Estrel drew a sharp breath, but my mother went stiller than a shadow crow concealed in darkness. For a fraction of a second, I swore something pained flashed through her iron gaze, but it vanished quickly.
The circlet of silver feathers on her brow gleamed like molten starlight. “I expect you back here before the hatching.” She turned to Tyros, who leapt from his perch to the wide window ledge, a perfect tableau of strength against a backdrop of approaching night. With a grace I hadn’t yet mastered, she swung up into the saddle. Wings tucked in tight, Tyros leapt. They plummeted from view, gone for barely a breath before they soared up past the window, climbing into the darkening sky.
“That went well,” I muttered.
Estrel smacked the back of my head, and I winced, rubbing the spot though the blow hadn’t hurt. “Stop stealing my crow!” Despite the snap in her voice, an easy grin filled her face, and she let out a low laugh when I smiled back.
There wasn’t a single other rider or a single other crow I’d ever dream of doing what I did with Iyla. Any other crow would snatch me by the leg with its beak and toss me off, princess or not. That was, until I had my own.
My gaze dropped to the gold and black edges of Estrel’s Corvé tattoo that reached up over her muscular shoulders, denoting her as one of Rhodaire’s nine crow masters. While the heads of each house saw to their people, each wing’s Corvé saw to its crows.
Tonight, I would choose my own crow. I would become a rider. And one day, I would earn the tattoo and become the royal Corvé after Estrel.
“The Sky Dance starts in an hour,” Estrel said. “Then it’s back here for the hatching. Are you and Kiva going into the city tonight?”
“To Rua’s.”
She smirked. “Take a breath. Enjoy the night. You’ll have your crow soon enough.”
Soon enough felt a lifetime away as I bolted down the winding rookery steps, dodging a rookhand balancing plates of meat, and out into a perfect Rhodairen winter evening. The air was cool but not cold and filled with the possibility of rain. Storm crows would keep it at bay, though I wished they’d let it fall. I’d always wanted to see a Sky Dance in the rain.
The wind buffeted my escaped curls into my face as I shot along the gardens, through the castle gates, and into streets filled with thick green trees and climbing vines trickling down buildings like rivulets of rainwater.
I veered onto the main road between the Caravel Wing and Thereal Wing, then cut right into the Thereal section of the city, slowing as a wave of music and laughter washed over me. I made for Rua’s, a bright-blue building on the corner where a crow had been painted in sunset colors across one side, done by a street artist in the night.
Native brown-skinned Rhodairens walked alongside colorfully dressed, dark-skinned travelers from Trendell, a kingdom far east of Rhodaire. Both were dwarfed by the pale, long-limbed Korovi of the northern kingdom. People came to Rhodaire from all over the world for Negnoch. I even spotted a few revelers from Illucia, the border kingdom to our north, though they were probably only here for festival discounts on Rhodairen weapons. Or maybe they were guards for the visiting Illucian dignitaries.
That was probably what had my mother on edge: their presence, and their queen who threatened war. She’d already taken two kingdoms.
Someone seized my arm, spinning me around. Kiva grinned down at me, her moonlight-colored hair freed from its characteristic braid and down to her shoulders in waves. She still wore her castle guard uniform, making her look older—sometimes I doubted she owned anything else. She even had her sword at her hip.
“I was starting to think you weren’t coming!” she shouted above the clamor.
“And let you eat all the orange cakes?”
“Typical. Here for the food.”
I nodded at her uniform. “Hoping to impress someone?” She’d been flirting with a girl at Rua’s for weeks now.
Kiva’s cheeks burned, and she nudged me with her shoulder.
I grinned. “Race you.”
We dove into the crowd, dodging flying elbows and swinging hips. Along the sides of the streets, baskets of the last fruits of the season sat waiting to be eaten, from bright-yellow mangoes to fresh-picked oranges. Overhead, thunder boomed in a near cloudless sky, a storm crow marking the time.
The night passed in patches. I drank talcé after talcé, sweet juice drinks filled with pieces of fruit, and ate as many orange cakes as I could stomach. We danced and sang, following the street past acrobats and fire-eaters, carts of pastries and fruit pies. Children ran laughing through the streets, kites in the shape of crows tied to their wrists by long, thin strings. Tradition said if your kite made it through the night undamaged, you were destined to become a rider.
Thunder boomed again. The Sky Dance was about to begin.
Crows glided in lazy circles above the castle with riders on their backs, looking like shadows set adrift in the sky. The sun set behind them, painting everything deep mauve and carmine, buttermilk and fuchsia.
The drums started, low and steady at first, matching the rhythm of the crows as they circled. Then the speed increased, and higher drums joined in. The circling crows broke in all directions, some diving straight down, others surging upward in a powerful burst of speed. They twirled and dove, weaving around each other in exact, graceful movements.
A fire crow opened its beak and let loose a stream of blue-tinged flames at a wind crow, which buffeted the fire upward toward a water crow, which doused it into steam with water from its beak. Sun crows lit the sky in ethereal gold, their glow fading into wisps like the light of falling stars. Shadow crows wove ribbons of night around them, creating intricate shimmering patterns.
Each action a crow took was mimicked by another one across from it, one formation molding seamlessly into the next, creating a symmetrical design of beasts, people, and magic, all interwoven in a dance among the clouds.
The drums grew faster. Lightning struck and thunder rolled, keeping time with the beat. Crows dipped and twirled in perfectly timed maneuvers I longed to try. My heart raced with them, imagining the feel of the wind in my hair and the heat of a crow beneath me.
As the music peaked, every crow shot upward, carried by drafts from wind and storm crows. Then they dove.
As the echo of the final drumbeat sounded, the crows shot out in all directions in perfectly executed dives. Their deep, echoing cries filled the sky as the sun finished setting, and the crows blanketed the night.
Still ecstatic from the dance, Kiva and I moved off the main road to find another talcé vendor. The skies had cleared, and the crows had all returned to the rookeries throughout the city’s wings to be unsaddled and fed. The images remained seared into the back of my eyelids. Soon, I would be a part of that dance.
“You’re going to be late,” Kiva warned as we navigated the crowded street.