She gave a low coo, throbbing with tender emotion, and I looked at her to find her jewel-like eyes burning into mine. She angled her head and gave my hand a gentle nip with her beak, as close to a kiss as she could manage. My knees suddenly felt weak, and I swallowed over the dry patch in my throat, remembering how we still flew together every night in our shared dreams. God, the ecstasy. God, the torment. Waking up to reality after those dreams, the realization every morning that we could never touch each other again as husband and wife was pure hell. I had to be the first man in history desperately in love with a bird.
My lungs burned as I inhaled air thick with Safire's cedar essence. She continued to coo, the sound of a dove summoning her mate, and tremors shook my spine, a tingling heat in my blood. I touched her crest, my fingers shaking as I ran them over the feathers much as I had caressed her hair when she was human.
My head shot up as Elsa blew her nose--I had forgotten she was in the room. She looked at me with bloodshot eyes, tears streaming down her cheeks.
"Why, Elsa dear, what is it?" I asked.
"The way you look at her, that sound she makes when you do," she stammered. "Sir Merius, you two are breaking my heart . . ." She abruptly picked up a startled Sewell and fled the chamber, the door banging shut behind her.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"Thank you for inviting yourself and everyone else to dinner at the last minute, Father," I said to him in a low voice as we followed the Rankins and Eden into the studio. We had just finished one of Birdley's omelets, stuffed with cheese and herbs and whatever other good things she had been able to gather at a moment's notice, sausages, roasted sweet potatoes, and freshly baked bread. She had outdone herself, and for the first time in weeks, I had actually tasted what I ate.
Father smirked. "If I'd waited for you to issue an invitation, hell would have frozen over. It was Eden's idea anyway. That Birdley's far better than those fancy cooks at court. At least I knew what I was eating for a change."
"She is a good cook," I said.
"Her talents shouldn't go to waste. I think we'll invite ourselves every week, if you don't mind."
I shook my head--he was beyond the pale sometimes. "If I did mind, it wouldn't stop you, so why not?"
"Good." He glanced around. "Where's Safire?"
"Our bedchamber." I hadn't been able to coax Safire from her new creation, even for dinner. She usually had a good appetite and still ate a lot of the things she had eaten when she was human, which had surprised me at first. Birds usually weren't omnivores. It did worry me that she hadn't wanted dinner tonight--could phoenixes become ill? I wished I knew more about them. Rankin and I had spent many hours poring over Talus's journals again, re-reading any mention of the weirflynt we could find, but had turned up with few new insights. Thinking about it reminded me of something I needed to show Rankin.
I pulled King Rainier's list of books from my pocket--in the aftermath of Safire's transformation, I had set it aside and forgotten about it until I found it yesterday at the bottom of the wardrobe.
"My lord," I said to Rankin, who stood beside Narie and Eden as they shuffled through the last of Safire's paintings and sketches. When he looked up, I continued "Have you heard of any of these titles?"
He took the parchment with a rattle, his eyes widening in that intent owl look that meant he was fascinated. "Where did you get this?"
"King Rainier gave it to me. I forgot about it till now. Supposedly all those titles can only be found in his library."
Father sauntered over. "Can I see it?" he asked, reaching for it. "Damn that demon king," he muttered as he glanced over it. "Another one of his nasty manipulations, I'll be bound."
My chuckle turned the air acid. "I'm certain King Rainier knew Safire's true nature when Queen Jazmene had us imprisoned at the palace. Now that I think about it, Undene said something about one of Safire's first paintings--it was of a phoenix, and the old witch made some sly remark about it being a self-portrait. I thought it was just one of her jests at the time, but now I know better."
"Oh, Rainier knew," Father said, handing me the parchment. "The day of your duel with Toscar, Undene remarked that how Safire healed my stab wound with heat was the last sign, that Safire was a creature of 'pure instinct.'"
"I remember that." Rankin removed his spectacles and wiped them on his sleeve, blinking. "It would have been the honorable gesture if they had warned you with more than vague hints."
"Well, they're far from honorable. He's withheld those books from us all this time." I crumpled the list. "It's one of his tactics to trap us at that court. He said he would only let me study them if we resided there. I just feel stupid for not putting all this together before now. Before it was too late . . ." I trailed off, gulping, the list fluttering to the floor. I sank down on the arm chair and clasped my hands under my chin as I stared with unseeing eyes at the shadow of Safire's easel.
"But Merius, none of us suspected, and we all had the same information," I heard Father say from a vast distance.
