Chapter 22
For hours, Six fought Ezer’s attempts at buckling the saddle.
Each time she tried, the pup panicked. Each time Ezer settled her again, she received various visions of trapped creatures flooding her mind.
And felt the panic within her own soul.
‘It’s a means to an end,’ Ezer said, on the third hour.
She’d long since removed her cloak and was covered in shavings, sweating despite the frigid temperatures inside the dark space.
‘The end is freedom, Six,’ Ezer said. ‘You can leave your cage. You can fly.’
Six walked slowly towards the saddle, which was left crumpled and abandoned on the edge of the cell, half-buried in the shavings.
‘That’s it,’ Ezer said. ‘It’s safe.’
Six swiped out with her front paws. And positively shredded the seat of the saddle.
‘Fine,’ Ezer growled. ‘You don’t like that one, then I’ll commission another. And another after that, until you do as you’re told.’
Six grabbed the saddle with her curved beak, sharp as a sword itself. And flung it across the cage. It landed in her water trough, drenching Ezer in a wave.
‘Gods,’ Ezer said.
She slumped down, soaked, breathless and too damned tired.
A familiar burn started behind her eyes.
No, she thought.
It was weak, crying. At least, that’s what she’d always thought, for Ervos only cried when he was drunk, too buried beneath the weight of alcohol to think clearly.
She often brought him a mug of steaming coffee, for it seemed to be the only thing to sober him up. She’d take his large hand in hers and help him stand and hobble towards the couch, where he’d slump down, his eyes half-open.
She could feel the tears on her face, hot despite the cold around her. She could feel the pain in her heart, the emptiness that came from not ever getting a chance to say goodbye.
Not to her mother or her father or to Ervos, who took the place of both.
Hot breath suddenly warmed her face, and the tip of a sharp beak nudged her chin.
‘Go away,’ Ezer said. ‘Please.’
But the beast lay down and placed her heavy beak on Ezer’s lap. Her body had grown, the weight of her head had grown, in the past many weeks alone. She almost didn’t even look like a pup anymore, unless Ezer paid attention to the downy feathers still clinging to her neck.
‘What are you doing? What am I doing?’ Ezer wiped her tears and laughed to herself, a sad and desperate sound.
And then she placed her hands on Six’s beak and lowered her forehead against it.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
She wasn’t certain if that sorry was for Six or for herself, for all she’d endured.
The beast huffed out a warm, stinking breath.
And a vision stole her away.
This time it was a true vision. A memory, perhaps.
She saw the Eagle’s Nest.
The trees and the lush springtime forest, and when she looked down, she could just barely see the tip of a curved black beak and two awkward, too-large raphon paws, Six’s paws, as the beast climbed across the treetops, leaping and bounding like only a cat could.
From branch to branch, the raphon went.
Ezer recognized the memory as the day Six broke out.
The day they first met.
It felt like ages ago, now.
Six reached the domed edge of the Eagle’s Nest, where the runed glass was all that stood between her and that harrowing drop far below.
She could hear the war eagles screeching, could hear the Sacred calling out as they tried to give chase. She had seconds, maybe, before they caught her.
But she couldn’t tear her eyes from the sky behind the glass.
A boom rattled the world.
She felt it in her body, through her paws and all the way to the tips of her lovely black wings.
Lightning illuminated the storm that hung over the Sawteeth. Shadows swam through that infernal cloud, like stretching fingertips. They danced down the mountainside, a web of darkness that none could pass. And beyond the shadows, beyond the Sacred Knights and golden eagles …
She saw the raphons.
Her own kind.
They soared from the Sawteeth, a flock of dark feathers and fur.
She could hear the wind calling to them as they rose, even from here.
It danced past her hearing, whispering that the path for the raphons was safe, that the shadows spilling down from the clouds would not harm her kind.
Each rider was held expertly between their raphon’s wings.
There were no saddles. No bridles. Only a beautiful, unbreakable bond between darksoul and raphon, and when they reached the curtain of darkness, alive and swarming down from the mountaintops …
They passed on through.
And dove into the war, ready to kill.
Ready to claim all in the name of the Acolyte.
The vision broke.
Ezer pulled away, lifting her eyes to the raphon. Six’s beak was wet from her tears, her jagged white scar shimmering in the torchlight.
‘You aren’t to be gentled, are you? Broken.’ She growled the word, like Zey had. With disgust. ‘Not in their way.’
A single twitch of the raphon’s tail.
‘All right then,’ Ezer said. ‘That settles it.’
