The Shapeshifters: The Kiesha'ra of the Den of Shadows

by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  Another loop, and this time I cried out, feeling the skin on my back split. Blood seeped into my clothing. Another line, another slice, another shriek. How many times would I accidentally kill this peregrine?

  Nicias stirred, drawing a breath as I removed the bands around his throat. His eyes opened. They held a dazed, lost look that nevertheless was one of the sweetest sights I had ever seen.

  Exhausted, I wrapped my arms around Nicias’s neck and laid my cheek against his shoulder, breathing deeply and trying to memorize his scent. My body was shaking from the pain it had absorbed and the effort of pulling us both back into this world, but the ache faded as Nicias took over the healing process.

  “I couldn’t leave you there,” I whispered. “Why did you … why did you come for me?”

  “I couldn’t leave you there,” he said.

  Hungrily, I lifted my face to his, tasting his lips. Instead of the ashes of nothingness I had found with others, Nicias had a spark that drew me here and now. After a moment of surprise, he returned my kiss, his lips even softer than the feathers I felt at the nape of his neck.

  I combed his hair back from his face with my fingers, savoring the silky texture.

  He started to pull away, and I clung to him desperately.

  “Please,” I said. “Nicias, you drew me back from the Ecl and gave me the world. If you asked me to dance, I feel like I could fly. How could you ever doubt what you mean to me?” I whispered, addressing his fears before he could speak them. There were tears in my eyes, which had been dry for many years. “Please,” I whispered. “Believe me. I love you.”

  He caressed my cheek; I closed my eyes, leaning toward his hand. “I believe you,” he said.

  “Then stay.”

  When I opened my eyes, he was shaking his head. “Hai, I left Salem unconscious, possibly dying, to go after you. I can’t stay longer, not without knowing how he is.”

  Salem.

  After risking so much, and experiencing a kind of hell that only a falcon could ever truly know, how could I possibly have forgotten who we had done it for?

  I needed to know what would happen next.

  I smiled wryly, realizing that Cjarsa had been wrong about one thing. Apparently a mongrel could understand things such as loyalty and duty … at least well enough to let go of this beautiful peregrine and say, “You’re right.”

  Nicias kissed my forehead, lingering a moment longer before we both pulled back, and rose to face the world that Fate had left to us.

  I would never be able to replace Nicias’s love for his wyvern Oliza or supplant his responsibility to his Diente, Salem. But for now it was enough, for me, to see the reluctance in his movements as we stepped out his front door and into the bustle of the marketplace.

  “I think I heard the doctor say she was taking Salem back to his room in the Rookery,” Nicias said, leading the way to Wyvern’s Court’s royal keep.

  When we reached the Rookery and ascended the stairs to the top floor, we found guards in front of Salem’s door.

  They nodded to Nicias in respectful greeting and said to us, “Sive Shardae is inside.”

  Nicias had just lifted his hand to knock when the door opened, revealing the young hawk, who did not manage to keep the sorrow and fatigue from her face.

  “Nicias, Hai,” she said. Her voice was still musical and calm, but exhaustion had given it a rough edge, and she didn’t quite focus on us when she spoke. “We found you with Salem—” She drew a breath, trying to compose herself, and then said, “It is good to see you well.”

  “Thank you,” Nicias answered her. “Has he woken yet?”

  Sive shook her head. “Not yet, and the doctors do not know if he will. They say that by all rights he should be dead. The poison …” Her voice dropped, but resolutely she continued, “Prentice used the strongest poison he could get his hands on.”

  We knew it all too well. Neither of us had the courage to ask the next reasonable question, but Sive must have known what we were wondering.

  “Prentice has officially been exiled from my people,” she said, “and given over to the serpiente to face judgment. If Salem survives, he will be the one to judge his attacker. If he dies, Prentice will be executed, in accordance with nest law.”

  She looked back at the door she had just come through, as if willing the cobra on the other side to wake.

  “Oliza has returned,” Sive added. “She is Salem’s heir, and if he dies, she will need to take the serpiente throne.”

