“We’ll be outside soon,” she said. An undeniable excitement pulsed through the words. As much as Lyana loved her home and understood the need to remain indoors in such a hostile, cold environment, she’d choose the wintry bite of open air over the palace walls any time.
“Are you sure about that?” Cassi couldn’t help but wonder.
Lyana frowned, shaking her head. “We’re back to this?”
“Well,” her friend drawled, “I just remembered that I ran into Elias with your brother last night, right before bed. Exactly how many cups of hummingbird nectar did you have to plug into him before he agreed to this little plan of yours? Five? Ten? He was flying in zigzags when we left him.”
Lyana shrugged. “I don’t know. A few?”
“That’s what I thought. I’m not sure how hospitable he’ll be feeling after all.”
“Just come on.”
With a roll of her eyes, Lyana pulled on Cassi’s arm, urging her friend to move a little faster. They reached the end of the passage after a few rushed minutes, but before Lyana could pull the door open, a deep voice stopped her.
“Don’t even think about it.”
Lyana paused with a heavy sigh. But it was just an unexpected setback, a little delay, nothing more. She forced a wide smile onto her lips and opened the door. “Morning, Luka.”
Her brother stared back with his arms crossed and his ashy wings outstretched, blocking the door to the outside. The atrium was made of crystals, meant to blend with the surrounding town, and it was lit brightly enough to reveal the disapproving lines etched in his dark skin. Two years older, and he never let her forget it. To his left, Elias stood with drooping shoulders, his tan wings folded and his face remorseful.
Lyana wrinkled her nose at him. Traitor.
“It’s not Elias’s fault,” Luka cut in, aware of every thought racing through her mind. “Did you really think I wouldn’t know you’d pull a stunt like this? I didn’t even realize Elias was on duty until I got here this morning to wait with him.”
Lyana spared Elias an apologetic look before concentrating on her brother. “Luka, come on. We’ll only be out for a few hours. I’ll be back before Mother and Father even realize I’m gone.”
He raised disbelieving eyebrows. “When have I heard that before?”
Valid…
“I mean it,” Lyana insisted. “I just want to watch the first house arrive. I just want to get rid of my nerves. I need some fresh air, or I’ll go crazy. Don’t you, of all people, understand?”
“I do, Ana.” His hard gaze softened. Before she could press the advantage, however, his brows scrunched together. “But this week, of all weeks, we need to be on our best behavior.”
Her wings drooped. “Why?”
“You know why. We’re representing our family, sure, but we’re also representing the House of Peace, all our people, all the doves. And most importantly, we’re representing Aethios, god of the sun and the skies. We can’t dishonor that.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Lyana said softly. She stopped short when Cassi bit her lip to keep from commenting. “It’s just, Luka, that’s not all we’re doing. And you know it.”
He sighed but remained silent with his jaw clenched.
Because she had a point.
Yes, they were the prince and princess of the House of Peace, but they were also a boy and a girl about to be paired off with a mate for the rest of their lives in a political partnership, instead of the love match all their friends would someday make.
The heirs from each royal house were currently on their way to her home for the courtship trials—their most honored tradition, during which all the royal matches would be arranged. They were held once in a generation, usually as soon as all the second-born children came of age, though occasionally exceptions were made, as they had been made now. Lyana was a month shy of her eighteenth birthday, but the other families had grown impatient to see their children mated and hadn’t wanted to wait a full year for the next summer solstice.
So tonight, after months of planning, the ceremony was set to begin with the parade of offerings. Tomorrow the tournament would commence, giving each heir a chance to display his or her skills and win the top choice of mate. And in four days’ time, the matches would be determined. While Luka, the firstborn and crown prince, would welcome his new mate into the crystal city, Lyana would be leaving everything and everyone she’d ever known to follow her mate to his lands, as was tradition.
Part of her was excited.
Part of her was scared.
All of her was out of kilter.
If she could just see one prince from another house—not all of them, just one—maybe the nerves that had been fluttering in her stomach for the past month like a flock of wild fledglings would finally go away.
Lyana stepped closer to her sibling, widening her eyes, silently pleading. Her wings lifted and shifted just enough to make her appear small and fragile, like the innocent little sister he still saw her as, despite the evidence to the contrary. A slight wobbling of her lower lip puffed it into a pout. She didn’t have to turn to see her best friend roll her eyes—she just felt it without looking.
Her brother’s icy exterior began to melt. Deep in his honey irises, she could see the shell cracking. He closed his eyes tightly and released a loud, frustrated breath as his body slackened with defeat.
“Every time,” he muttered.
Elias offered him a consoling slap on the back. Cassi shook her head.
Lyana jumped forward and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek, wings rippling in anticipation of the endless sky. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!”
“Yeah, yeah.” He folded his wings, revealing the door to the outside, but didn’t fully step aside. “You’ll be back before noon?”
“I promise.”
“You won’t let anyone see you?”
“I promise.”
“You won’t do anything idiotic?”
“I promise.”
Luka scoffed and turned to Cassi. “You won’t let her do anything idiotic?”
