Not completely to herself, Veronyka realized, sitting up straighter. Her maiora knew. Ilithya Shadowheart had served Avalkyra Ashfire in the Blood War and had continued to serve her after her resurrection. That was why she had always deferred to Val, always let her rant and rave and spit cruel words. Ilithya was a soldier, and even as a child, Avalkyra Ashfire was her queen.
Was Morra looking for her fallen queen when she’d been ambushed and lost her leg? Did Ilithya find Val, or was it the other way around? The memory of the day with the snake reared up again, and Veronyka understood why Val had seemed a stranger to her in that moment—because she had been. Ilithya had stood up to protect Veronyka until she’d recognized Val as Avalkyra, her dead sovereign. Val must have used her shadow magic to seek out other animages, trying to find friends and allies, trapped in a child’s body and burdened with the secret of her true self, waiting, searching for her chance to be a Rider again, to be herself again. Val would want to announce her identity from a position of strength and power, not as a penniless, powerless peasant girl. She’d most certainly have been hunted by the empire if she came forward, and besides, she had no bondmate. What kind of Rider queen could she be without a flaming phoenix beneath her?
Val was as stubborn and prideful as they came, and she might well live and die in anonymity rather than admit who she was and how far she had fallen.
It had already been sixteen years. Clearly Val had lied about being seventeen, if she had indeed been born the night of the Last Battle. How much longer was she planning to wait?
Even as the theory started to ease the confusion in Veronyka’s mind, a spool of doubt unraveled in her chest. If Val was the supposedly long-dead Ashfire heir . . . then who was Veronyka?
The younger sister, Pheronia, didn’t have any magic, and so therefore had no bondmate and no means of resurrection. Besides, Veronyka didn’t have memories of some past life; the visions she’d seen in her dreams, they were Val’s, from Avalkyra’s point of view, not Pheronia’s.
Veronyka threw herself back onto her pillows, the signet ring clutched tightly in one hand. Though exhaustion had turned her limbs to lead and her thoughts to water, sleep eluded her.
Instead she stared at the ceiling, watching the shadows shift and grow and lengthen, until darkness swallowed the room. When she couldn’t stand being alone with her thoughts for one second longer, she went in search of a distraction.
It was late and most of the work had halted for the night, but Veronyka wandered toward any signs of noise or action, eventually walking through the open doors of the temple infirmary. As she entered the space, the healers, visitors, and mildly wounded moved about the hall, voices hushed as people tried to rest and sleep.
Large pillars created separation in the wide-open space, outlining a central place of worship, flanked by hallways on both sides. In the middle, priests and acolytes would normally chant prayers amid smoking incense and the ever-burning hearth that represented the Heart of Axura, but they had been recruited to help the solitary healer and the handful of midwives who had volunteered their services.
Veronyka found Sev on a pallet in the hallway to the left, reserved for those with stable injuries who were on the mend, while the opposite hall housed people who were dying or who hovered on the edge of life and death.
She was immensely relieved to know he was going to be okay and happier still to find him awake as she approached, propped up against a stack of pillows.
She crouched down on the floor next to him, feeling awkward and unsure what to do with her hands. “Hi, uh . . . do you remember me?”
He didn’t seem surprised to see her. “Of course,” he said, turning stiffly to face her. “You saved my life.”
Her tension loosened somewhat. She smiled. “Only after you saved mine.”
His lips twisted into something that resembled a smile but lacked the happiness.
“How’s your shoulder?” she pressed on, nodding down at the heavy bandages. Veronyka had some bruises and scrapes along her face and neck but was otherwise unharmed from the attack.
He shrugged—then grimaced, the movement no doubt causing a spear of agony to rip through his wound. “I’ll live.”
“Good. That’s good,” she said, nodding. Glancing over her shoulder, Veronyka settled more comfortably next to him. “I was hoping I could ask you about Ilithya.”
He was clearly surprised by the question, but his frown quickly shifted from confusion to regret. “I . . . I didn’t know her for very long,” he admitted, a slight waver in his voice. “And I don’t know much about who she was before all this.”
Veronyka shook her head, feeling her heart reaching, grasping at every word like a thirsty plant in newly watered soil. “That’s okay. Tell me what you did know. What was she like?”
He rubbed a hand along the back of his neck, considering. “She was bossy. Brutal at times. She had a sharp tongue and a quick wit. She told the best stories. And she was kind, too, though I think she tried hard not to show it.”
Veronyka found herself smiling. Most of this she already knew, and it erased any lingering doubt she might have had as to whether they were talking about the same Ilithya. It felt good to know that the woman from her memories wasn’t some fiction, like Val had been. She was real.
“How did you know her?” Sev asked, drawing Veronyka back to the present.
“She, well . . . she was my grandmother.”
Sev sat up straighter. “You’re Veronyka, aren’t you?”
Veronyka darted a terrified look around. Luckily, Sev was fairly isolated, and most of the people who were awake were the healers and helpers tending the more gravely wounded in the other hall. Nobody had heard him.
“Did she talk about me?” Veronyka whispered.
“No,” he said, somewhat apologetically, “but she said your name in her sleep. Always yours . . . no one else’s.”
Veronyka wasn’t sure what to make of that information. On the one hand, it was validating, proof that her grandmother hadn’t forgotten about her, that the love they’d shared was real and lasting. On the other, it reminded her of all the lost time they could have spent together.
Veronyka forced herself to smile. She was grateful to him and glad that, for whatever reason, their lives had intersected in so many ways.
“Where did you find them?” she asked, nodding toward the satchel on the floor next to him. The sight of the eggs would have sent her heart bursting from her chest a few days ago, and though Xephyra had returned and so much had changed, they were still desperately important. In the face of the recent attack, the growth and development of new Riders seemed paramount.
“I didn’t. It was Kade who—one of the other bondservants,” he said, practically choking the words out. “He and Ilithya found them and kept them concealed throughout the journey.”
They must have come from somewhere in the empire. Could there be more? Could the empire hold the key to the Phoenix Riders’ survival, right in front of them but still out of reach?