Not long ago, there had been a great battle in the land of Jeru. Wrongs righted. Oppression lifted. But little had changed in the villages of Quondoon. The merchants came to Solemn from Jeru City bearing wares and tales, and Sasha’s master had sat with the elders, hearing the stories of the powerful King Tiras who could fly like a bird and who had done away with the old laws. Now the Gifted were free to roam and do their worst, the elders said, though no one had ever seen a Spinner or a Healer in Solemn. There were Changers in Doha, the village nearest them—an old man and a child, though they could only partially change, sprouting wings or powerful haunches at will, but unable to completely transform. Sasha had never seen them, but the elders were dismissive, laughing at the oddity, claiming it more a curse than a gift. The merchants brought more talk from Bin Dar—the land to the north—of great birdmen who made nests and ate human flesh, but no one from Solemn had seen them either. Sasha was not a Changer, a Spinner, a Healer, or a Teller. She was something else entirely. No one talked about Sasha, but their silence did not equate to safety, and Sasha had no confidence in a king so far away or laws that were supposed to protect everyone. Even slaves.
He had a face that she wouldn’t forget and one she couldn’t remember. She shouldn’t have been able to see him so clearly. It was night and he hovered above her, shadowed beneath a half-eaten moon. His eyes were like the sea, blue but not untroubled, and his mouth was her anchor, making promises that kept her from floating away. His hands were gentle, his words were rough, and when he asked her to come with him, she did, rising from her body and becoming someone new.
But they still found her.
Figures moved in and out of the mist, shifting and searching. People screamed and shadows flew through the air, diving and swooping. She hid, flattened against the ground, her face in the dirt. She tried to draw breath but choked and coughed as she breathed in bits of earth. She covered her face with her scarf to strain the air and crawled forward. There was no sound. She tried to shout and felt the shape of his name on her lips, a word she couldn’t hear. A word she didn’t know.
Whop, whop, whop.
The sound echoed in her head and her chest, and the world of hidden figures and flying death whirled away as the beating grew louder.
She’d fallen asleep too close to the fire.
Again.
Her hair and face would be streaked with soot, and she’d drawn ash into her lungs. The house was too hot for a fire, but she hadn’t been able to keep Mina warm, and the coals were slower to die than the old woman had been. Her heart was pounding and her throat was raw. The slapping sound became sharper, heavier, and it left her head and shook the air with the sound of a thousand wings.
“Sasha! Let me in. Untie the flaps.”
Sasha rubbed at her eyes and rose unsteadily to her feet, drunk on the old dream. She was weary and her cheeks burned. She’d been too many days at her master’s bedside, tending the old woman until, like the dream, Mina had drifted away. She’d mourned alone, setting up a call into the night that had been met with moans and little more. Mina’s brother had come with the elders only hours before. They had taken the body of her master away and left her behind.
“Sasha! Let me in!”
“Maeve! You’ll wake the whole village,” she warned, stumbling to the door and unknotting the ties with weary hands. The girl, small and dark like many of the people of Quondoon, tumbled through the opening and fell into Sasha’s arms.
“Sasha. Run. Go now! They’re coming for you,” Maeve gasped. “Mina can’t protect you anymore. They’re coming. I heard them. They’re scared, and they blame you.”
“For what?” Sasha cried. But she knew. Maeve knew too, and didn’t waste time with unnecessary words, grabbing at her hand and pulling her forward.
“Where will I go?
“You’re free. Go wherever you wish.”
“But this is my home.”
“Not anymore. Mina is dead. And you soon will be if you don’t leave now!”
“I’m not properly dressed.” Sasha reached frantically for her head covering, needing to shield her pale skin and her bright hair. Her shoes were outside the door.
“You’ve no time!”
Then Sasha heard it. Felt it. And she recognized it. She’d seen this moment. The sensation of loss and . . . relief washed over her. It had come. There was always relief when visions became truth. She didn’t know why.
From far off there were shouts and cries, as if the village was under attack. But there were no pillagers on the borders, seeking entry. There were no dragons in the air, breaching the borders of the city of Solemn. The enemy was within the gates.
The crescent moon, gloating and glowing in its safety above them, made their night travels across the plain a cold pleasure. The sky was devoid of clouds and littered with shards of stars. The cliffs rose up like marooned ships, their ragged stone masts pointing at the star-filled heavens, and their horses began to descend, winding their way downward into Solemn on the far edges of Quondoon. Kjell of Jeru, Captain of the King’s Guard, had only been there once before, but he remembered the simple attire of the desert dwellers, their covered heads and their quiet ways.
They’d seen no sign of the Volgar—the monstrous birdmen—in the last few days, no nests or carcasses, no stench or even stray feathers, and he wondered again at the hysterical reports in the villages on the border of Bin Dar about devastation in Solemn. But there was something in the air, and his horse, Lucian, was restless, chuffing and flighty, resisting the descent and the press forward.
It would be so much easier if he had Queen Lark’s ability to command and destroy. Instead, he and an elite group of warriors had traveled through the provinces of Jeru, north to Firi and west to Bin Dar, east to Bilwick and back to Jeru City, hunting the Volgar the hard way, at the end of a blade. He’d spent the last two years on the back of his horse, destroying what was left of the winged creatures that had once laid waste to vast provinces and almost decimated an entire kingdom.
When he’d received word that there were flocks of the birdmen in the cliffs of Quondoon, he’d left Jeru City again, oddly grateful there was something to do. Tiras, his half-brother and the king of Jeru, ruled ably, finally freed from the affliction that had kept Kjell so close for so long. They’d rarely been apart since the day Tiras ascended the throne in their father’s place, young and Gifted, with no one else to turn to but his illegitimate older brother. But Tiras didn’t need Kjell anymore. Not in the same way.
Kjell didn’t desire riches. He didn’t want power or position. He’d never longed for possessions or even a place to call his own. Though he was older than his brother, he’d never wanted to be king, and he’d never envied Tiras—legitimate son and heir to the throne—who shouldered the weight of his responsibility with a calm acceptance Kjell had never mastered. Kjell had always been happiest watching his brother’s back or lost in the heat of battle, and he’d always known who he was.
He hadn’t been especially proud of it, but he’d known.
He was the bastard son of the late King Zoltev and the servant woman, Koorah, who’d warmed His Majesty’s bed for a time. A very short time. She’d died in childbirth, and Kjell had been named by the midwife, who thought his infant cry had sounded like the scream of a Kjell Owl before it attacks.