“I’ll do my best,” Lyana's friend replied solemnly.
Luka sighed. “If you get caught by Mother and Father, Elias and I were never here.”
“My lips are sealed,” Lyana promised.
Luka looked at Elias, giving his friend room to stop him from making a decision he shouldn’t, and moved out of the way. Before her brother had time to reconsider, Lyana pushed through the door, sucking in sharply as the frigid air brought an instant tingle to her skin and nearly stole the breath from her lungs. Behind her, Cassi hissed at the cold. But to Lyana, the bite was one of liberation.
She spread her wings and pumped them, muscles awakening and warming her body as she took to the sky, unable to stop herself from sneaking one quick glance behind. There was nothing in the world quite like the flare of the rising sun reflected off the crystal buildings she called home. But in a few days, she’d be leaving. And her destiny was waiting at the sky bridge—in her hollow bones she knew it. She turned her gaze to the horizon, letting her wings and her eager heart carry her toward the unknown.
2
Lyana
They sped across the barren, arctic land, keeping low to the ground. Without the cover of trees or vegetation, Lyana’s warm umber skin and tan furs stood out too much, no matter how well her snowy wings blended into the landscape. And she’d promised her brother she’d keep out of sight…for the most part.
“I see the edge,” Cassi called from Lyana’s right. Her owl vision was superior at far distances, especially in this still-soft morning light, a fact she rarely let Lyana forget. But she didn’t mind. Because to read even the simplest note, Cassi had to wear glasses—a fact Lyana never let her friend forget.
“Do you see the sky bridge?”
“Yup,” Cassi called.
“Anyone there?”
Cassi paused for a moment and shifted her focus, before shouting back, “Not yet.”
G
ood, Lyana thought. It meant they had time to get to their favorite hiding place before anyone could spot them, exactly as she’d planned. One house. That was it. That was all. She hadn’t been lying to her brother. She just wanted to see one house arrive, then she’d fly back, play the good little princess, and do her part.
One house.
She swallowed a tight gulp, but the sound of whistling winds pulled her attention from the future and back to the present. They’d nearly reached the edge. A few feet before the ice and rock gave way to nothing, Lyana flapped her wings, easing her speed for an easy landing. Cassi, on the other hand, preferred to land at a run, shifting her feathers down to slow herself beforehand. Two different wings, two different styles.
What other styles are there? Lyana wondered, gaze shifting to the crystal bridge a few hundred feet to her left. It nearly blended in with the sky as it connected the inner and outer rings of her homeland. Theirs was the House of Peace, and as a sign of peace, no other houses would enter their inner island through flight. Instead, they walked over the bridge, vulnerable and submissive, with their wings tucked against their backs.
She wished she could see them fly, though, all the different houses, because she longed for something new. Sure, the doves had visitors from time to time, but most of the traders didn’t venture inland. Instead, they exchanged their goods at the outposts and towns scattered around the outer loop of her isle, avoiding the hassle of the sky bridge at all costs. Cassi was the only other bird she’d spent a lot of time with, but after so many years, she hardly even registered her friend was an owl and not a dove. They’d been a duo for as long as she could remember, ever since the day the guards had found Cassi abandoned on the ice and brought her back to the palace. Lyana had begged her parents to let the owl stay, too curious by half about this mysterious orphan discovered in the tundra. They searched for her parents and sent letters to the House of Wisdom, but no one claimed Cassi. Before long, she’d become part of the family.
Now she was old news.
Not exciting, not anymore.
Not like all the flocks flying toward her home at this very moment.
Patience, Lyana thought, hearing the voice of her mother in the back of her mind. Patience.
The lesson her parents always tried to teach—the one she had never bothered to learn. Because she wanted to see it all. She wanted to see everything. The libraries the owls kept. The great plains the eagles scoured. The tree villages the songbirds built. The paradise the hummingbirds cultivated. And more, so much more.
Lyana shifted her gaze from the two icy landscapes and the bridge connecting them to the blue sky that arched above and curved below. Then she looked farther down, and even farther, curiosity leading her eyes to the hazy white fog thousands of feet below.
The Sea of Mist.
According to legend, their floating isles had once been part of the land hidden beneath the fog. They’d been slaves to cruel masters who used magic to keep them weak and subservient. But their people had prayed to the gods to save them, to give them a home where they could finally live free from tyranny, and the gods had listened. Aethios, her patron god, master of the sun and sky, along with six others, surrendered their material forms and used their divine power to rip the isles from the ground, lift them into the sky, and gift their faithful servants with wings. But Vesevios, god of fire, refused to sacrifice his strength and remained below, where a raging sea rushed to fill the void, drowning him and all his power as a punishment for his greed.
Lyana tried to picture the world as it had once been, endless blue from sky to sea and back to sky. They said the waves were once as tall as mountains. That even from the height of her isle, nearly fifteen thousand feet in the air, she could have seen them crash and splash and rage. But the god of fire never forgot how he’d been bested by the other gods, and his anger bubbled under the surface, growing and growing with each year, until eventually the waters turned so hot, they began to boil and steam. And now, no one knew what existed beneath the fog. Water? Barren, rocky land? Molten fire? Nothing? And no one wanted to find out.