  Sive’s gaze drifted out the window. On the ground below, I saw the image of a now familiar figure.

  Keyi darted among merchants, running into this one and that one as she evaded her mother, Oliza. The child was laughing as Oliza shook her head, smiling fondly.

  Vere Obsidian sneaked through the crowd and took his daughter by surprise, lifting her around the waist.

  I reached for Nicias’s hand, needing contact, comfort, anything, because in that moment I wasn’t numb. I could feel despair, and hopelessness, and shame.

  I had seen Keyi time and again. I had seen Salem’s death. The visions had unsettled me, and I had stirred myself to speak to the Empress and the falcons, but what had I done to prevent this from happening?

  Until the moment when the cobra had been dying in my arms, I had done little more than hope for the best … and now we would all suffer the consequences of my naïveté and weakness.

  I, who could see quite clearly all our futures, had no excuse for this failure. I should have done something differently.

  Was it too late, or could I still?

  Sive leaned against the wall, whispering, “Salem should be king. Oliza should be allowed to be with the woman she loves. Prentice should—” She broke off. “Once Salem named his mate, he secured the title for his generation, and the succession never goes backward while there is a legitimate heir. Besides, an infertile couple can’t rule the serpiente, and Irene hasn’t had any children in the last twenty years.”

  Sive was rambling. Everyone in the room knew it, but she didn’t seem able to help her own words.

  Finally her eyes focused, on us. “Please. Is there anything you can do for him? Please.”

  “We’ll try,” Nicias promised her.

  She reached out and caught my hand. “Hai, I know you and I have never been close. Your prophecies—the idea that our destiny might not be of our own design, might be completely out of our hands, terrifies me. But if you can tell me … please, will he wake? Do you know? Do you know who started those horrible rumors, or if … Is this my fault?”

  Nicias gently took her hand off mine. “None of this was your fault,” he said.

  “I should go,” she said to us. “I have obligations. I have to …”

  “It’s all right.” I was not good at giving comfort, but I could try. “You do what you must. I swear to you, we will do everything we can for Salem.”

  “Th-thank you. I’m sorry, I—I should go,” she whispered again, as if that one decision was still too difficult.

  “Someone should go with her,” Nicias said to one of the other guards as Sive started to walk away alone.

  I shook my head. “She’ll be fine.”

  “You can’t be sure of that,” the guard said. He looked from Nicias to me.

  Nicias turned to me. “Hai, you’re certain?”

  “Yes, I am.” Sive would be queen; she always reigned in the futures I envisioned, except when Oliza’s child killed us all. “For now she needs time to be alone. She can’t grieve if someone else is there.”

  But she wouldn’t be alone. I could see her already snuggling close to the serpent who had first comforted her. He held her quietly, because someone needed to.

  “Then we’ll let her be alone.”

  “Yes, sir,” the guard replied before we moved forward to check on Salem.

  We entered the sickroom with Sive’s despair heavy in our hearts, and it only settled deeper when I saw the cobra.

  Salem was pale and s
till. His heartbeat was slow but even, and his breath rose and fell, yet I sensed no life from him. Normally my magic reacted to Anhamirak’s fiery power in Kiesha’s kin, but in this case I felt nothing.

  Salem’s body had survived, but that was all.

  He would not wake.

  He would live until his body starved, but he would never again open his garnet eyes. I knew that as surely as I knew Ecl’s damning darkness. And I knew that nothing good would become of this world without him.

  Behind me, I heard Keyi cry.

  “No!” the child shouted.

  Oliza frowned. “Keyi, you need to—”

  “Don’t wanna!” The child pouted and launched into a tantrum. “No, no, no!”

  “Keyi, do I need to—”

  Oliza cried out, recoiling from her daughter as golden red bands of magic whipped across her arms, drawing blood. Her eyes widened with sudden terror.

  “Calm down, Keyi, please,” she said.

  Keyi continued to wail and stomp her feet, sending a stream of scalding magic at Oliza. Oliza screamed and fell, and only then did Keyi’s tears stop.

