Chapter 27 #3
‘Arawn,’ she said, loud enough that his eyes slid to hers. She dared step closer, until their chests were nearly touching again. She felt her fingertips graze his, a spark of desire surging through her. ‘You are more than enough.’
He inhaled at her touch. The flame in his hand suddenly surged.
His eyes met hers.
‘The gods failed you,’ Ezer dared to say. ‘Like they failed my mother and father. Like they failed Ervos. It’s okay to admit that.’
Like they have failed me, countless times.
Like they failed Zey.
She had fallen asleep clutching the Eagleminder’s book last night, replaying every interaction. Replaying how pained Zey was. It was obvious now, in hindsight. And no one had tried to help her, except by making her pay penance.
What if someone had dared to try something different? Something that wasn’t within the confines of the Five?
What she was saying …
It was dangerous.
And yet she could not stop herself from speaking truth to this prince.
‘The gods cannot fail, Minder,’ he said. ‘Sometimes things don’t work out the way we wish.’
‘Maybe not in your mind,’ she answered. The dancers began to swim before her, the colors melding into one shade. Her dress was suddenly too warm. The room, too stuffy. She longed for the darkness of night, the cold kiss of the wind, instead of all this …
This singular brightness.
This one day that would still end in another death-filled night.
Absolution was all the Sacred had, a little tease of what life could be.
Like giving a dog a bone, but only after he obeyed first. She suddenly hated it.
‘I’ve seen the way the laws hold you back,’ Ezer said. ‘Perhaps … there are ways around them.’
‘There aren’t,’ Arawn said.
And he sounded so sure, so certain, that even with the winterwine fueling her bravery …
She let it go.
‘Perhaps …’ His eyes glanced past her nervously. ‘Perhaps the gods will be merciful.’
She raised a brow.
‘My father’s time is short. His end is near. Perhaps … you may not have to make the Descent at all. If the gods call him home. Soon. If,’ he whispered, and his smile fell. ‘I would pardon you from your duty … if I were already King in his place.’
A month ago she would have wept at the thought of such mercy.
But now?
Now she caught a glimpse of Kinlear as he danced past, and he was laughing, so full of life it pained her. It made her remember, in a flash, every moment they had ever shared together, training Six.
‘No,’ she said softly, and shook her head. ‘I think … I would still make the Descent. I’m fated for Six. Fated for this. I’ll get her to fly. I just have to figure out what is holding her back.’
To walk away now …
It would leave her feeling like she’d denied the greatest part of herself.
The only gift, perhaps, the gods had ever given, and it came hand in hand with Kinlear and Six.
‘I figured you’d say that.’ Arawn frowned, following her gaze to where Kinlear spun away. ‘Which is why I’d like to show you something. Would you care to talk a walk with me?’
He held out a large, calloused hand, his eyes eager as he waited for her to take it.
And she was surprised how good it felt, how normal, when she laced her fingers through his.
With the winterwine in her system, she would have followed him anywhere.
She would have followed him to a shadowed alcove, where she could truly press her lips to his. She would have followed him to any of the places he’d taken her in her dreams. The library, the bathing chambers, the flour-coated countertops in the kitchens …
But it seemed her dreams would remain only dreams.
Because Arawn took her back to the place she’d spent countless hours in – the Aviary. They went not to Six nor the Eagle’s Nest. But up the stairwell that led to the Ravenminder’s tower.
Where it all should have begun.
They’d since found someone else to fill the job, she’d been told. The Ravenminder was at Absolution with all the others, but would soon return like everyone else, ready to send messages that gave names and faces to death.
It felt like days ago that she was doing the same.
It also felt like a lifetime, for so much had changed.
The door to the tower was old and wooden, and when Arawn pushed it open … it was an effort not to gasp.
The smell was just like home.
Crushed seeds, millet and corn and parchment, and a candlestick on a small table in the center of the room, and birds sleeping on perches all around. A perfect Ravenminder’s tower, and for a second, she imagined Ervos sitting at that table.
She could picture her uncle turning to face her.
He’d probably say, ‘Come on, Little Bird. It’s time for me to show you something new today.
’ And he would point out some interesting fact about a swallow or a finch or a tawny owl.
He’d tell her how to tame that specific breed, how to determine whether or not it was trustworthy to make the routes they required from one tower to another.
But in the end, it was always ravens for her.
‘Ezer?’
Arawn was staring at her, where she still stood in the doorway, watching the shadows like they might hold a ghost.
But there was no one at the table.
Just ink stains and a stack of empty papers, some of them already pre-torn to the perfect size for a messenger bird’s scroll.
‘How did he die?’ Ezer asked suddenly.
She no longer felt the warmth of the wine.
She felt only sorrow, deep as the sea.
‘A scuffle in the barracks, if I had to guess,’ Arawn said. ‘The soldiers may fight for Lordach. But they are not always kind to one another. Especially when so many of them come from prison cells. From dark places.’
‘Was it fast?’ Ezer asked. ‘Or …’
‘I don’t know,’ Arawn said. ‘I wish there was more to tell you.’
She felt like there was.