"No, we didn't have the same information. I knew more than anyone--hell, I turned into a damn weirhawk. You'd think I would have figured it out then. I was just so scared of the implications, and I didn't even realize it. Safire was right. If I'd just listened to her, if I'd swallowed my pride or fear or whatever the hell it was and told you about the weirhawk, my lord," here I glanced at Rankin, "maybe together we would have been able to figure it out. But I didn't. And now it's too late." I hid my face in my hands, my shoulders shaking as I struggled for breath. My lungs suddenly seemed to have shriveled away, my chest so tight that I gasped.
Gentle fingers touched my back then. "Merius, do you know I can finally see the movement in Safire's paintings?" Narie said.
I found myself able to draw one shallow breath, enough to answer her. "Really?"
"I can't believe it--all this time, I didn't see it. Not till tonight. Her work is just so beautiful--the beauty distracted me. Beauty, love--any of us can miss what's right in front of us because we're blinded by love. Love is nothing to be ashamed of, dear one."
"No, I don't suppose it is," I managed.
"You should show her work at court now that it's safe," Eden remarked. "It's a shame she had to hide it for so long."
Safire's voice filled the house then, a sudden, joyful sound like a thousand songbirds greeting the sunrise in a summer wood. I rose, Narie's hands sliding from my shoulders. We all looked at each other--even if we had wanted to speak, we couldn't have heard each other over the fierce splendor of her song. I listened for a moment, her voice thrumming the very marrow in my bones, a glad summons. I raced from the studio and into the bedchamber.
All the candles and the fire burned brightly, lighting even the shadowy corners with a soft glow. Safire stood in her nest, her head tilted back, the purple and gold plumage of her neck shimmering as her throat quivered. When I crossed the chamber to her, she stopped singing and lowered her head, her gaze meeting mine.
She blinked at me and cooed what sounded like an endearment. Then she stepped aside, showing me what lay in the nest. An egg. A lovely opalescent egg, perhaps twice the size of a swan egg.
I clapped my hand to my mouth, staring at her, then staring at the egg, then staring at her again. Everything around me was too bright to be real, the edges stabbing my eyes. Safire nudged the egg with her foot, pushing it toward me, inclining her head in a gesture for me to pick it up. Dazed, I slid my hands around it, as gentle as I would be with a newborn baby. I lifted it, surprised at how heavy it was as I turned it in my hands. Warm to the touch, the shell gleamed like mother-of-pearl in the firelight.
"She's beautiful, sweetheart," I choked as I quickly set the egg back in the nest before I dropped it. I realized then the others had crowded into the chamber behind me.
"Is that what I think it is?" Father demanded after a moment of intense silence.
"I just assumed she'd lost the baby," I whispered. "I guess that will teach me to assume anything about this s
ituation." I looked around at all of them, their shock mirroring my own. None of us knew whether to laugh or cry. "I wonder if any of King Rainier's books mention this," I said. Then I started to chuckle, shaking my head as tears warmed my eyes. Safire nipped my finger playfully, her sweet warble tingling in my ears.
Other Works
Fledgling Witch: A Novella (Prequel to the Landers Saga)
The Witch Awakening (Book One of the Landers Saga)
Tapestry Lion (Book Two of the Landers Saga)
The Curious Fear of High and Lonely Places (Book Four of the Landers Saga)
The Bird Children (Book One of the Phoenix Realm) - available February 2014
Across the Summer Sea (Book Two of the Phoenix Realm) - available Winter 2014 / 2015
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About the Author
As a child, Karen suffered frequent bouts of insomnia. The only way she could settle into sleep many nights was to imagine stories that played out like movies on the dark ceiling over her bed. Since her mean parents refused to replace the TV after the cat blew it up by peeing on the cord, all Karen had left to entertain herself in the lone wilds of the Minnesota wilderness were books and her own stories. As Karen grew, the stories grew with her. One day when she was fourteen, she told her mother one of these stories for probably the hundredth time. Her mother, who knew Karen very well, turned to her and said, “You know, Karen, you keep talking about these stories, but you never write them down. You keep saying you’re going to write a novel, but I don’t believe that you will.” This comment infuriated Karen so much that she started writing her stories down and hasn’t stopped since.
Acknowledgements
As with The Witch Awakening and Tapestry Lion, Cheryl Dietrich provided invaluable feedback on the initial drafts of Phoenix Ashes. She helped the phoenix find her song, and for that, I can never repay her.
Special thanks to the many friends and mentors who have encouraged me through the years with my writing, too numerous to name here. Just know that without each and every one of you in my life, I never could have written this book.
Phoenix Ashes (The Landers Saga Book 3) Page 59