Wings of Shadow

by Nicki Pau Preto

  There was also no way she’d failed to notice that the empire’s forces remained uninvolved.

  Veronyka could feel the smile on Val’s face as she sent the next barrage of strixes forward.

  This time she sent two charges—the first followed the previously established route, making straight for the Phoenix Riders that floated in the air, but the second? It flew right behind the first, but fast and low, targeting the soldiers instead. Those at the rear heard the strixes’ battle cries, and their carefully organized ranks bunched and stumbled together as they struggled to get away.

  Fallon’s archers were shooting arrows at will now, but they hesitated—unsure which line to target.

  Focus on the first charge, Veronyka advised, before turning to Tristan.

  With me, she said, and Rex flew up next to her and Xephyra. She turned to the rest of Tristan’s patrol. Await my order and have your bows ready.

  While they continued to fly in place just in front of Fallon’s archers, Veronyka and Tristan moved into the foreground. Their patrol was now stacked, two in front, three behind, and Fallon’s patrol several yards behind them.

  The first charge was bearing down on them, but Veronyka waited until the last possible second before acting.

  Drop! she shouted, and Rex and Xephyra tucked their wings and descended until their feet met the ground.

  The strixes—and Val, their master—hadn’t seen that coming, and so the second charge veered back up again, right into Ronyn, Latham, and Lysandro. Arrows loosed, and those that managed to dodge them wound up careening into the first charge. Squawks and shrieks assaulted Veronyka’s ears, while fiery arrows zipped through the tumult, hitting home with dull thuds and crackling flames that engulfed their targets in seconds.

  Again, Val withheld the rest of her forces, waiting until the last strix was shot down from the sky and Veronyka’s forces reestablished their positions.

  You handle plots and planning well, Nyka. Your mother would be proud. But how do you handle chaos?

  And then she set them loose—or as loose as someone like Val could truly allow. She might pretend to welcome pandemonium, but she wouldn’t have sought apex powers just so she could relinquish control. No, Val needed it, thrived upon it, and even if she didn’t control her horde’s every movement, she had made them, and their will was hers.

  Veronyka noted that Val had not yet tried to break through their shadow magic connection and make physical contact, and she thought she had the poisoned darts to thank for that. Likewise, Veronyka couldn’t risk trying to poison Val again and being wrenched from her saddle clean across the battlefield and thrown to her death, so she, too, avoided anything beyond conversation between them.

  She watched as the black mass of wings disintegrated before her, strixes flying in all directions, and gripped Xephyra’s reins so hard her joints ached. Now the real battle would begin.

  Val had lost maybe a dozen strixes thus far, but the coming horde looked no less imposing. Not all those the Phoenix Riders had turned back or shot down were actually killed, and it was clear that Val was forcing them to fly even with torn wings and scorched flesh. Her cruelty grated at Veronyka’s fraying nerves, their pain a dull throbbing in the back of her mind, but she had other things to worry about.

  Though the strix numbers seemed endless, Veronyka knew they were closer to a hundred. That put their odds at around five to one. She looked behind again, at the fleeing soldiers, and wished things had turned out differently.

  Ready? she asked, turning to the others. Time to engage.

  Leaning low in the saddle, Veronyka held on tight as Xephyra pumped her wings, surging forward with all the strength and speed she had. Rex soared tightly behind, covering Xephyra’s back just as Tristan—with an arrow nocked and ready—covered Veronyka’s. Heat built underneath their wings, trailing behind them in crimson waves, but it was still ordinary phoenix fire. She had asked Ignix how to produce heartfire for the battle ahead, but the phoenix had said it couldn’t be forced. She promised it would happen on its own and that she and Xephyra would know when it did.

  Veronyka could only hope it happened sooner rather than later.

