Wings of Shadow

by Nicki Pau Preto

  With Kade draped over every inch of him, that was easier said than done, but Sev tried.

  “I wanted to ask,” Kade said after several minutes of silence. “Did you write that letter in blood?”

  Letter? Sev’s mind was already slipping into sleep, but then he remembered the note Kade had sent him in the tower and his own hastily improvised reply. “I’d hardly call it a letter.”

  Kade released a huff of laughter. “Blood, though? Very grim.”

  Sev shrugged, then lifted his bandaged hand to peer at the slice on his thumb, just barely visible in the moonlight. “What else was I going to use—my handy inkwell and goose-feather quill? It was you.… I had to reply.”

  Kade didn’t answer; instead, he took hold of Sev’s hand and pressed his lips against the tender skin of his thumb in a gentle kiss.

  It burned more sharply than the cut, the sensation lingering long after Sev closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.

  Now there are two Apex Riders.

  Two Ashfires. Two queens in the sky.

  - CHAPTER 25 - SPARROW

  IT WAS QUIET.

  Sparrow hated quiet, but this quiet was even worse than usual. Thick. Cold. Heavy, somehow.

  It hadn’t started that way. No. First it was louder than anything she’d ever heard, as if the world itself had cracked in two and swallowed her whole. There had been pain then, bumps and scrapes, and Sparrow thought she might have actually lost consciousness, because when she came back to herself, everything was still, muffled and close, the sound of her panting breath echoing strangely in her ears.

  At least she was not alone.

  Fine Fellow was nearby, scritching and scraping as he rooted around for worms and insects.

  And she was here too—Ignix.

  Sparrow had felt the phoenix’s presence with her magic first, a distinctive, familiar awareness. Then she’d recognized her physical closeness, her wing arcing over Sparrow like a tent or a sloping roof. It muted the sound around her—the echoes gentler than those that reverberated from the rocks—and radiated warmth.

  She could also hear Ignix’s steady breathing, the rise and fall of her chest… a barely there noise, but amplified by the soft whisper of her feathers sliding against each other as her rib cage expanded and contracted. Ignix could sit incredibly still—stiller than any living thing Sparrow had ever heard—but she was alive, and things that were alive moved. Made sound. They filled out Sparrow’s surroundings when her eyes could not, and truly, how better to understand the world as an animage than through the animals that lived in it? Sparrow didn’t care for buildings and wagons and roads. She cared for living things, and they cared for her, too.

  Well, most of them did anyway. People were harder.

  The memory of Elliot’s voice echoed in her head all of a sudden, tight with fear and dread—he had known what was coming, had seen what Sparrow could not. She thought back farther, to the moment outside the village when he’d forgotten her in favor of his sister. When he had tried to pawn her off on Ignix.

  Yes… people were harder.

  When Sparrow finally groaned and rolled over, coughing, Ignix sighed in relief.

  You sleep like the dead. She was all around Sparrow, her wings encircling, wrapping—protecting—and was surely the reason Sparrow hadn’t been crushed in whatever collapse or cave-in the monsters attacking the Eyrie had caused in the first place.

  “Wasn’t sleeping,” Sparrow muttered, though she couldn’t recall how she had wound up where she was, or how long she’d been lying there. Maybe she had fallen asleep.

  The scent of blood was thick in her nostrils, but it wasn’t the familiar, metallic tang of regular animal or people blood. It smelled like smoke and charcoal and was hot to the touch.

  It was phoenix blood.

  “You’re bleeding,” Sparrow informed Ignix, as if she didn’t surely already know.

  Mere flesh wounds, Ignix replied. I will survive.

  “Does that mean…? Did you lose?” Sparrow asked tentatively. It had all been very hard to follow. One second she was running toward the village, intent on helping Jana and the others get the animals to safety—the next, Ignix had scooped her up in one of her giant clawed feet and carried her through the air like an eagle with a twig for its nest.

  Despite the confusion, Ignix had eventually explained exactly who was attacking them—strixes, of all things!—and Sparrow had heard the challenge and the acceptance from her place inside the Eyrie, right before the battle between Ignix and Avalkyra Ashfire began.

