

  It was late and most of the work had halted for the night, but Veronyka wandered toward any signs of noise or action, eventually walking through the open doors of the temple infirmary. As she entered the space, the healers, visitors, and mildly wounded moved about the hall, voices hushed as people tried to rest and sleep.

  Large pillars created separation in the wide-open space, outlining a central place of worship, flanked by hallways on both sides. In the middle, priests and acolytes would normally chant prayers amid smoking incense and the ever-burning hearth that represented the Heart of Axura, but they had been recruited to help the solitary healer and the handful of midwives who had volunteered their services.

  Veronyka found Sev on a pallet in the hallway to the left, reserved for those with stable injuries who were on the mend, while the opposite hall housed people who were dying or who hovered on the edge of life and death.

  She was immensely relieved to know he was going to be okay and happier still to find him awake as she approached, propped up against a stack of pillows.

  She crouched down on the floor next to him, feeling awkward and unsure what to do with her hands. “Hi, uh . . . do you remember me?”

  He didn’t seem surprised to see her. “Of course,” he said, turning stiffly to face her. “You saved my life.”