  They shot through the coming charge, and Veronyka felt the phantom rip and tear of beaks and talons whipping past—Xephyra’s speed too great to allow much contact, though her fire had managed to cause several of the strixes to shriek and cry out or turn aside, their feathers charred and smoking. Despite such close quarters, Xephyra appeared to be unharmed, the only side effect of their close brush with the strixes several streaks of soot-gray across her brilliant feathers, quickly burned away by her fire.

  Again, Veronyka urged both Xephyra and Rex. She threw her magic wider, speaking to everyone, telling them to keep it up, to stick to the plan—praising and pushing in equal measure. Whenever there was a stray strix or a dangerous situation, she called out warnings and nudged people out of harm’s way.

  It should have been exhausting, and while it certainly split her focus and made it hard to concentrate, Veronyka’s magic was as strong and as steady as it had ever been. It was relentless, flooding through her body, but it also made her feel oddly separate and detached from herself. She usually reached inside for magic, but being connected to so many bonds was like drawing water from an overflowing well—she had no need to reach within; she just let it bubble over into her open hands.

  As they made another pass, Tristan fired several arrows to cover her back, ensuring none of the strixes got too close as they soared through the fiery hole Xephyra had punched through their ranks.

  They looped back around in time to see Ronyn flying as point, with Latham and Lysandro on either side, cutting through much as they had, choosing to veer to the right and corral several of the shadowbirds toward Alexiya’s awaiting bow. All of them met the coming darkness with a reckless bravery that made Veronyka’s throat ache.

  As long as they kept moving, as long as they stuck to their plan, they should be able to keep this up for as long as necessary to take the strixes down.

  No sooner did she have the thought than a strange, incongruent bubble of excitement surged inside her. Not her excitement, but someone else’s. She found Val across the battlefield, eyes glittering as she looked to the south, where Pyra rolled out before them.

  Veronyka twisted in her saddle, staring down the sloping hillside.

  The soldiers’ retreat had halted, their procession bunching together thanks to a distant obstruction. Not strixes, but humans—a dark swath of them spreading across the road, blocking their retreat.

  Veronyka’s stomach dropped.

  It looked like the Unnamed had decided to join the fray after all.

  One of the more enigmatic mysteries of our world history is that of the Lowland civilization. We know little of their people or their society and can only postulate based on what has survived the ages or been absorbed into other cultures.

  The Lowlanders occupied much of modern Pyra as well as Arboria North. While the disputed border territory remains unclear, tensions between the Lowlanders and the Queendom of Pyra eventually reached a fever pitch.

  Despite being utterly wiped out by Queen Lyra’s Red Horde, the Lowland civilization was a formidable enemy. It was from their designs that the empire developed their concept for modern catapults, and the metal nets favored during the Stellan Uprising also originate from early Lowland warfare tactics. The Lowlanders had been fighting—and winning—against the ancient Pyraeans for decades, and even though their civilization is considered extinct, there are some who suggest their people survive to this day.

  Various freedom-fighting militias have risen up in Pyra over the centuries, the most popular being that of the Unnamed, who some trace all the way back to the now-lost Lowland civilization. Despite this claim, there seems to be little that unites them, save for their location and their desire to see a Pyra free from Phoenix Rider rule.

  —The Lowland Civilization, the Morian Archives, 175 AE

  I gave
the strixes all the fire I had, all the fury. What might have happened if I’d given them something else?

  - CHAPTER 56 - TRISTAN

  TRISTAN FOLLOWED VERONYKA’S LINE of sight and gaped. There was something happening on the road, past Runnet, near the bridge that crossed into the empire. Fighting.

  Rex snapped his beak in agitation, and Tristan borrowed his eyesight for a better look. A ragtag group of warriors had descended upon the road, engaging with the retreating soldiers, who were evidently ill prepared for an assault coming from that direction. There weren’t nearly as many attackers as there were soldiers—maybe a quarter of their number—but they’d had the element of surprise and were using the geography to box in and bottleneck their enemy.

