Wings of Shadow

by Nicki Pau Preto

  Sparrow screwed up her face in thought at the question, hands slipping idly over Carrot the cat’s mangy ginger fur. “Left the temple the same year as the Great Flood,” she said. “I remember the bridge got knocked clean out, and the Narrows streets were ankle-deep with river water.”

  “That was… what, nine—no, ten—years ago, now?” Riella asked, turning to Elliot, who was busy trying to wrap his brain around the fact that Sparrow had been alone and wandering for ten years.

  He nodded numbly. “We were still living with Great-Aunt Emilia in Stelarbor.” In a fancy manor house, with full bellies and a roof over their heads.

  “And they only take acolytes at age five,” Riella mused. “How much time did you spend in the temple?”

  Sparrow shrugged—or maybe it was a shudder. “Not long… Was dropped off at the end of the summer and was gone before the next spring.”

  “So you’re about fifteen, then,” Riella said excitedly. “The same as me!”

  “You’re only fourteen,” Elliot pointed out.

  “And a quarter,” she corrected, stung.

  Sparrow nodded somewhat indifferently. “Could be—I’ve had these for a while now,” she murmured, pressing her hands to her breasts.

  Elliot’s mouth had fallen open, then he’d jerked his gaze away so fast he cricked his neck. Riella, meanwhile, let out a peal of laughter and dragged Sparrow’s hands away. Elliot’s face had burned hotter than a phoenix in a fire dive, but Sparrow only shrugged and smiled her more familiar goofy—but no less affecting—smile.

  He hadn’t spent any time with her since.

  “Jax has been talking about you nonstop,” Riella continued, making Sparrow grin more widely. “So it’s only fair you do him the honor. What do you say, Elly?”

  Elliot hated that nickname. Sparrow’s face faltered somewhat, unease flickering across her features. Even if she didn’t spend her nights waiting for him, Elliot had wondered if Sparrow noticed his absence in her life—but of course she had. There was a reason the two of them had wandered the field outside the village in the first place. They were lonely.

  While Sparrow looked unsure, Riella’s expression was pointed, her brows raised. There was clearly only one answer he could give, according to her.

  “Sure,” he said, darting a glance at Sparrow. She seemed surprised; then a flush of pleasure crawled up her cheeks.

  “Perfect!” Riella trilled, yanking the box of supplies from Elliot’s hands once again and stalking off toward Ersken without a backward glance.

  “Uh,” Elliot began, but he was saved from coming up with anything to say to fill the silence when Jax soared down from the gallery to land next to them, his saddle jangling as he shook out his wings in excitement.

  As Jax moved closer, Sparrow’s raven squawked and puffed out his feathers in the face of the newcomer, and Jax let out a piercing shriek in response. The raven settled down at once.

  “Serves you right, with ideas above your station,” Sparrow said matter-of-factly to her raven, and Elliot felt the strange tension between them dissipate at once. He grinned.

  “Will he join us?” he asked, running a hand along Jax’s flank and quickly checking the straps and buckles. A fluttering sensation rose in him, and he felt like a green apprentice again—afraid and excited in equal measure when he was about to fly. Elliot had spent months grounded, and though it had been weeks since he’d been allowed to ride again, he still reveled in his ability to mount up and take to the sky.

  “Not sure he likes to get his feathers ruffled…,” Sparrow said idly, and the raven croaked with indignation. “Well, then, make nice,” she said in response, and the raven turned a baleful look at Jax. “Go on,” Sparrow prompted, and then, with something that sounded very much like one of Riella’s exasperated sighs, the raven hopped down Sparrow’s arm and waited.

  Sparrow lifted him, and Jax lowered his head curiously. The raven tilted his head this way and that, seeming to take the measure of Jax. The phoenix emitted a questioning croak, then the raven hopped onto his head, strutting around and poking his beak in among Jax’s feathers.

  “Ravens,” Sparrow commented sagely. “All mouth and no manners.”

  Elliot chuckled. “Are you ready?”

  Sparrow’s smile slipped.