No one, it seemed, except her.
Lyana was dying to see beneath the Sea of Mist. To fly through the impenetrable white and discover what lay beyond.
But that wasn’t her future, no matter how she wished it could be.
Her future was here. Now. Waiting across that bridge.
“I think I see movement,” Cassi hissed under her breath.
Lyana blinked, tearing her eyes away from dreams that could never be and focusing on the present. “Let’s get in position.”
Cassi nodded.
Together, they jumped off the edge, wings bearing them aloft and flapping in the strong gusts whipping through the channel. They couldn’t speak over the loud, blistering winds, but they didn’t have to. They’d spent their entire lives sneaking out of the palace to explore what little bit of land they had access to, and they knew it better than anyone else. Just like they knew each other better than anyone else. They didn’t need words as they drifted below the edge, moving as one toward the cave below the sky bridge, hidden under a large outcropping of rough stone. The entrance was masked by shadow, and it was far enough to the side to make it nearly impossible to find, yet it provided a mostly unhindered view of the translucent stones overhead. It had taken the two of them years to discover it, but only a second to claim it as their own.
Lyana soared through the opening, finding a perch before tucking her wings as tightly into her back as possible. Down here, surrounded by rock and shadow, her furs and skin acted as cover, should anyone think to glance down.
Cassi took the empty spot by her side.
“Can you see who it is?” Lyana whispered, hoping her voice wouldn’t carry.
Cassi shook her head. “Not from this angle, not quite.”
They waited, watching silently in absolute concentration.
It wasn't long before Lyana began to bounce on her heels, excitement getting the best of her. “You don’t see anything?”
“Shush. I think—”
They spotted the two blurry figures at the same time. Men, most likely. Old or young, Lyana couldn’t tell, but it wasn’t their faces or bodies that had grabbed her attention as they stepped to the foot of the bridge, getting close enough for her to see them standing at the edge. It was their wings. Their deep ebony wings. Even with her dove eyes, and even from this distance, the black iridescent feathers that somehow both reflected and absorbed the sunlight were unmistakable.
“The House of Whispers.” Cassi all but breathed the words. A moment later, her arm shot out, anticipating Lyana’s itch to lunge forward for a better view. Cassi forced them both deeper into the cave, out of sight.
But the image of those wings was crystal clear in Lyana’s mind. She grinned. “The ravens.”
3
Rafe
“So, this is the infamous sky bridge?” Rafe asked, crossing his arms. “I have to admit, I expected more.”
“Expected more?” Xander snorted, shaking his head. His brother’s gaze shifted to the far side of the bridge, the open channel below, then back to Rafe. “Expected more than a bridge made of clear stones that spans a distance of nearly three hundred feet? You expected more than that?”
Rafe shrugged. “I don’t know, we’ve been hearing about this place since we were kids. I expected something…larger? Grander? I don’t know…” He gestured with his hands. “More.”
Xander laughed. “You’ve always been difficult to please.”
“Me?” Rafe touched his heart in feigned denial. “Maybe I just have high standards. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Maybe you’re just too stubborn for your own good,” Xander mumbled, his voice barely audible above the blistering winds.
But Rafe heard him.
He heard everything his brother said, whether he wanted to or not, because he’d spent his life learning how to pay attention—to his brother, to his people, to anything and
everything that might affect his place in the House of Whispers. That was what the bastard son of a dead king needed to do to earn his keep—love his crown prince unconditionally and leave no room for anyone to ever question his loyalty.
Yet even surrounded by nothing but air and ice, he had no snappy response for his brother. He couldn’t deny that he was stubborn. He also knew why Xander had brought him to the sky bridge so early in the morning, twenty minutes before the rest of their people planned to show up.
“I’m not going to do it,” Rafe murmured.
Xander sighed loudly, but without surprise—with something more akin to frustration. “You have to.”
“I don’t. And I won’t.”
“Rafe, now is not the time—”
“It’s the perfect time, Xander. It’s the only time.”
The crown prince’s midnight feathers bristled, but he took a deep breath, ever the calm, collected brother, and continued with his plan undeterred. Rafe, on the other hand, stepped forward, nostrils flaring as he turned to face his sibling, wings stretching wide even as he tried to rein them in.
“Xander,” he protested.
Patience and unrelenting persistence were Xander's own brand of stubbornness, and he ignored Rafe, pulling free the chain he always wore around his neck to reveal a large ring previously hidden beneath his leather overcoat.
“You have to take it,” Xander said in an unflinching tone.
Rafe preferred to think of this as his brother’s royal voice, because it was a royal pain in his ass. Still, he glanced down at the silver band resting in his brother’s open palm. The polished obsidian stone faced out, mocking him with the royal seal. Rafe had spent his entire life convincing the ravens he had no desire to steal his brother’s throne. And yet, here he was, being asked to do that very thing during the most important week of their young lives.
The Raven and the Dove Page 2