I’d like to be called Trix. She was silent for a long time, and Sev thought the conversation was over.
“We survived the fighting in Aura Nova,” Trix began, her voice heavy, “because we weren’t in it. I was already positioned inside the Nest and had to maintain my cover. Bellatrix was with the youngsters at Avalkyra’s home base on Pyrmont. It was terrible to be apart, but as I watched the phoenixes drop from the sky, I was grateful. Sick with cowardice and grateful all the same. In the days and weeks that followed, we tried to keep the rebellion alive. I fled my post, but I couldn’t risk leaving the capital—everyone traveling in or out had to provide travel papers and identification. Laws were passed; friends were executed as traitors. To exist was an act of rebellion. Even in Pyra, we were not safe. Avalkyra left nothing in place, no precautions in case she did not return. We were leaderless, all our best warriors dead or imprisoned. Raiders wreaked havoc on our borders, and animages were chased deep into the mountains. But hope lived. She lived.”
“Who lived? Your phoenix?”
Trix stilled for half a heartbeat, pain flickering across her face before tossing her stick aside. “Yes. She lived, for a time. She begged me to run away with her. There were still safe places for people like us, deep in the wilds. But I couldn’t.”
Trix was speaking steadily faster, the words pouring out of her in a rush.
“I have a duty to my queen, and my work is not yet done. I told Bella that, again and again—she had to remain in hiding, lest she give us both away. When she railed against my orders, I commanded it, with all my might and all my magic. She didn’t listen. Bella was a stubborn old thing,” Trix said, aching tenderness in her voice. Then, in the blink of an eye, her tone went hard. “When they found me at last, they dragged me to the city square. I must admit that I was afraid. I was a spy, so I was always prepared for my own death—but facing it is an entirely new beast. And facing Bella’s? That, I was not ready for. She came for me, wings blazing, shrieking her fury. A dozen soldiers were dead before they managed to hook her with a net and drag her down to earth. I could hardly see, for the tears in my eyes. Bella called to me, and her fear was like fire in my belly. Before I could do more than cry her name, they raised the ax and cut off her head with one fell swoop. A phoenix that’s been beheaded cannot be reborn. That death is final. There was blood everywhere. . . . It sizzled as it spread across the cobblestones.”
Sev stared at her, unable to banish the horrible image from his mind. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Say nothing,” she said briskly, clearing her throat. “It was years ago now. Water under the bridge. Ashes in the wind.”
“I’m sorry, Trix,” Sev said eventually.
“Ilithya,” she corrected. “That’s my true name. Or at least, it used to be. Ilithya Shadowheart. It’s about time you knew it.”
Sev felt the weight and significance of that name and the fact that she’d given it to him. Thya was short for Ilithya, and Trix was short for Bellatrix.
There’s so much in a name.
“I’m sorry, Ilithya,” he corrected.
“You know what? I prefer Trix,” she said, and gave him one of her wide, mad-looking smiles. Sev found it oddly comforting.
“Time for sleep, I think,” she said, getting creakily to her feet. “Nothing like tales of the bloody past for a bedtime story. Sweet dreams, Sevro.”
She squeezed his shoulder, then puttered off to bed, leaving Sev alone by the fireside.
He wasn’t at all ready to sleep. He wouldn’t be surprised if Trix really did think the history of the Blood War made a good bedtime story, but Sev did not. His mind was racing, filled with images of battles and blood and death.
He put another log onto the fire and stared into the growing flames.
Sev knew there was a chance he wouldn’t survive what was to come—that Trix and Kade might not either. But if Trix’s plan succeeded? He and the others would be free. Sev could go anywhere, do anything, with no soldiers left to drag him back to the empire. As much as that was exciting, he ached to have a place to belong when all this was over. To have “friends and loved ones” like Trix. Now that he’d had a small taste of it, he wasn’t ready to let it go.
“Can’t sleep, soldier?”
Sev squinted into the darkness, and a second later Kade appeared from the shadows. Sev hadn’t heard his approach, which made him wonder how long the bondservant had been lurking there, just out of sight.
“Have you been eavesdropping?” he demanded as Kade lowered himself onto a log opposite him.
“There’s nothing Ilithya could tell you that I don’t already know. Besides, I didn’t want the old woman interfering.”
Sev settled back into his seat, wary. Kade’s presence always put him on the defensive. “She prefers to be called Trix.”
Kade snorted. “She’s just being difficult. When we first met, she asked me to call her Princess Pearl.”
Sev found himself smirking, and Kade grinned too.
“Are you sure you’re up to this, soldier?” Kade asked eventually, his smile gone. His hands were knitted together in front of him, and he spoke to the flames, not to Sev.
“You don’t want me involved,” Sev said, not at all surprised by the fact, though still put out by it. He had thought, when Kade argued against his dismissal after the llama incident, that Kade was looking at him differently. That maybe he’d wanted Sev around after all—or at least saw value in his skills. But Kade made no move to deny his words. He took up Trix’s abandoned stick and jabbed angrily at the fire. Obviously Sev was wrong.
“Well, you don’t have any other choice,” he said bitterly. “So you’re stuck with me.”
“We can figure something else out,” Kade said, shifting onto the log next to Sev’s, leaning forward as he spoke. “We can find another way.”
Sev continued to prod at the fire, but he wasn’t really seeing it. “I know I’ve made some mistakes,” he began, trying to keep his voice steady, “but I can do this.”
“We can’t afford mistakes, soldier. People’s lives are at risk.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Sev asked.
“You’re not thinking this through. You realize you’ll be poisoning your fellow soldiers, looking them in the eye right before you turn around and stab them in the back.”
Guilt gnawed at Sev’s stomach, but he refused to let Kade’s words dissuade him. Of course what they were doing was terrible, but they didn’t have any other options. Besides, if Sev didn’t do it, someone else would.
“Why can’t you see past it?” Sev demanded.
“Past what?” Kade asked, his brow furrowed.
“The fact that I’m a soldier. It’s not who I really am.”
“Did you see past it before you were one of them? Did you see past it when hundreds of them marched on your family’s farm?”