  I lost, Ignix replied gravely. I had hoped to lure her into the tight quarters of the tunnels—to regain the upper hand—but…

  But she’d run headlong into Sparrow, and the tunnel had collapsed on them.

  I suppose I was just delaying the inevitable.

  “What will happen now?” Sparrow asked, forgetting her own predicament in favor of worrying about her animal—and human—friends. “To the others? Are they…?”

  Avalkyra has honored the terms of the challenge. She has the Eyrie, but your friends do not belong to her. They are gone. Evacuated.

  “Do you think those birds—those strixes—will chase them? Do you think they’ll come after us in here?”

  As far as their master is concerned, I am dead. She paused, and Sparrow had the sense she was reaching her magic, feeling out their surroundings. We are safe from them, for now. But we will not remain safe here for long.

  “Right,” Sparrow said, blowing out a shaky breath through her lips. “What do we do?”

  We move.

  And she did, turning in the tight, confined space—but in the tiniest, most careful of increments. Then she halted.

  “What’s the matter?” Sparrow asked.

  Ignix didn’t reply at first. The passage is unstable. I fear the roof will collapse on you.

  Sparrow listened hard, listened to the shift of gravel and silt, the barely there grinding scrape of rocks. Was Ignix preventing a full-blown cave-in? That seemed impossible, no matter her age and strength.

  “Only a little,” she reasoned, and the phoenix expelled an irritated gust of air—it caused Sparrow’s hair to fly across her face.

  Or a lot. There is no way to know for sure.

  Sparrow shrugged. “I can die now in a rockslide or I can die in a day or two from thirst or hunger. I’d rather take my chances with the rocks. I’ll be fine, I know it.”

  Ignix sighed again, more heavily than before. This will probably hurt, she said, and Sparrow braced herself. The heat of Ignix’s wings drew away from her as the phoenix got to her feet, scraping her talons against the stone.

  As soon as she stood, clouds of dust settled on Sparrow’s skin and inside her lungs. She began coughing instantly, and then a cascade of larger debris started to rain down on her. She tucked her head under her hands to protect herself—Fife leapt forward to scramble underneath her arms—but Ignix moved slowly, cautiously, and soon enough the cavern fell silent again.

  “See?” Sparrow croaked. She needed water, her mouth was gritty and her throat raw, but the tunnel had not collapsed on her. Even better, the air was different now too—fresher, sweeter, and with the slightest bit of current.

  She scrabbled onto her knees, ready to stand, when Fife squawked a warning, the sound echoing all around them. The ceiling was too low, or perhaps a broken bit of rock protruded above her, so Sparrow hunched as she ambled forward. She tilted her head toward that sense of movement—that clean, brand-new smell.

  She followed it.

  The passage to the south has collapsed. You cannot go that way, Ignix said, halting Sparrow in her tracks. But there is another route we might take.

  Sparrow tilted her head, extended her senses. “That way?” she asked, pointing in the opposite direction of that fresh, flowing air.

  Yes, Ignix said. West first, then south again.

  “I know you can see in the dark and all, but your sniffer ain’t as good as mine,” Sparrow said primly, tap
ping herself on the nose. “I’m tellin’ ya, we gotta go south.”

  It is blocked, Ignix insisted.

  “There’s a way through,” Sparrow said, shaking her head. “I can smell it.”

  I will not wager the fate of the world on your sniffer, Ignix snapped, bristling. I am the only one who can defeat her. I must get out of these cursed tunnels and quickly—I do not have time to play nursemaid.

  Sparrow’s nostrils flared and her jaw clenched. “Nobody asked you to. I’m fine without you. Come on, Fife.” Spinning on her heel, she headed south again, trusting her senses—and the raven’s occasional croaks—to lead the way.

  Ignix didn’t follow. Instead, Sparrow discerned the soft clicking of talons on stone as she walked away, in the opposite direction.

  “Phoenixes,” Sparrow muttered, stomping forward.

  The tunnel was caved in—barely fifty paces away—but Sparrow was not deterred. It wasn’t just her nose that was guiding her now, but her ears as well.