  “Mommy?”

  Keyi hurried to Oliza’s side, her eyes wide and afraid. “Mommy?” she wailed. “Mommy?” Her hands touched the blood as she shook Oliza, begging her to wake. “Mommy, come back! Mommy? Mommy, get up, please. I won’t cry anymore. Mommy!”

  “I need to talk to Oliza,” Nicias was saying. “I—she—oh, gods.”

  “Nicias, you can’t!” I cried, spinning toward him. “She can’t rule. You know that.”

  He shook his head. “It isn’t my decision.”

  “It needs to be someone’s,” I snapped. “You of all people know the possible consequences if Oliza returns to the throne.”

  “And you of all people know that Araceli’s predictions are not to be trusted,” he replied. “Darien believes it is possible to protect any children Oliza might have, and Cjarsa trusts Darien’s judgment. Since Oliza is returning only as Diente, she won’t need to worry about choosing a mate the avians will accept—”

  “Nicias, don’t be a fool.” Instinctively, I reached toward him magically, trying to show him. If he could only see what I had seen—

  Nicias recoiled, slamming magical walls between him and me so fast that I felt as if I had been slapped.

  “Nicias, please, listen to me.” I begged without shame, but I could see in his eyes that it was no use. I had been careless in my haste and had warmed the seeds of mistrust that still lingered in Nicias from his time on Ahnmik. He had experienced firsthand how powerfully manipulative a falcon’s persuasion magics could be, and he would not allow himself to be fooled a second time.

  What he might never understand was that there was no magic more powerful than that his own mind could use to convince itself that it was right.

  “Nicias, I have seen the future in which Oliza takes the throne. I have seen you screaming when—”

  “You have said yourself, many times, that sakkri can be misleading. They can show us that which we most fear.” Before I could argue, he added, “You are not the only falcon who can spin a sakkri, Hai. Your mother has hope.”

  “My mother can’t see past Oliza’s magic.”

  “And Cjarsa?”

  Was wrong. I didn’t know how, but Cjarsa was wrong. Yes, sakkri could be misleading, but this one was too real. I believed absolutely that if Oliza took the throne, this world would be destroyed. Cjarsa feared the return of a wyvern so much that I could not understand how she could possibly be fooled by the hope that Nicias would be able to keep us all safe by binding the magic. How could she not see? Long before, it had taken all of the four falcons’ power to tear Anhamirak’s magic in half to keep it subdued. How could anyone believe that one prince, who had begun to study his magic only a few months earlier, could do what the high priestesses of Ahnmik and Brysh and the priest of Ecl could not?

  “I will try to warn her of the danger, but, Hai, Oliza is all we have left,” Nicias said. “If you are afraid of what might happen, then help us. Your magic is as powerful as mine. I know it overwhelms you sometimes, but despite that handicap, you still wield it with more precision and power than I can. I do believe we can protect Oliza. I would like to have you on our side.”

  I closed my eyes, letting a million futures drift before them. I saw Keyi. I saw fire, and I saw ice. I saw Rosalind weeping, Sive cold and dead, Nicias shrieking—

  “I love you,” I said, opening my eyes. “I have come to care for Wyvern’s Court, and for Oliza. I do not know what Cjarsa does or does not know, or what my mother does or does not believe.” All I knew was that my mother would risk much to prove Araceli wrong and to get Nicias back on the island. “But I … I swear, I will do all I can to keep Wyvern’s Court safe.”

  To Ahnmik, who holds all vows true, this I swear.

  “Speak to Oliza,” I said. “I will be here when you return.”

  Oliza already didn’t trust me; if Nicias wouldn’t believe me, there was no use arguing with the wyvern. She would trust her loyal guard over any other falcon. However, I had spoken true when I had made my promise to Nicias.

  Because he was wrong.

  Oliza wasn’t all we had left.

  I walked through Wyvern’s Court with a deep weight in my heart.

