Page 30

Thirty

Ayna

I barely breathe as Kaira’s fingertips brush Herinor’s temples, lingering. She’s mastering the shaking of her hands better than I do, the fingers of one of my hands clenching around Myron’s, the other hand tucked into the folds of my skirts. A dress Clio lent me with the words, “Show the bastard what a queen you are.” And the tears in her eyes when I walked out of her closet, head high and already battling my dread?—

“Promise me you’ll kill him slowly if he proves to be a real traitor,” she’d said. And I promised with ease, fully aware that, as a real Crow, all my promises are now binding. That’s why I hadn’t specified when I’d kill him if the worst came to pass.

Now, I’m regretting my easy agreement because I can feel in every last one of Kaira’s heartbeats echoing through the cell how it would break her to see the male before her dead.

“You can do this,” I tell her through our mind connection—the one only between the two of us. I don’t mind that it feels like being back in my bird body to not use my corporeal voice. This is to be there for Kaira when she needs me, the same way she’s been there for me from the beginning. The ways she’s helped me these past weeks of being trapped in my bird form. It’s a small thing to endure in comparison to what she’s going through right now.

“What if I find something that damns him?” Her voice is small, desperate.

“We’ll deal with it if that is the case.” It isn’t much, but it’s the truth. No need to plan an execution if we don’t know of the actual crimes committed. “The fact that he’s offering to let us wander through his mind should tell us something.” Should give us hope. But I don’t add that. It’s hard enough for her without hoping.

All our eyes are on the Crow warrior kneeling before the Flame, on his wary face, the hope flickering in his own eyes. His chest heaves, hair sliding away from his cheeks as he tilts his head back an inch to look up at Kaira.

“Whatever you find in there—in my past…” He struggles for words. “I’m not the same male as I was before we came to Eherea.”

Kaira doesn’t look at him, already focusing on her task.

“I won’t hide a thing from you. Pick through my thoughts and memories as you will. But don’t judge me by who I used to be. I’m no longer that male.” It’s enough of a plea to make my throat bob even when the words weren’t meant for me. That he’d lay himself bare like that?—

The tightness in my throat is enough to make Myron study me from the side in a gesture of reassurance. My palm tingles where my new mate mark lights up in my closed fist, and I could swear a hint of starlight glow shimmers through Myron’s fine tunic. If anyone notices, they don’t give a sign.

Before I can meet Myron’s gaze, Kaira opens the mind link she perfected over the past weeks of connecting me with my court and allies, and we tumble right into a hushed conversation echoing from the chambers of Herinor’s memory.

“I made my choice,” a Crow with a crooked beak on his barely human face says. I see the back of his conversational partner’s head. A male who spies for King Myron, who roams the limits of what the bargain with the Fairy King allows.

“A wise decision, Neris,” Ephegos approves. “You’re joining a winning court. A court of a new era.”

Neris is a fool to trust a male who seeks to betray his king. It’s the only thing I can think as I withdraw into an alcove to avoid detection. Myron is a good male and deserves this last chance.

A final chance. The Crows are restless, need more of a territory to hunt, to live . We can’t remain in this forest forever and be expected not to shed blood among each other. Ephegos turning on him is only the beginning.

The mind link flutters, and I’m back in my own mind, taking in the room for a heartbeat before Kaira sucks me back into Herinor’s memories. I wasn’t aware how vivid this would be, how real. That I’d see memories rather than hear thoughts.

Myron hasn’t managed to make the human fall for him. And to no surprise. Ephegos’s bargain is still intact. I’ll join him if the Crow King fails by the time the big move happens. If only I knew what that big move was. I might be able to aid the Crow King rather than sealing his fate before I need to make that choice of selling my loyalty.

But if I tip off Myron and he fails to break the curse after all, there’s no way I’ll stay within this place a minute longer. Millennia of hoping and failing. Millennia of slaughter and mindless existence. A brutal existence.

The memory flickers out of existence once more, taking us all back to a sandy beach with lush woods to one side and endless waters to the other.

Warm sand trickles through my toes as I saunter along the dunes, eyes on the two females before me. They sought me out the night before, and I can still feel their mouths on my skin and their breasts in my hands. The one on the left, the redhead with the supple ass… What a lovely feeling that was, her curves pressed against my hips as she stood on hands and knees while the other one touched herself.

My skin tightens in my groin, and I whistle to catch their attention. The dark-haired one gives me a coy smile over her shoulder. There was nothing coy about her last night.