  “Help me,” Sparrow said, and Fife left her shoulder to hop across the ground before her, picking a path over rubble and huge blocks of stone. She followed, scraping her knees and cutting open her palms. She lived for the outdoors, for the wind and the sun and the freedom that she could taste on that barely there whisper of bright, clean air that teased her with every labored step.

  There was an opening at the top of the rock pile—Sparrow was certain of it. But it was tricky to reach. Fife cawed encouragingly, and as she followed the sound, her right hand found a gap in the stones. She pushed herself through with such enthusiasm that she fell headlong and tumbled down on the other side.

  It hurt, a lot, nearly knocking the wind from her lungs—but when she finally drew in a breath, she released it again at once, laughter in her throat. The air here felt positively breezy in comparison to the cramped space on the other side of the opening, and Sparrow reveled in its crisp freshness.

  She reached out, finding smooth walls against her hands—not jagged, broken stones—and Fife told her where to put her feet. She wished she had her spear, but realized with a pang that she had left it somewhere in the tall grasses outside the village.

  They hadn’t made it far before Fife crowed excitedly and took off in a gust of wingbeats. Sparrow frowned, still edging slowly after him.

  “Bath?” she asked in confusion, trying to piece together the bird’s frantic thoughts.

  Then she heard a splash.

  Sparrow stumbled forward, stubbing her toe painfully on something round and hard that thunked loudly—not the dull, flat sound of a rock, but the heavy, reverberating sound of a wooden cask or barrel. It was followed by a slosh and a splatter.

  Sparrow stuck out trembling hands, her body catching up to the picture Fife had painted in her mind, and lowered them into the open barrel. Icy shock raced up her arms, followed by painful joy, and she wasted no time plunging her face into the water.

  Fife squawked and splashed, and Sparrow drank greedily, stopping only once she’d had so much her belly felt waterlogged and her teeth ached from the cold.

  Filthy, said a stuffy magical voice behind her, the word edged in distaste—but Sparrow only smiled as she turned. She and Fife had made such a racket with the water, she hadn’t heard Ignix approach.

  “I thought you were headin’ west?” Sparrow asked smugly.

  I thought I should check on you, Ignix said responsibly. Sparrow waited, then—And… I encountered a dead end.

  Sparrow grinned more widely. “As you can see, we’re fine.”

  Indeed. Ignix’s voice sounded strained—distracted, even. Fife was still making a mess in the water barrel, the contents gurgling and sluicing onto the floor.

  Despite Ignix’s pretense at disgust, Sparrow knew the phoenix was as thirsty as she was. Once she and Fife were done, gasping and laughing and soaking wet, Ignix inched forward to delicately dip her beak. She made barely a sound—though she drank long and deep.

  Sparrow investigated the area and found the barrel was outside a small storage room, filled with supplies, including sacks of grain, ceramic jars of preserves, and even bags of apples. She tried to orient herself, imagining where this place was in relation to the hallway they’d just left, but all the excitement was starting to catch up to her.

  She ate an apple, leaving the core for Fife, and then climbed atop the bags of grain—which were cold and lumpy but positively feather-soft compared to the hard ground she’d been lying on since the cave-in. It became even more decadent when Ignix sidled in, slowly warming the place and causing the grain to smell toasty and fragrant, like Morra’s kitchens in the morning.

  “Looks like you shoulda trusted my sniffer after all,” Sparrow said with a yawn.

  Ignix huffed. I would have found my way eventually.

  “Slowly,” Sparrow corrected, smiling. “And you don’t have time to waste.”

  No, I don’t, Ignix replied.

  Sparrow wanted to say more, but sleep pulled her under.

  Another generation at war.

  - CHAPTER 26 - TRISTAN

  TRISTAN FELT EUPHORIC SOARING with Rex into the night sky.

  As soon as he knew the danger had passed, he twisted around to see the estate and its many soldiers disappear into the darkness. Then he loosened his tight muscles, settling comfortably into the saddle and relishing the cool wind and rolling rhythm of flight.

  Rex was focused on following the others to their chosen rendezvous point, but Tristan felt his pleasure at being reunited—the sense of rightness between them, the way they fit together.