  Nicias, you gave me this pain, I thought, weeping. If it wasn’t for you, I would never have loved this land. I would never have needed to fight for it.

  I found myself at the green marble plaza, at the very center of Wyvern’s Court, regarding the tall marble statue there. The wyvern looked so proud and sure.

  I knelt and pressed one hand to the statue’s base. From this spot, I could feel the heartbeat of the land.

  I could also hear the argument Nicias was having with Oliza. Though I was glad that some of my warnings had reached him, I knew they would not be enough.

  “I’m not returning as wyvern; I’m returning as Diente,” Oliza said when Nicias pointed out, as I had, that there had been many reasons for her to leave the first time. “I need to fill only the one role, so there will be no conflict as long as I choose a serpent for my mate.”

  “And your child?” Nicias asked.

  This, too, Oliza had an answer to. “The Dasi’s magic became unbalanced when Maeve left the coven, but there is a group where that balance has been preserved among her descendents.”

  “Obsidian.”

  “Yes. I wouldn’t have been able to make the alliance as wyvern, but as Diente, I can. Their leader is …” Oliza’s voice wavered a little. She had no words of love to speak. “He is not a bad man. He has been kind to me.”

  I could already hear the child I had seen in the woods, Obsidian’s wyvern child, laughing.

  I closed my eyes and sent my spirit outward as I whispered a prayer to Ahnmik.

  “White falcon, give me strength. Help me do what must be done.”

  “Obsidian will make a good Nag. He leads well and is charismatic enough that I think he will be able to earn the favor of our people despite the prejudice against white vipers.”

  “Your people will be uneasy enough about your choosing a new mate,” Nicias warned. “And even if you weren’t pledged already, you know that the serpiente won’t react well to anything they see as a political marriage. It is going to be difficult to force a white viper on them at the same time.”

  “I don’t have a choice!” Oliza snapped, the words choked by sobs. “Gods … Salem.” She bowed her head, no doubt struggling to compose herself, to stop thinking of her dying cousin and her abandoned love.

  Prying myself away from Oliza and Nicias, I turned my prayers to another deity.

  “Anhamirak,” I said, “you have never answered me. The magic of my mother’s ancestors ripped your serpiente worshippers in half, and all I have to call you by are the shreds left behind. I know that. But please, I’m struggling for your people now. Please, if ever you would help a mongrel, make it now.”

  “It’s the only o
ption,” Oliza was saying.

  “It isn’t a perfect solution, but … there might be some way you could adopt—”

  Oliza shook her head. “If all I wanted was to be safe from my magic, that would be the answer—but if I must do this, make this choice, then I want more to show for it than survival. The Obsidian guild has been abused by the Cobriana for millennia. Anjay Cobriana promised them equality, but his death destroyed that chance. My father was pledged to a white viper, and then ended up executing her. I have a chance to make this right.”

  Oh, Oliza, there is no way to make this right.

  “Ahnleh …”

  What could a mortal say to the merciless Fate?

  I forced myself to my feet.

  A’le-Ahnleh was the traditional end to a prayer. By the will of Fate.

  “A’le-la,” I whispered defiantly.

  By my will.

  I had plans to make.

  When Nicias returned to Wyvern’s Court, his steps were heavy with sorrow and exhaustion, and his beautiful eyes were distant.

  “My love,” I said, greeting him.

  He leaned against me. “I spoke to Oliza. She will be here in the morning and will speak to her parents, and then she will make the announcement of her return in the evening.”

  I wrapped my arms around him. “It’s all right,” I said. “We will make it all right. But you should rest for now.”

  He took a deep breath and whispered, “Stay with me tonight?”

  “Yes,” I said, the word a prayer. “Tonight.”

  And then, the next day, I would lose him.

  He lowered his head, and we kissed. It was sweet, and gentle, and it made tears come to my eyes.

  “Just hold me,” I said. “I love you. Please believe that. Please trust me. I love you. I have always loved you.”

  He kissed me again and then picked me up in his arms and carried me inside to his bed.