“Shut your mouth,” Sev snarled. “I am what the empire—what those soldiers—made me. A motherless, fatherless animage with nowhere to go and no one to trust.” He tossed the branch into the fire and lurched to his feet, stepping over the log and making to stride away.
Kade stood in front of him, blocking his path. “Do not make the mistake of thinking you are the only person here who’s had a hard life. That you’re the only ‘motherless, fatherless animage’ to be found in this camp.”
Sev stared at him, at Kade’s rising and falling chest. Was Kade a war orphan too?
Before he could ask, Kade huffed an exasperated breath and continued. “I understand that life has been hard for you, but people can only judge you by what they see. By your actions.”
“And what have my actions told you?” Sev demanded.
Kade shrugged and looked away. He was attempting to stay calm, Sev knew, but the strain was evident in the tense cords of muscle in his neck and the way his jaw clenched. He ran a hand over his short hair, then cast Sev a sidelong glance. “You’re a liar. You’re selfish and reckless. And you care nothing for our cause.”
Sev couldn’t deny the first three things. He’d lied about being an animage since he was four, and for years he’d only ever looked out for himself. If his two escape attempts weren’t reckless, Sev didn’t know what was. He used to loathe those parts of himself, the same as Kade, but Trix had changed that. When she looked at Sev, she saw all his negative qualities as his greatest potential. She saw someone capable—someone with hidden talents and a dark past.
Someone just like her.
“I didn’t care, at the start,” Sev admitted, addressing Kade’s last comment. Or rather, he hadn’t wanted to care. Life was easier when you didn’t care—or so he’d thought. He’d spent so much time afraid of hurting, of losing everything again, that he’d forgotten life wasn’t worth living—worth saving—if you had nothing to live for. “But that’s not true anymore.”
“What changed?” Kade asked, hand dropping to his side. “You all but begged to be done with this mission.”
“I don’t know. I . . .” Sev swallowed. Sure, he felt guilt over messing things up, for disrupting Trix’s plans and getting Kade punished—but that wasn’t what had changed for him. The circumstances hadn’t changed, but Sev had. “I’m not sure how things changed, but they did. And I’m not quitting,” he said, shaking his head resolutely.
Kade stared at him, an odd expression on his features, almost indiscernible in the flickering light of the fire. Was he surprised that Sev was fighting back . . . or maybe pleased?
“What about you?” Sev asked, carefully avoiding Kade’s eyes. “You hated me at the beginning. Has that changed?”
“I never hated you,” Kade said quickly—too quickly.
Sev forced out a rueful laugh. “Now who’s the liar?”
Ignix was the world’s first phoenix, a female, and Cirix was the first male. Just as they were a mated pair, so too were their Riders.
Cirix was bound to Queen Nefyra’s lover, Callysta. When she died, Cirix promised to join her, if only for a moment, before coming back to bond with her daughter. And so he did, again and again, remaining in Callysta’s family line for many generations.
Ignix, on the other hand, has no death or resurrection on record. It is believed she lived through all the ages of the queendom until the founding of the empire, when she was finally lost to history. Most believed she remained in Aura, forever haunting those golden ruins.
Despite her long life, Ignix never bonded again.
—Famous Phoenixes throughout History, Princess Darya, published 12 AE
There is strength in unity, it is true. The bond of blood, the bond of magic. And love, the most powerful bond of all.
- CHAPTER 28 -
VERONYKA
VERONYKA WATCHED, NUMB, AS Val made her way toward them. The crowd parted for her, as Veronyka had known it would—she wouldn’t have been surprised if the very mountains moved to make way for her sister. The bow in Veronyka’s hand fell from her slack fingers, and the sound of it hitting the packed dirt echoed in her ears as if from very far away.
She wanted to run. She wanted to scream. She wanted to scrape that cold, impassive look from her sister’s face.
“I have to go,” Veronyka heard herself saying, the words slightly muffled as she forced them through unmoving lips.
“Nyk?” Tristan said, but Veronyka was already pushing past him, through the open gate of the training yard, and intercepting Val before she could enter.
“What are you doing here?” Veronyka whispered angrily, grabbing Val’s arm and steering her aside. The familiar sight of her sister was unwelcome, wrong here in this safe place Veronyka had found for herself. All she could think about was what Val had done to her. All she could see in her mind were Xephyra’s eyes bulging as she’d fought for life. The memory of the poison was fresh as spring blossoms, and the dizzying, heartbreaking betrayal was like rot in her belly.
“I go where I please, Ver—”
“Don’t call me that,” Veronyka snapped. She was leading Val back out the stronghold gates and through the village—she’d have marched Val all the way to the switchback stair, but Val finally planted her feet just outside the metalworker’s quiet shop and refused to move.
“What shall I call you instead? Nyk?”
Veronyka reared back slightly. “How did you—”
Val rolled her eyes. “Look at you. If I hadn’t heard that boy say it, I’d have figured it out when I saw you.”
Veronyka forgot that Tristan had called her name before she’d abandoned him inside the training yard. A pang of guilt surfaced at the way she’d left him, but she didn’t have the mental space to dwell on it.
Veronyka stared at her sister. Val looked the same as she always did: tall and beautiful, head held high—no matter the tattered clothes she wore—and always that distant, unfeeling facade on her face.
“How did you find me?” Veronyka demanded. “What do you want?”
“Who’s the boy?” Val asked, nodding back toward the stronghold.
“Nobody,” Veronyka said sharply.
Val laughed, the light, tinkling sound raising the hair on Veronyka’s arms. “Oh, come now, little sister. You can lock your feelings up all you want, but you cannot hide them from me.”
Or have you forgotten?
Veronyka lurched back, hastily reinforcing her mental walls, seeking out the gaps in the stones. She’d gotten lazy in her time away from her sister, not constantly on her guard as she’d had to be all her life. Now the barrier felt flimsy, as if cracks and crevices had appeared in the time she’d stopped tending the wall so diligently.
“You still haven’t told me what you want or why you’re here.”
Val shrugged dismissively. “I came back for you,” she said at last.
Came back? That didn’t even make sense. Was Val delusional enough to think that she was here for Veronyka’s sake? That Veronyka needed her help?