As they looked on, Rex made himself comfortable on a nearby ledge, his feathers sending up sparks as he shifted into position. All around, other phoenixes settled in for the night, roosting in small clusters.
Only the top two levels of the Eyrie were in use, but Tristan liked to imagine what it might have been like a few hundred years ago, when every cavern was occupied and flaming birds perched on every ledge.
Nyk’s eyes were fixated somewhere below. “There’re more phoenixes down there,” he said, his voice oddly strangled. “There’s an enclosure, or a fence. . . .”
Tristan withdrew his gaze. “It’s the females,” he said heavily. “That’s where the breeding cages are.”
He risked a glance at Nyk and instantly regretted it. Nyk looked shocked, disgusted, and his reaction made Tristan feel dirty—as if it had been his idea.
“They aren’t bonded,” Tristan explained, lowering himself onto the ground next to the archway. He leaned his weary back against the cool stone wall, and Nyk copied him. “So they have to be restrained, or they’ll leave. The Riders are trying to get them to mate.”
Tristan could see that his words upset Nyk, and if he was honest with himself, they upset him, too. After knowing the mind of a creature as intelligent, powerful, and ancient as a phoenix, it was hard to believe putting them in enclosures—cages, essentially—and using them for breeding was at all right.
Nyk crossed his arms. “And has it worked?”
Tristan sighed heavily. “We got one last year—”
“One egg?”
“Yes, one,” Tristan admitted reluctantly. He ran a hand through his hair, the curls stiff with the day’s dirt and sweat. “But whether the bird was already carrying or not, we don’t know. She was wild; they managed to trap her, and she laid the egg soon after. Every other attempt has gone badly.”
“Badly?” Nyk repeated.
“They’ve maimed every single male who got close to them. You know, when they hurt, we hurt,” he added, and Nyk nodded—confirming he knew this already. “I remember a couple months back, Fallon was limping for days because his phoenix was in the breeding cages and had been slashed by one of the females. They’re stronger than the males and usually grow to be larger.”
Nyk seemed pleased by this information.
“The same is true of, well, pleasure,” Tristan said, staring resolutely at his knees. Heat crept up the side of his neck, and he forced a laugh as he continued. “We feel all their emotions, good or bad, and apparently if the phoenixes actually did mate, the bondmates sense it in some way. So that’s weird.”
That startled a horrified laugh out of Nyk, and Tristan grinned, gratified that he’d been able to make him smile and break the awkward tension.
“In the old days Riders worked in pairs,” Tristan said, arching his back to stretch his stiff muscles. Nyk watched him idly, and his attention was unlike anyone else’s—not the intense scrutiny of his father or the vague affection of someone like Beryk or Morra. It made Tristan’s senses sharpen and his shoulders straighten. “For hunting and tracking and fighting. The phoenixes would become a mated pair for life, and so would their Riders. I guess their bonds, they bled into each other, so it was almost like the Riders were bonded in the same way the phoenixes were.”
“Like Nefyra and Callysta,” Nyk murmured, his tone thoughtful.
Tristan smiled, pleased that Nyk knew about the First Riders. There had been hundreds of famous pairs throughout Phoenix Rider history, but Nefyra, the First Rider Queen, and Callysta, her second-in-command, were Tristan’s favorites. Even though they married others for alliances and for children, they remained committed to each other above all else. They refused to leave each other’s sides—in battle, in life, and in death. When Callysta succumbed to an arrow wound, Nefyra followed her soon after, dying of a broken heart.
“So, if the breeding cages don’t work and you don’t have any eggs, why isn’t your father searching Pyra, the abandoned watch towers and outposts?”
“We have,” Tristan said. They hadn’t searched thoroughly. He knew that, but there was never enough time. Any day now the empire would learn about them, and they had to be ready. Nyk opened his mouth, probably to argue his very valid points, but Tristan was tired of defending his father’s methods—especially when he hardly agreed with them himself. “Listen, Nyk, I dislike it as much as you do. But if you ever want to be a Rider, we need more phoenixes. This is the only way we know how.”
Nyk fell silent; clearly talk of the breeding cages was dimming his initial pleasure at seeing the Eyrie for the first time. This disappointed Tristan.
He reached out with his magic. With some prodding, he was able to convince Rex to leave his roost and visit him at the end of the phoenix walkway. When Tristan got up, Nyk followed a second later, a frown on his face.
Standing near the edge of the plinth, Tristan felt the warm rush of air that signaled Rex’s approach. Nyk stopped next to him just as the phoenix burst from the depths of the Eyrie; a gust of wind rippled through Tristan’s hair, and streaks of light momentarily marred his vision.
Arcing above, Rex burst into full flame at the peak of his ascent, then dove downward into the darkness below. Nyk crouched in alarm as Rex hurtled toward them, then he leaned over the edge to watch the bird’s descent. It was part of the solstice dance, the display Rex and the other phoenixes would put on the following evening.
Again Rex flew high into the air, only to turn around and soar in a fiery coil toward the earth. As Tristan had hoped, soon other phoenixes joined in, ruffling their feathers in puffs of sparks before igniting. Sometimes Tristan thought phoenixes were natural performers, always game for a bit of theater, a bit of the dramatic—especially if it involved showing off their elegant flight and brilliant flame.
Seeing them like this was surprisingly easy—their fire was a faraway spectacle, not a dangerous threat. He could appreciate the beauty of it in a detached way, as distant and otherworldly as the sun and stars.
While watching one phoenix fly into the sky and then come careening back down was beautiful, watching half a dozen was spectacular. Nyk gripped Tristan’s arm, his mouth hanging open as the firebirds twisted and spiraled, leaving flaming tracks in the air. The moon hung in the sky behind them, fat and bone white, and dull in comparison.