Outside, the stronghold had gone quiet. The dining hall was empty, and the guards were back at their posts. The celebrations had been cut short; there would be no fiery phoenix dance tonight.
Val was waiting for her, seated on a barrel with a shawl wrapped around her shoulders. It had grown cold, and a bitter wind whipped across the abandoned courtyard.
Veronyka ignored her sister and headed toward the barracks.
Val caught up, walking beside her in silence. After several steps, Veronyka decided she wanted to talk to her after all.
“Did you do it?” she asked, turning abruptly to face Val.
“Do what?” Val asked, staring down the length of her nose at Veronyka.
Veronyka shoved her, relishing the idea of getting into a fight, of releasing all the anger and heartbreak that was building up inside. “Those ashes were cold and dead when I left that cabin. How is she here?” Veronyka demanded, fighting to keep her voice from rising to a shout. “What did you do?”
She thought back to that day, sitting in front of the empty hearth. She was certain she’d failed, had felt nothing from her bondmate, nothing in the weeks since . . .
Actually, that wasn’t true. She’d put Xephyra in her mental safe house, blocked her presence and shut her out. Veronyka had thought she’d been stifling painful memories, but she’d actually been shutting out her bondmate’s newly reborn attempts to connect with her.
Val stared at the place where Veronyka had dared to touch her, but she made no move to retaliate. “Don’t blame me for the threads Anyanke has woven for you. I had nothing to do with your bondmate’s resurrection.”
Veronyka scowled. It was all too convenient, too awful, to have happened by accident. But the logistics of it weren’t easy to dismantle, not when Veronyka was already so mentally drained. It was impossible to control a phoenix you weren’t bonded to, let alone travel with one for weeks. Val couldn’t have done this. “Since when do you believe in the gods?”
“Since always. Believing is one thing—worshipping on bended knee is something else.”
Veronyka rubbed her arms, trying to banish the chill night air.
“Have they kicked you out, then?” Val asked, a determinedly light note to her voice—as if it was of no importance to her at all.
“No, they didn’t. I’m . . .” The hollowness in Veronyka’s chest was spreading, clawing its way up her throat and making it difficult to speak, to breathe. “They’re putting her in the breeding enclosure. And I’m to work there as well.”
Saying the words out loud was like a slap across the face, and the gravity of what was happening finally caught up with her.
A breath escaped Val’s lips, as if she’d been hit in the stomach. “Do they know that you’re bonded?”
Veronyka shook her head. She was oddly grateful for Val’s shock, relieved to have someone on her side—but she dismissed the idea at once. Val was only ever on her own side.
“They think I have a gift with calming animals. I did the same thing with a horse once, and . . . they want to keep Xephyra in a cage, force her to mate, and . . .”
Her throat hitched, tightening painfully until she couldn’t speak at all. Against the cold numbness of her body, hot tears spilled down her cheeks.
“You cannot stand for this,” Val said, taking a step toward her. “You must free her.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Veronyka demanded.
“Xe Nyka,” Val said softly, reaching for her, but Veronyka dodged her touch.
“This is all your fault,” she snarled, before running to the servant barracks, leaving her sister standing there, her arm outstretched.
That night Veronyka dreamed for the first time in weeks.
She sat in a crowded, smoky room, at the foot of a large wooden bed.
She held a hand in hers and was unsurprised to find that it belonged to the same dark-haired girl as in her last dream. She seemed older now, in the early years of her womanhood, and their hands fit perfectly. Together they bent their heads in somber silence.
There was a man in the bed, apparently unconscious, buried in fine blankets and propped on embroidered pillows. His skin had a sallow tinge, and his brow was dotted with sweat.
He was dying.
In her dream Veronyka knew this, even without recognizing the black-robed priests of Nox or noticing the veiled mourners in the background. Incense burners filled the room, choking the air with their bittersweet smoke.
Dream-Veronyka had fond feelings for the dying man, but she loathed the woman who stood next to him with a hatred that made her stomach churn.
Dozens of others stood vigil in the room. Men and women, all dressed in the finery of the wealthy Golden Empire elite. One of the courtiers caught Veronyka’s attention, and the recognition she felt was almost enough to jolt her from the dream.
Tristan.
No, that couldn’t be right. This man was older than Tristan, but he had the same eyes, the same strong nose and stiff posture. Something in her mind clunked into place, and she knew this was Cassian she looked at. A much younger Cassian, but the distinctive widow’s-peak hairline was evident, along with the indents that would become dimples on either side of his mouth when he smiled.
What she was seeing . . . it must be the past, then—but whose past? She looked at the girl next to her again. There was something familiar about her, but of course, Veronyka had been visiting this girl in her dreams for years.
A low rush of murmurs drew her attention. A stillness had come over the dying man, and a healer moved forward, checking his hands and neck before shaking her head and drawing the blanket up over his face.
The hated woman let out a wail, but it was nothing to the fierce chasm that had opened inside Veronyka. She clutched at the hand she still held as all around the room, the richest and wealthiest people in the empire turned in her direction and bowed. . . .
Veronyka awoke in the dark. She was more tired than when she’d fallen asleep, and her eyes were dry and puffy. The dream had been strange, but what had come before it had been stranger; Azurec’s Day had delivered Veronyka the pieces of her old life again, except they didn’t fit back together as they once had.
Xephyra’s arrival had helped clarify things, putting Veronyka’s position into perspective. Her bondmate did not belong in a cage, and if that meant Xephyra didn’t belong here, with the others, then neither did Veronyka.
It made her ache to think of leaving Tristan behind, of what they might have become together if things were different.
But as she’d said to Val: If things were different, she’d be a Phoenix Rider.
Veronyka slipped out of the barracks before sunrise. She doubted Tristan would come by for their predawn run, but she wanted to avoid it in case he did. There was no point in pretending or getting her hopes up, and she wasn’t ready to see him just yet.