  “Don’t worry,” Elliot said. “You just have to hang on to me. Jax will do the rest.” She nodded, but her face was tight. Elliot reached for her—then hesitated. “Can I…? Is it okay if I lift you?”

  “Oh,” she said, features flickering with even more uncertainty. “Right. Yes.”

  She held her arms out from her sides, waiting, and next to them, Jax lowered himself to the ground.

  Elliot took her spear and leaned it against the wall before stepping in close, hands hovering over Sparrow’s middle. Touching her this way felt too familiar, too intimate, but there was nothing else for it. “Here I go…,” he said, feeling like an idiot. Then he gripped her sides and lifted her into the saddle.

  She sat sideways at first, but once Elliot released her, she felt around and lifted a leg across Jax’s back, getting herself situated. The raven squawked and pecked, fussing, while Elliot guided her feet—bare, why were they always bare?—into the stirrups.

  Climbing up in front of her was a bit of a challenge, especially without the stirrups for footholds, but he managed, settling slowly back into the saddle. The raven had fluttered over to Sparrow and perched himself in her hair again, but she still sat rigidly, her hands fisted and held out to her sides, as if unsure of where to grip.

  Elliot’s nerves were back again, but when he saw the uncertain look on her face, he forgot them at once. They weren’t awkward acquaintances—they were friends—and Elliot wanted her to enjoy her first phoenix ride, especially since it was with him.

  “Here,” he said, reaching back to take both her hands in his and drawing them around his middle. The movement forced Sparrow to press against him—he felt the sharp point of her chin and the rapid-fire beat of her heart against his back. Her hands were still fisted, so he tugged gently on her fingers until they splayed against his stomach. His muscles clenched in response. “Hang on tight,” he said.

  Jax got to his feet and spread his wings wide. There was a gust of wind and a lurch, and suddenly they were ascending, climbing into the sky in a rolling rhythm that matched every pump of Jax’s wings.

  Sparrow gasped and dug her fingers into Elliot’s stomach, and he felt her turn her face into his back, as if seeking something solid and reassuring. He couldn’t imagine the jarring sensation of flight without his sight to ground him, but they’d left the Eyrie behind now, and as Jax leveled out, the ride became smoother.

  Sparrow’s iron grip loosened somewhat, and Elliot felt her draw back.

  Her hands trembled against him for a moment, then released. He twisted around as she flung her arms out wide, mimicking Jax’s soaring wings.

  He wished she could see it the way he did—the vast blue sky, the way the world faded away below, as if time and space and distance no longer mattered. But he also knew she saw it in other ways—ways that were lost to him. The scent of the cool autumn air, the sound of the wind, the taste of sunlight.

  He felt the rumble against his back before he heard her wild laughter, whipped away on a gust of air and taking his own along with it.

  Axura was my mother, the sun in the sky, and my father was the earth below. The rock from which I was born.

  - CHAPTER 6 - AVALKYRA

  IT WAS DIFFICULT TO tell how much time had passed.

  Daylight didn’t quite reach them here, with the rising smoke of the Everlasting Flame to obscure it, but it was dark as night when a scraping sound punctuated the silence, followed by a resounding crack.

  Onyx cocked her head and leaned over the edge of the pit, but Avalkyra shoved her aside, boots crunching on broken shells, to see for herself.

  A phoenix required fire and bones to hatch, a tribute of life and death, but strixes needed neither
. As far as Avalkyra understood, the less they got, the more likely they were to be born—they were made of aching hunger and desperate emptiness. They were voids made solid, absence given presence. They were made of nothing, and what was more nothing than the smoking remains of the Everlasting Flame? It had hosted a thousand births and deaths, created a queendom and a country—it had taken and given and taken again, until suddenly it stopped. Suddenly all that history, all that culture, disappeared in a snap.

  This vacuous pit was all that remained—a perfect symbol of what happened when the taking went on too long… when there was nothing left to give.

  Avalkyra understood that feeling. She had only her own nothingness—her own empty soul and hungry heart—to offer, and that’s what she’d clung to as she’d placed the egg into the swirling mist.

