Page 17

Seventeen

Ayna

Scattered with scratches from my claws, the windowsill in Myron’s room has become my favorite place over the past weeks of fighting a battle against time: time to prepare, to understand the magic-nullifying drug better and make an antidote from it, time to spend with my new family, time to work out how to choose immortality.

I’ve tried—Guardians, have I tried to choose . Every day I sit in this place, focusing on my mate, on my title as a Crow Queen, on what I want for this court and how to achieve it. I decide over and over again that I want to be Queen of Crows. That I am Queen of Crows. That I choose to be the queen of this feathered people.

Nothing.

Less than nothing. Not even a mocking laugh from Shaelak or a warning from Vala that she told me so .

Kaira can’t spend every minute of her day with me so I can talk to people, and Tori is busy readying Askarean forces and positioning them north of the city in Erina’s legions’ path. Every day feels like a million lifetimes and too short to bear when I come up empty-handed, still clad in feathers and claws, and my mate is still as mortal as I am.

We’ve talked about the solstice, about the ritual the Flames do to reaffirm their long life. It’s the best idea anyone has come up with so far, even when dancing in this form might prove to be a challenge.

When I told her, Clio suggested I sit on Myron’s shoulder and let him do the work, but the humor in her tone was forced, and the compassion in her gaze brought back the initial pain and hopelessness Shaelak’s words instilled in me.

“Hello, little crow.” Myron has soundlessly entered the room, afternoon light spilling over his tall form from the window behind me. With a soft click, he closes the door and sheds his leather jacket on the broken chair by the desk. This room— his room—is the one where he slept when Erina tried to un-mate us and I rejected him for a while. He now sleeps back in our initial room, in the wide bed, but during the days, he still comes here to read in books he borrows from Recienne’s library or study maps Tori provides, and when I want to spend time with him, I join him here.

One of said books still lies open on the made bed, a cup of cold tea sitting on the edge of the desk and an empty plate next to it, proof that he sometimes stays here even through mealtimes.

Lips quirking into a half-smile, Myron strolls over to the window, propping his hip against the worn wood and bracing a hand beside me. For a moment, it strikes me as odd that I’m looking directly at his abs—hidden beneath the loose white shirt he’s wearing—but I know his body well enough to recognize the contours and what it felt like to touch them.

On instinct, I lift a claw; then I remember I’m a bird and he’s in his fae form. And I’m a bird.

“Kaira is tormenting Herinor in the training ring,” Myron says, oblivious to my moment of forgetting my form. He chuckles quietly, gaze wandering to the window as if he could see all the way to the arena. “I wonder which of the two will break first.”

“In the arena?” I think at him, but my words are lost in the void my mind is without Kaira’s ability to relay my thoughts.

“They’ve been dancing around each other for a while, and the way I see it, Herinor will either spear her with his sword or with his cock, depending on how much she upsets him.”

I cackle a laugh of surprise as he puts it so bluntly. Kaira definitely has it in her to drive anyone mad, but the way I’ve caught Herinor looking at her gives me hope he won’t run her through with a blade. Which would leave the other option, and I’m back to studying Myron’s abs through his shirt.

My bird body can’t feel desire the way my human one could, so all that remains is the memory of what we used to have and of that dream a few weeks ago that keeps haunting me.

Myron turns his head and catches me studying him, and I’m glad I can’t blush in this form, but pain flashes in his eyes before he turns his back to the window and lowers his head, a curtain of black hair hiding the exhaustion on his features as he sighs. “I know you can’t respond without Kaira or Tori here to help translate, but I want to talk to you anyway.”

One caw for a nondescript response. He can interpret whatever he likes and I’ll get to hear him speak for a little longer. Much as Shaelak’s words have shaken me, at least my bird self has come to her senses, my instincts no longer driving me away from my mate. I can finally allow myself to be next to him without believing it would be better if I set him free—because he’ll never be free, even if I disappear into the night. He’ll die with me, whether we’re in the same room or oceans apart.