I’m thrown out of the memory so fast my head hurts, and I could swear Kaira is fuming with hurt and fury at a memory made so long before she was ever born. Long before the curse was ever spoken.

My gaze finds Myron, who shakes his head as if to tell me it doesn’t matter, that things are in the past and Herinor is being a brave male for letting us all see snippets of his life.

The next memory takes me to the top of a mountain. Not only one mountain, I realize, as Herinor turns his head in the memory, showing us the view of a long mountain range peeking out of the oceans in rocky summits.

“I don’t want to leave,” I say, helplessly staring at my feathered arms. They won’t shift back. As won’t my clawed hands and my near-bird face. Beside me, Silas hisses and spits words that are hard to understand. He’s struggling even more than I do to adjust to the new situation. It might have something to do with the perished female he woke up next to this morning.

Dead. All of them. Not one single female Crow left.

Vala did a thorough job, that fucking menace of a deity. My chest is tight and my heart strains to beat at all.

“Maybe it’s for the best that we leave this continent,” Silas muses, gazing out at the turquoise sea. Carius said he wants to go west. Crossing the continent is no longer an option, and he doesn’t want to go around it lest Vala has other curses prepared for us if we defy her. He’s eager to explore and conquer whatever he finds lying west of these lands.”

Home. We’ll leave home.

My chest cracks.

And so does mine as I dive out of the memory, only to be taken into the darkness of Myron’s palace in the Seeing Forest. I know the hallways, the carvings, the everlasting torches along the walls.

“She’s pretty,” Ephegos muses, nudging Myron in the side with that playful way of his. The King’s best friend and perhaps the only one who is allowed to say anything like that to him.

“Pretty doesn’t even begin to describe it,” Myron says, face grave. “What a waste.”

It’s been two days since Wolayna arrived at the palace. The king has put me on guard duty because I’m one of the more civilized Crows in this court. Might have something to do with my history in Carius’s court. I’m used to pretending to have no opinions or emotions. Part of being a Crow soldier.

“You can still have your fun with her before she dies,” Ephegos suggests, earning a warning glance from Royad, who hasn’t left the King’s side as if anxious Myron will do something stupid if he allows him anywhere near the bride without adult supervision. Not that Myron is a child… Just, he is still a youngling in my view. Was born just as the curse fell upon us. He hasn’t seen much of his homelands, only the island where Carius made us stay the first decades of the curse. Still Neredyn but not the mainland. He built himself a palace there to remind Vala he doesn’t give a shit about her curse, that he welcomes the brutal cruelty of our people, solidified in our half-form.

How I ever fell for Carius’s ideals, I no longer know. Myron is the one who will bring about change. He said he’d do it or die trying. Not a promise. He knows better than to give careless promises. But with all those females dying on him… I’m not sure he’ll ever succeed.

I straighten at my post by the door while the three of them survey the sleeping pirate woman. Her hair is grimy, and she reeks of sweat and dirt. Of blood and fear.

“How long do you say she’s been out?” Ephegos asks, leaning over the bride with predatory interest.

“Since the boat. She was asking questions, and before that, she tried to escape on the prison island.

“A feisty one.” Ephegos claps Myron’s shoulder. “If she’s too much for you, I’m happy to take her off your claws.” He winks, and Royad chuckles while Myron just stares down at the woman who might seal all our fates.

“Don’t you have a ward to unweave?” Myron says to his friend, who laughs and flashes his toothy grin—fae enough if it wasn’t for the feathered arms—and strides from the room, followed by Royad, who halts at the doorstep, ignoring me completely as if I haven’t been standing guard since the moment they brought her in so none of the more savage Crows will feast on her—and I don’t mean the sensual way.

“Coming?”

Myron nods at his cousin, but before he turns to leave, he bends over the bride, studying her sleeping face, and brushes a thin strand of ash blonde hair from her forehead. “I might not know you yet, but one day soon, I will love you,” he whispers so softly I’m not sure I heard him. “Even if you’ll hate me. Even if I’ll never break the curse, I will love you.”

My heart stills as I fall out of the memory to Myron’s thumb brushing over the back of my palm. When my eyes snap to his, they are already waiting for me, a guarded expression on his face.

All this time… From the very beginning.

And Herinor had known. He’d known how good Myron was even back then. How he’d done all of it from the very first moment. He’d told me he never expected to break the curse when I was brought to him. He’d given up hope that anyone could ever love him back. And all those times he told me he wished he didn’t care if I lived or died—all those times were to protect his own heart when he believed I could never love a monster.

“You kept your promise,” I whisper at him, moisture collecting on my lashes.