Page 6

Six

Ayna

I’ve made it to the top of the pine, one small flutter at a time, ears on the whisper of the wind stroking the trees and the snoring of one of the twins. The male who’s keeping watch is scanning his surroundings too vigilantly for a simple messenger. He knows the dangers of these lands, and judging by the way his hand wanders beneath his cloak every time a twig snaps when the wind decides to kiss the treetops with brute force or a forest animal scurries along the leaf-covered ground, I know he’s ready to take out whoever dares come close to their camp.

I don’t dare breathe as his eyes slide past me over the next tree. I need to get out of here. Warn the others someone is coming to the palace.

If I had my powers, I could shift back and pin them to the boulder until I have answers, but the way things are now, all I can do is flee.

So I scramble farther up and take off into the night.

At least, I try to. One moment, I’m up in the air, the treetops shrinking beneath, the next, a sting of hot air loops around me, trapping my wings against my body, and I drop like a rock.

Faster, faster I plunge, the sensation as familiar as the panic coming with it, heart racing out of my chest and breath coming without a rhythm. My bird instincts set in full force, wiping away any thought but that of survival as I brace for the impact, but before I meet the ground, the twigs and branches I’d used as a perch whip my feathered form as I tumble and tumble.

Fly. It’s not as much a voice as an instinct shouting at me.

With all the strength I have left, I push my wings away from my sides, spreading them enough to break the speed of the fall, and I can tell up from down once more. By the time I catch a weak twig with a claw, my head is spinning, but I feel more in control. Now all I need to do is beat those wings and lift back up into the skies.

So I try again.

It takes about five heartbeats before the loop of air catches me again, and this time, it’s only a few feet fall, and when I hit the moss-cushioned ground, I barely remember why I was even in that tree to begin with. All I know is I need to get out of here before a predator spots me.

I’m small and slow on the ground—defenseless. Even my claws, which can kill small animals, don’t provide much protection when I’m dependent on them for balance. The dull ache in my side isn’t a good sign, though, making spreading my left wing nearly impossible.

I caw what I suppose is a curse, but no more words form in my mind as the worst predator of all appears in front of me.

Large hands reach for me, grabbing me before I can even attempt to flutter out of reach—not that there is anywhere for me to go. The fingers trapping me enclose me hard enough to make breathing a challenge, but then, I haven’t taken a breath since I hit the ground, and I realized that whatever the reason I chose this particular tree, I chose wrong, and the cruel black eyes peering at me from a foot away are proof that this is the last time I’ll see the stars.

“What do we have here?” The male’s breath smells of ash and spices as he sits back on his haunches, lifting me from the ground to inspect me from every angle. “A little bird caught on a current.”

Keeping me tightly in his grasp, he walks back to the campfire where two other males are sleeping. I think I’ve seen them before, but my instincts are screaming at me to flee, and that’s all I can think about. I claw at him as best as I can, one of my talons finding purchase on his fingertip, and he curses so violently I remember hues of turquoise waters and men singing foul songs, but before I can put a name to the faces, they’re gone, and I’m back in the forest, straining against the hold of my captor.

“Don’t fight, little bird. You have nothing to fear from old Gus.”

Old Gus looks anything but old. If I were human or a fairy, I might consider him outrageously handsome and place him perhaps in his early thirties. But I’m neither, and crows don’t consider the looks of fairies at all. We try to get away from them as fast as possible.

I wiggle and caw, beak snapping at any part of him I can reach—which is the hem of his sleeve and has as little an impact on him loosening his hold as a bug biting a horse. How I know this, I can’t remember as my bird instincts take over. What I know is that being trapped means death.

“I won’t hurt you.” The male brings me closer to the fire, the two other males rousing from their sleep at their companion’s uttering.

“What’s this?” One of them says, bending out of his blanket to assess my frantic fight against the iron vise that is his fingers.

The second male leans in, his face so similar—twins, I realize, and it feels like I’ve had the same realization before, but I can’t remember. Blood is pounding in my ears, drowning out the soft voices as they discuss something … something about me, about what to do with me. I caw my lungs out in screams for help, but why I thought anyone would come, I can’t remember.

Flee. Fly. The sky is safety. The ground is death.

The ground is death even when I’m not in the hands of these people who are now staring at me like they can read a truth from my feathers.

“Are you a bird, or are you one of those creepy shifters?”

Shifters. There was something… Far away in the darkness that my memory is becoming, a flicker of truth rings at the word. But am I a shifter? I’m a crow. A bird. Wings and all. I can’t remember the last time I’ve shifted into anything other than this form. The feathers are my clothes, and the wind is my companion.

A companion… The colors of the ocean flicker before me, but I can’t tell how they are connected to me and why they make my chest ache.

So I caw and caw and struggle to free myself.

“We’ve seen enough of them shift to know their tells,” one of the twins says.

Them… I wish I knew who they were talking about. And shift…

“This one is too small to be one of the Crow Fae,” the other twin assesses. “It’s impossible to tell the gender of these birds, but if it’s a female, it’s definitely not a shifter.”

The dark-skinned man gives him a sideways glance, the cruelty in his eyes turning into curiosity as he tilts me upside down as if I had any external organs indicating my gender.

“It was spying on us, though,” Gus points out. I wonder what he means by that.

The twins chuckle.

“I mean it. This bird has been hopping up and down this tree”—he points at the pine I plunged from—“for a while. I swear it was trying to sneak away when I caught it.”

“You caught a bird?” One of the twins laughs. “Is our mission so boring that you need to catch yourself a bird to torment?”

Gus growls at the male, and my blood runs cold. I stop fighting at the authority in the wordless warning.

“Tie it up and throw it in a bag. We’ll take it to the palace tomorrow. Perhaps it will make negotiating a bit easier.”

I hear the words, but I don’t understand their meaning until one of the twins pulls a string of leather from his pack and ties a part of it around my neck then wraps it around my body inch by inch as Gus slides down his hand to expose my wings. When those are thoroughly bound, he ties a knot around my legs, rendering those sharp talons useless.

I can’t breathe, can’t move, but Gus laughs as he tosses me into the light jute bag and holds it up like a trophy. The world is a dark, airless void, but I pant through it as something shimmers deep down inside of me. A thread of silver and gold so thin it barely casts light into my panic, but the thread doesn’t end with me. It’s a long, barely-there connection to a world out there, one beyond my feathers and my meek and desperate caws. I tug on it. And it tugs back. A promise. I’ve made a promise I can no longer remember, but it was a binding one, and no matter how my instincts are telling me a bird is all I am, the thread is holding me to this promise.

So I count my heartbeats as I wait for the males to deliver my fate.

If I die not fulfilling my oath, the person on the other end will be free.