I love you, Myron. I’m sorry I’m taking your immortality to my grave.

“I’ve been thinking about—” He stops himself, shaking his head. “I’ve been thinking about the promise.”

What promise? I want to ask, but I hold still, hopping a step closer while Myron runs a hand through his hair, revealing his profile against the smudges of orange and pink along the graying sky.

For a long, tense minute, he says nothing, doesn’t even look at me, but when he does, his brows knit together, and he shakes his head again. “It’s probably a stupid idea.”

Without another word, he prowls over to the bed and slumps onto the covers, picking up the book and burying his nose in it.

What are you reading? I want to ask just to keep him from withdrawing into this shell he sometimes pulls up—whenever our eyes collide for too long and myriads of emotions swirl in the ocean depths like he can see me beyond the form I’m trapped in. It’s those moments when I wonder if he felt as embarrassed when I looked at him like that when he was still a prisoner of Vala’s curse.

He hasn’t been avoiding me the way I avoided him before what happened with Gus and the twins and then in the temple, but something has changed in him, and I can’t put my finger on what it is.

Talk to me, I think at him. Look at me. Even when I can barely stand his scrutiny.

He doesn’t move. So I flutter to the edge of the bed, cocking my head so I can spy past his shoulder where he’s braced his head against the wall behind the bed. Myron lowers the book, eyes locking on me once more, and his chest expands, muscles playing in his neck as he rolls his shoulders like before a fight.

The Eastern Oceans , I read the title of the book he closed in his lap and which is now resting atop his powerful thighs.

A map collection. Of the oceans separating Eherea and Neredyn, his home. I don’t dare ponder what this means and why he’s looking at it now.

“Since the Flame ambush in the borderlands…” he starts again, an emotion I can’t place on his features. “Have you ever thought about the power of promises?” Before I think about what he means by it, he continues, “Like Herinor’s bargain with Ephegos. A bargain is a promise of sorts. It keeps him locked in a certain pattern until he’s released from it. Until the bargain is fulfilled or, in my case…” His throat bobs, voice turning hoarse. “A promise.”

His gaze holds mine as I peer up at him from my perch, head heavy with swirling thoughts, and ready to scream.

What promise?

A knock on the door saves me from losing my mind, and the growl ripping from Myron’s throat at the interruption—despite his reluctance to share what was on his mind—makes the blood in my veins grow cold.

“This better be important,” he snarls. I flutter to the top of the shelf beside the bed, taking up a defensive position or eradicating evidence of how close I’ve allowed myself to get to Myron.

The door swings open, Herinor hesitantly poking his head inside with a stone-like expression on his face. “I know, I know… Only if it’s important, you’ve made that clear.”

I wish I could ask what he means by that, but Myron silences him with a forbidding glare that would send lesser males running.

“What is it?” Myron gets to his feet, bringing himself between the shelf and the door as if shielding me from danger when Herinor just so clearly stated his loyalties to this court and his intentions to become worthy of it.

“Recienne asked me to inform you he’s readying for battle. The soldiers in the north are on the move.” It’s all he needs to say to have Myron launch into action. He grabs his leather jacket and dons it atop his shirt, checking his weapons before sheathing them at his hips like he’s ready to walk onto a killing field right now. My heart launches into a frenzied gallop. Too soon. We were supposed to prepare more, perhaps find a way to make use of that one bottle of magic-suppressing drug in our possession.

“When is he marching?” Myron follows Herinor out the door then halts just across the threshold, bracing a hand on the doorframe and glancing at me over his shoulder, a crease forming on his forehead. “I haven’t fulfilled my promise, and I know there is no way I can until you turn back into your human form. The old magic of fae promises and bargains will not be patient forever.”

Good I don’t have a voice that could form words, for I wouldn’t have any to say, my mind blank as I try to remember the promise he made. Only when a slight blush graces his cheeks before he turns away, heading out the door after Herinor, do I remember the last promise I fulfilled—and the last one he made.

Promise me there’ll be a tomorrow, Ayna, and I’ll fuck you, then.