But it wasn’t his job to keep track of deaths. He was Lordach’s crown prince, and Ervos was just another Minder in a tower. One who probably got drunk each night in the barracks down below, playing cards … cheating, when the desperation to win became greater than the guiding light inside him.
She turned away and focused instead on the tower.
The birds.
‘Hello, friends,’ Ezer said.
There were a few ravens inside, and they instantly perked up at the sound of her voice. Like they knew her, though they’d never flown her routes. Not this far north.
She held out a hand, and one of them fluttered towards her, landing on her wrist with sharp, dark talons. But she remained still, so as not to scare it. Not that a raven would ever spook around her.
Perhaps it had been there in the woods a month ago.
Perhaps, in that strange burst of magic that had yet to return, this was one of the ravens that had saved her.
‘I’ve never seen such an ability,’ Arawn said, looking at her from the doorway. ‘It’s like they know you. Like they trust you, just as Six does.’
Ezer shrugged and ran her fingertip across the raven’s chin.
‘It’s been this way for as long as I can remember.
And yet, when I’m faced with a test of normal pillared magic …
’ She blew out a breath, lifted her hand and sent the raven soaring back to its perch.
‘I get nothing. Only silence from the Five.’
‘If I were a god, I’d answer,’ Arawn said.
She raised a brow. ‘So now you think yourself a god, Arawn of Augaurde?’
‘No,’ he said, shaking his head, his eyes wide. ‘Not in the slightest. I know my place, I know my – you’re joking again. Aren’t you?’
‘Always,’ Ezer said.
He crossed his large arms. ‘I simply mean, it would be a fine gift, to give you the clarity you seek. Not to know your lineage, your background … it would frustrate me to my core.’
He motioned for her to cross to the window at the other side of the tower. Already, she could tell it would overlook the Expanse. And the Eagle’s Nest, from above, if she peered out of it.
‘I will rule all of this someday,’ Arawn said. He released a frustrated sigh. ‘A leader who cannot properly wield. I wonder how the people will respect me then.’
‘You will be respected,’ she said firmly.
‘You already are.’ She’d seen the way the soldiers looked at him in the halls.
How they inclined their heads, not because they had to, but because they probably all knew of his pain.
His loss. And still … he was here. Still, he would take up his father’s crown and lead.
‘I’ll find my magic, and you will recover yours.
And if we don’t … there is always Realmbreak. ’
‘Realmbreak,’ Arawn said. ‘It’s why I brought you here.’
He turned his gaze towards the view out the window.
Despite the twist in her stomach, she leaned against the stones and peered out with him.
The Eagle’s Nest was like a giant glass orb from up here. The tower itself, far up in the steeple, higher than the peak of the dome. She could see the golden runes swimming across the glass, alive with the gods’ magic.
‘Just in time,’ Arawn said. ‘Look.’
The domed roof beneath their tower suddenly opened wide.
And the first War Eagle soared out.
The climb was instantaneous, a burst of gold wings and feathers and a rider in white, soaring up into the sky, twisting once upside down before nose-diving, beak-first, over the cliff’s edge.
She watched that fall the way a child would, when tossing a coin into a fountain. Wide-eyed and waiting until it hit the bottom.
At the last moment, the rider tugged on the reins, and the War Eagle lifted its wings. It rose just enough to cross through the Snow Gates: those two towering black pillars that marked the opposite edge of Augaurde, and the golden wards.
Where the eagle’s wings took over, and they rose steadily back to the sky.
‘This looks far more terrifying from above,’ Ezer said as she watched the next one rise from the glass dome and make the nose-dive. ‘Why did you bring me here again?’
Arawn grinned. ‘Because this is the highest cliff face in all Augaurde. It’s the greatest challenge Lordach’s war eagles will ever face.’ He smiled. ‘But the raphons?’
He pointed at the Sawteeth, small from here, with that ever-furious shadowstorm.
‘Those mountains are made of nothing but heights … the kind that would make this cliff face look like child’s play.’
Her stomach twisted.
‘That’s supposed to make me feel better?’
He blinked, like she still wasn’t getting it.
‘It’s in her blood,’ Arawn said. ‘To fly from harrowing heights. Her own mother came from there, in the Acolyte’s domain.
And the raphon before that, and the one before that, too.
It’s who she is, Ezer. And if you’re going to survive this …
believe in her. Trust that she’ll know what to do when the moment comes. ’
She could picture it, the Descent, the fall, in her mind.
The wind biting at her hair, the—
Arawn placed a hand atop hers. It was steadying. Grounding.
Warm, as it always was in her dreams.
For a moment, she didn’t want him to move it away.
And it seemed like he didn’t either.
So they stood like that, his hand just barely resting over hers, shoulder to shoulder, watching the sky.
She could feel his heartbeat.
It was fast, like hers.
‘Let her do what she does best,’ Arawn said.
‘Just like a bird leaving the nest, she’ll know what to do.
And if you give her that trust …’ A steady breath, as his shoulder rose and fell against hers.
And when he spoke next, she could have sworn there was sadness in his voice as he slid his hand away.
‘You’ll be flying away from here in no time. ’