  This must be the Unnamed… but how had they gotten here? Perhaps they had used the tunnels after all, not to ambush Veronyka and the others but to make their way south undetected.

  Things had been going fairly well thus far. The fighting was intense, their foe fearless—or at least reckless, which was down to Val, their leader. But Veronyka had been keeping everyone together, calling the fight, orchestrating their defense with a calm bravery that made his heart soar.

  The truth was, they needed her, and she’d risen to the occasion magnificently.

  But just like that, the fight had changed.

  “Val’s cutting off their retreat,” Veronyka said, voice strangled.

  She was right. The line of empire soldiers below them stretched along the road from the crumpled command tent all the way to the bridge, which the attacking Unnamed now held. While this approach served to keep the retreating soldiers in Pyra, it also served another, possibly more fatal function.

  “Not just retreat,” Tristan said faintly. “The bridge—they’ll cut off retreat and any hope for reinforcements.”

  Because on the far shores hundreds more soldiers were ranged, huddled around tents and wagons and massive wheeled catapults. There they stood, ready and waiting in case the Phoenix Riders proved resistant to the empire’s first efforts. In case Pyra required a full-scale invasion the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the end of the Blood War. A threat the empire surely never expected they’d need to deliver on, and a thing Tristan would have very much wished to avoid, except that now it might be the difference between victory and defeat.

  If the empire could be convinced to fight with the Phoenix Riders, they could make a truly formidable defense—and break the lines that separated them from their reinforcements.

  But how to get them to such an alliance?

  As the soldiers formed ranks and drew weapons, the Unnamed were also reorganizing their attack. Those that had been stationed on the bridge rushed to the northern side just as a flaming Phoenix Rider appeared in the sky.

  Sidra, Veronyka said into his mind, her eyes narrowing. Of course. But what was she up to?

  She kept diving across the bridge, swooping back and forth. Tristan thought she was simply trying to scare away the empire soldiers who had begun to crowd the far shore, until he saw one of the bridge’s supports catch fire.

  This was no scare tactic—it was a strategic attack. They meant to take down the bridge.

  When the flames began licking across the beams and struts, the soldiers redirected their attacks, launching crossbow bolts into the air. The Unnamed did their best to cover Sidra, until she landed in the middle of the broad, wooden bridge for one final strike. Her phoenix burst into flame with enough power to send the nearby soldiers and Unnamed flying off their feet, setting the bridge fully ablaze and sending great beams of wood cracking and crumbling into the river below.

  Tristan drew back from Rex’s mirrored vision.

  They were surrounded, hemmed in by the geography of the land and with Val’s forces closing in on them from either side. The Phoenix Riders had more mobility than the soldiers below, but the message was clear: Val wouldn’t let anyone escape this. Not the empire, not the Phoenix Riders. She wasn’t trying to create a diversion so she could slip by—she could have done that already. This was exactly what she wanted: a brutal fight, a devastating blow to the world that had rejected her.

  She didn’t care about the empire or its citizens, and she clearly had no desire to rule.

  She just wanted to make absolutely sure Veronyka didn’t. That there would be nothing left to rule.

  Though he was too far to hear it, Tristan swore his ears rang with the sound of wrenching wood and roaring flames. He thought of the distant shores, where soldiers stood in rank upon rank—armed and ready but with no way to cross.

  Suddenly Tristan knew what he had to do.

  “Let me go,” he said to Veronyka. “To the bridge. It won’t affect the apex-benex bond, will it?”

  Her head snapped in his direction. Her initial distaste for the idea was plain on her face, but she shook her head slowly in answer to his question. “I don’t think so.”

  “Good. It’s not that I want to separate,” he said, and then continued in his mind, because shouting the words to her didn’t feel right. It’s that I want to help you.

  He hated the idea of leaving her here to face off with Val, but when had he ever been anything but a complication and a liability when it came to a matchup between them?

  He would be of more use to Veronyka in the south. More use to all of them.