  Now she squinted into the gloom until a shape materialized in the haze.

  It was a bird. Ink-black and agitated, scrambling over eggshells as it stumbled forward. The creature had none of Onyx’s immediate grace and gravitas, and when the strix finally looked at Avalkyra, she understood why.

  There was nothing between them. No bond—not even a hint of connection or awareness.

  Avalkyra looked at Onyx, who lifted a single, midnight wing in a shrug. Her feathers were filling out now, but they alternated between a smoky, soft-edged luster and a spiky, pointed silhouette. It seemed to reflect her mood—even now, the color darkened, the lines hardening as she croaked at the hatchling, shoving it with her beak.

  Disappointed, Avalkyra thought back to the night Onyx was born. She had been at her lowest, her angriest… her most vulnerable. Before then she’d spent a lifetime unable to lure a phoenix out of its shell. Clearly, she had lacked something those firebirds needed. She’d always assumed it had to do with her failing animal magic—which had become diluted in this second life—or her much stronger shadow magic. But perhaps it was more about vulnerability… an open, willing unguardedness that Avalkyra did not know how to replicate.

  Veronyka could probably nurture a thousand bonds with a bleeding heart such as hers, but that was not Avalkyra. That was not how she did things. She didn’t ask for respect or try to earn what she desired. She demanded it.

  She stared down at the hatchling. The strix was alert and seeking—hungry, of course, and Avalkyra was the only living thing for miles.

  “You can try,” she said coldly, crouching down to look into its beetle-black eyes. It did, at first—a strange scraping, scratching feeling coming over her as the hatchling attempted to feed, to suckle on Avalkyra’s life force like a newborn babe at its mother’s breast.

  Onyx bristled. Avalkyra sensed the possessiveness there, the territorial nature of her bondmate rising up in the face of this interloper.

  But she would not give so easily. She gave to Onyx only because she received something in return.

  Taking hold of that reaching tendril, that wisp of magic, Avalkyra followed it to its source. She could bind the strix, here and now, but such a hold would weaken her magic even as it strengthened her numbers. It wasn’t good enough.

  Avalkyra’s primary experience with binds was with humans, whose natures were predisposed to want to serve her—or at least they had been, when she was a princess and then the Feather-Crowned Queen. Her one and only experience trying to bind a magical creature had worked, for a time—she touched her scarred face, her anger rising—but she had eventually lost all control. The cost had been too great, sapping her magic and her energy, and that ancient phoenix had turned on her with vicious contempt. Would Avalkyra run herself ragged trying to keep the strix in line, only to have it turn on her as well?

  She couldn’t risk it—the magical draining or the violent revolt. Now that she’d tasted strength, she couldn’t bear the thought of returning to weakness.

  She needed more strength if she was to bring the world to its knees. She needed to be more.

  And she was, she told herself. She was a bonded Rider again, and her mount was a strix, the first born in a millennium.

  The first born… Avalkyra cocked her head consideringly.

  There was power in being the first. Age, experience—and yes, strength. Those that come after owed their allegiance to those that came before. The first child of a queen inherited the throne, and the first hatched phoenix had inherited the sky… mundi apex phoenix. The world’s first phoenix.

  That was the literal translation, but it was more than just words. According to the history books, being “apex phoenix” had conferred extra abilities on Ignix, including power over the other phoenixes. A magical or social hierarchy that forced them to obey her. With Queen Nefyra as her bondmate, that ability was doubled, for she held similar power over the humans who served her.

  Ignix was the only apex ever recorded because even though she’d eventually disappeared from human knowledge, she’d never officially died. She’d simply faded away, along with the idea of the apex.

  Avalkyra thought of the solitary phoenix she’d binded. It had been large and old… older than any of the other Phoenix Rider mounts she’d seen. It had also bucked her control before breathing fire. A sure candidate for apex, if indeed there was one.

  She also recalled those distant wingbeats she’d heard the day before. This was where they had met, Avalkyra and the old phoenix.… Was it so strange to think she might return?

  For a moment, Avalkyra was certain she felt eyes on her.