  Too skinny, Rex said abruptly. Too light.

  It was rare for Rex to communicate verbally. He was hotheaded and emotional, the same as Tristan, and they understood each other perfectly well even without words. But Veronyka pushed Xephyra to be as verbal as possible, and Tristan couldn’t help but wonder if this was another instance of things bleeding over between them. He glanced at Veronyka now, soaring just ahead of him. Their bond had saved him tonight—and it had saved her when she was imprisoned in that tower and Xephyra reached out to Rex.

  Had Veronyka had a change of heart? Was she finally willing to use the magic that she had fought so hard against?

  And if so, did that mean she was with him, even now?

  She didn’t look back or acknowledge that she might be inside his mind, so Tristan pushed the thought aside and stroked his bondmate’s neck. Not that skinny.

  Rex showed him a mental image of a twig. Tristan chuckled.

  When at last they descended, it was on the northern shore of Seltlake. Most of the salt extraction from the lake happened on the southern shores near the salt flats, where an ancient, much larger body of water had slowly evaporated over time. Since it was the dead of night and they were on the barren edges of the Shadow Plains, they were safe to land and make camp.

  No sooner had Tristan slid from his saddle than everyone was on him.

  Rex was first, his all-business attitude gone as he ran his beak over Tristan’s body, somehow managing to find—and painfully nudge—every bruise and aching muscle, leaping all over him like an excited puppy. Then he raked his beak through Tristan’s short hair, as if confused about where the rest of it had gone.

  At last Rex settled back on his haunches and released a huff of air. His gaze was still measuring, though his anxious energy had settled somewhat.

  Stink.

  Tristan rolled his eyes. Thanks, Rex.

  Veronyka was there next, and Tristan found himself extremely self-conscious—thanks in no small part to what Rex had just helpfully pointed out. Instead of squeezing her in another desperate hug, Tristan stood awkwardly, expecting her to give him a close inspection as well.

  She didn’t bump and jostle him like Rex—thank Miseriya’s mercy—but her large eyes took in every inch of him.

  “Are you okay?” she asked anxiously.

  Tristan was about to give a dismissive response—it didn’t matter; he was here now—but then he notic
ed a bandage poking out from the top of Veronyka’s tunic. Now it was his turn to survey her, noting her stiff posture and recalling the somewhat labored way she’d moved inside the prison. He’d been so distracted by the sight of her, he’d just assumed it was nerves or other factors at work.

  “Are you?” he asked, and her gaze skittered away.

  “I’m fine,” she said, then cleared her throat and fixed him with a rueful look. “I can’t believe they cut your hair.”

  He smiled at that, running a hand over the short bristles. Before he could ask if she liked it, his patrol members surged forward.

  Anders grinned widely at him but was quick to echo Rex’s observations. “You look terrible,” he said after a brief hug. He scrunched up his nose. “But you smell worse.”

  “He’s been a prisoner for six weeks,” Ronyn said, shoving Anders aside to clap Tristan on the shoulder. “What’s your excuse?”

  “Glad to have you back,” Lysandro said, squeezing Tristan a bit too tightly.

  “Thanks for keeping everything together while I was gone,” Tristan said, ruffling his hair. Lysandro beamed proudly.

  Latham stood before Tristan next. The others became conveniently distracted by starting a fire and setting up camp, leaving them alone. They hadn’t properly spoken since their rather public argument in Rushlea, when Latham had accused him of being stubborn and reckless and called him out for how he ran their patrol and his preferential treatment of Veronyka.

  Latham looked acutely uncomfortable. His hands were fisted at his sides, his features pinched. “Tristan, I—”

  “It’s fine, Latham,” Tristan cut in, finding that his anger over their argument had long since faded. Latham had been upset about his bondmate, and after being attacked by the Rushlean farmers, tensions had been running high for all of them.

  “It is?” he asked warily.

  “We’re good. You were right about a lot of that stuff. I’m still trying to figure it all out. How to lead, how to balance everything.”

  Latham nodded. “Still. I’m sorry for the way I acted. For what I said.”