She picked up the saddle from the other side of the cell. Shavings tumbled from it as she lifted the soft leather into her arms. ‘We’ll just destroy this obnoxious thing, so that you never have to—’
Her words trailed off as she turned to find Six kneeling before her, leaning so far down her beak nearly touched the ground. She’d dipped one wing, as if she were making room for Ezer to climb aboard.
‘What are you doing?’ Ezer asked.
Six huffed, sending shavings outwards in a wave. She twitched her tail once. Yes.
‘Yes, what?’ Ezer asked.
And then her blood went cold.
‘Oh, no. No way.’ She held out her hands. ‘I’m certainly not going to ride you.’
Six’s tail twitched again. Yes.
‘Absolutely not,’ Ezer growled. ‘I won’t do it.’
One dark eye slid towards her and narrowed. A growl left her throat. Her hackles raised.
‘Six.’
Another growl.
‘I can’t be your rider!’
A single tail twitch.
Yes.
‘No.’
Yes.
Ezer put her hands on her hips. ‘I’m not arguing with you about this. I’m the Minder.’
She marched over and reached for the halter, to pull the raphon back up to full standing. But instead, the second her hand touched Six’s feathers … another vision came.
And this time it wasn’t a memory. This time, it was …
It was Ezer, seated atop Six’s back.
Ezer, soaring out across the cliffside, and Six was glorious, full-grown and wonderful as she tore through the sky, and together they were one. Together, they were fierce and wondrous as they angled towards the Sawteeth and never looked back.
Ezer ripped her hand away, breathless.
‘I can’t fly you, Six. I’m not a Rider. That’s not what this mission is for. You are to be matched –’ her voice broke at the sadness she suddenly felt – ‘with someone else.’
‘It doesn’t have to be that way.’
Ezer spun at the sound of Kinlear’s voice.
She didn’t know how long he’d been watching, but it had to have been long enough.
‘She speaks to you, doesn’t she?’ he asked.
His head was cocked, his eyes narrowed as he studied them both.
‘I wasn’t certain before, but now … gods, it’s impossible to deny, the bond you share.
Of course, I was hopeful before, when I first saw the beast standing before you in the Eagle’s Nest. But now …
well, it took long enough for her to do it. ’
‘To do what?’ Ezer asked.
Kinlear grinned. ‘To choose.’
Something strange began to move through Ezer, deep in her core. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘The book you’ve been searching for in the library. You won’t find it, because quite frankly it doesn’t exist. But the darksouls know. I told you before about the interrogations. About the things they tell us, when they are tortured.’
He had a new expression on his face.
He looked … like he was staring into the flames of a crackling fire, spilling his secrets. Ones he’d held on to for far too long.
‘The war eagles are assigned at random. They usually lean towards one or another, but in the end, they are all capable of being controlled by any Rider.’ Just as Zey had said. ‘Not so with the raphons.’
‘You knew this?’ Ezer asked. ‘The whole time? And you didn’t tell me …’
He shrugged. ‘The process must be organic. It cannot be forced, and I apologize for holding it back, but it wouldn’t have mattered. Because in the end … the raphon chooses the Rider.’
She couldn’t speak.
She couldn’t breathe, because she knew what he was saying.
And it terrified her, more than anything ever had in her life.
More than the shadow wolves, more than the summons to war.
‘And according to what she’s done now, Ezer …’ Kinlear glanced past her, where Six was still bowing low, as if waiting for her to climb aboard. He smiled, his eyes limned with silver as he said, ‘She has chosen you.’
The sky is a dangerous place for a girl without wings. Ervos’s words echoed in her mind. A warning each time she’d strayed too close to the windows in their tower.
‘I won’t do it,’ Ezer said now, as she stomped after Kinlear.
They’d left the tunnel behind and burst through the door into the main hallway of the Aviary. The smell of leather filled her senses – saddles on the walls – and it made her all the more angry. All the more terrified. ‘I’m not a Rider.’
She wanted to scream at him. He’d given her hope that she’d be dismissed, that she’d get to walk free with enough coin to sustain her for life, once Six was handed off to her Rider … and now?
Now, she was to be that Rider.
Which meant she’d have to go across the Expanse.
‘Then you’ll become one,’ Kinlear said, turning left towards the outer doors. ‘Several weeks is plenty of time before you make the Descent. It’s daunting, but from what I’ve seen thus far, I trust that you and Six will demonstrate your skills as a duo just in time.’
The Descent.
She felt like her stomach dropped to the floor as she realized he meant the display she’d been watching all these nights with the others in the training room. The War Eagles diving down the harrowing cliff face, towards death.
‘I’ll die!’ Ezer yelped.