  Had her once-bindmate come to pay her a visit? To finish what she’d started?

  Or had she come to watch and wait?

  Avalkyra shook her head and refocused.

  Onyx, she barked, drawing her bondmate’s attention.

  If the world’s first phoenix received special powers, surely the world’s first strix got the same? As it was, Avalkyra felt no different beyond the regular increase in magic a bondmate provided. But the power of the apex came not from a single bond.… It came from a flock. Not just being a part of one, but leading it. Ruling it.

  Make it bow to me, Avalkyra said, gesturing to the hatchling as it pecked its way across the ground. To us.

  How? Onyx cocked her head.

  Demand it.

  Avalkyra felt the press of magic behind the command as Onyx turned to the new strix, felt the hatchling’s resistance break under the force. It bent. It bowed.

  And then something changed. Another bond. A secondary bond, funneling through Onyx to Avalkyra. And with it came power. It wasn’t much, but with each new hatchling, with each show of subservience, her power would grow.

  She was no longer a Phoenix Rider, and she wasn’t just a Strix Rider either.

  She was apexaeris—an Apex Rider, and this was only the beginning.

  Queen Nefyra has borne many titles in her lifetime.

  First, she was a tribal leader, ruling her people on Pyrmont’s highest reaches.

  Next, she was the world’s first animage, first shadowmage, and first phoenixaeris.

  Nefyra, Rider of Ignix, soon became known as Nefyra Ashfire, the First Rider Queen.

  She would become a wife, a lover, and a mother. A warrior. A winner.

  But one title that receives little attention is that of apexaeris.

  Nefyra was the world’s first Phoenix Rider, yes, but she was also the world’s first and only Apex Rider.

  Being bonded to Ignix, the world’s first phoenix (or mundi apex phoenix in ancient Pyraean), came with certain social and magical abilities. This status helped Nefyra to gain much of the power and notoriety—and yes, titles—that she accumulated in her lifetime, yet the term has all but disappeared from most biographies and historical accounts of her life.

  It seems that, much like Ignix herself, that particular title has been lost to time.

  —Queen Nefyra: A Retrospective, the Morian Archives,

  100 AE

  My mother was fire and light, warmth and life. And so I was what she made me.

  - CHAPTER 7 - VERONYKA

  VERONYKA WAS FALLING
.

  Her stomach clenched and her breath caught as she hurtled through the sky. Helplessness turned her body to lead, her vision to tears, and all she could hear was the roaring of the wind as the earth rushed toward her.

  But then Xephyra was there, the ground was there, and all was still. All was safe.

  No, that was wrong.

  As if on cue, Val appeared across the grassy field, with Ignix standing between them.

  Veronyka was dreaming again, dreaming of Ferro and the moment her own sister had dropped her to her death. She knew what happened next and had no desire to relive it.

  “Val,” she said, breaking from the memory and stepping into that smoky, incorporeal place.

  Val didn’t answer, and resisted Veronyka’s attempt to stop the dream sequence. The image shifted in and out of focus for Veronyka, and words she had spoken weeks ago echoed in her mind, even as her body resisted speaking them.

  “Val, enough… Val, leave her.”

  And then Val’s eventual reply—spoken to Ignix, not to Veronyka. “You will obey me, or you will suffer my wrath.”

  Despite her efforts to end the vision, to leave the dream, Veronyka couldn’t help but watch as the phoenix lifted her beak and spouted a torrent of flames into the sky.

  When she turned away, Val was watching her. In a snap, the vision disappeared, and the world around them turned into a wall of gray, swirling and churning like they were trapped within a coil of smoke.

  “I have never seen a phoenix do that before,” Val said slowly, idly, though her eyes shone with intensity. “Have you?”

  “That’s no ordinary phoenix,” Veronyka said, gesturing to the place where Ignix had been.

  “What kind of phoenix is she?”

  “She doesn’t belong to you anymore, if that’s what you mean,” Veronyka said. Val must have conjured this dream to drill her on purpose, though how she’d done that, Veronyka had no idea. “I broke your bind. Her life is her own again.”