  There was no retreating for the soldiers now. Not only could he provide backup, but he might just be able to unify these armies against Val. He could rally the soldiers and put together a proper attack plan. For the Phoenix Riders, and for Veronyka.

  Please, he begged her. If I can salvage the bridge, we’ll have the reinforcements we need to end this.

  Veronyka turned in the saddle to see the fight raging all around them. They were really just treading water—surviving, enduring, but too outnumbered to actually win. The Riders fought desperately in the sky while the soldiers scrambled fruitlessly below, but if the empire joined the fight… if hundreds more swelled their ranks… Val didn’t stand a chance.

  He won’t like it, Veronyka said, nodding down at the general, who was working his way through the mass of soldiers to the southern front.

  He doesn’t have to, Tristan thought in reply. I don’t need him.

  It would be nice to have the general’s support behind him when he attempted to galvanize the empire’s troops, but he and Rex would get to the border faster than the man—or any decree from him—could.

  You can’t go alone, Veronyka said. She looked around. Take Doriyan with you. You can worry about the empire; he can handle Sidra.

  That was… valid. If Doriyan could keep Sidra occupied, it would buy Tristan time to corral the soldiers into helping him defend and rebuild the bridge. Even if they didn’t want to fight for Pyra or the Phoenix Riders, they could surely be convinced to fight for their lives.

  Will you be able to reach me? he asked hesitantly, as Veronyka used shadow magic to call Doriyan to their side.

  She nodded.

  The fear on her face made him move. Rex steadied his flight and extended his wings as Tristan stood in the saddle and walked across his outstretched arm until one foot left Rex’s wing and the next landed on Xephyra’s.

  Veronyka stood to meet him, and they embraced fiercely, desperately, clinging to each other as the wind whipped their hair and the battle raged all around.

  Veronyka pulled back only long enough to take him by the tunic and drag him down to kiss her.

  Ever since the night of her birthday and their weeks apart, Tristan had loathed being separated from her. Refused it whenever possible. They were stronger and better when they were side by side, but that also meant trusting each other when they were apart.

  Besides, like any bondmates—like any apex-benex pair—they were always together.

  What might have happened to them?

  And what might have happened to me?

  - CHAPTER 57 - VERONYKA

  VERONYKA WATCHED TRISTAN STREAK away with Doriyan just behind him,
trusting that they were doing the right thing—for others, if not for themselves.

  Still, there was a leaden feeling in her gut as she turned her attention back to the fighting that surged and pulsed all around her. She’d been tucked safely behind Fallon’s shakily held line, but the strixes were gaining ground. As his row of Phoenix Rider archers moved farther and farther back from its original starting point, the soldiers below were forced to scurry out of the way. Veronyka had the sense they were being corralled like livestock in a pen, with the strixes applying pressure from the north and any progress they tried to make south halted by the Unnamed at the opposite end of their march.

  As it was, they were three armies clashing on two fronts, but Tristan was right: If they allied, they could combine their efforts into a single fighting force and overwhelm Val’s attacks no matter what direction they came from.

  Several commanders and captains were nearby, trying to create order in their general’s absence. They had seen or heard of the attack to the south, and the mess to the north was unfolding before their very eyes. Many of them were fighting now, preferring to meet the threat head-on than continue to run and turn their backs on it.

  Veronyka seized her chance.

  She urged Xephyra to swoop down and land in their midst. They leapt back at the sight of her, mounted and looming above them, but she didn’t have time to comfort them.

  “Retreat is no longer an option. We must fight this common enemy together.”

  “General Rast…,” began one of them uncertainly, while their collective gazes shifted over her shoulder, where fiery phoenixes and swarms of strixes swooped and shrieked through the sky.

  “Is gone,” Veronyka said shortly. “You’ll have to decide your own fate now. There is no escaping this. Fight or die.”

  One of the commanders stepped forward, wary but firm. “What do you need us to do?”