I’d always loved Rosstair.
One of Rhodaire’s biggest shipping cities, it had a massive promenade lining the coast. The sloping city culminated in a wide boulevard filled with warehouses, some of which had been repurposed into collections of pubs and stores, including one of my favorite bakeries.
It was also where the flight training school had been built, right over the thin Fera River that trickled down from the hills the city rested on.
All of that I expected as the Aizel docked in port.
The army of green and silver soldiers, I did not.
“What in the Saints’ name?” Kiva surveyed the gathered ranks with an uneasy hand upon Sinvarra.
Samra stepped up beside me. “Is this not normal in a city of this size? We are quite close to Aris.”
“It would be if they knew we were coming.” I reached along the cord to Res. It wasn’t that I thought Rhodairen soldiers were a threat. It was that after all Razel had done, any strange situation made me wary. Had she somehow infiltrated the city? Were the soldiers a distraction?
“Who’s that?” Caylus pointed to where the crowd had just parted, letting through a tall, willowy woman with dark, curling hair unbound to her waist. One hand held up her skirts, and the other trapped her circlet to her head against the sea wind. She forgot both when she saw me.
“Caliza!” I bolted down the gangplank and into my sister’s open arms.
She enveloped me, holding so tight, the bracelet on her wrist dug sharply into my back. But I didn’t care. I never wanted her to let go.
“Thia.” Her voice strained. I held her tighter.
When we pulled back at last, there were tears in her eyes. Something tugged in my chest, and my eyes burned. She held my face in her hands, her fingers trembling. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re home.” She pulled me into her arms once more.
Home.
Then something was forcing its way between us. I stepped back as Res stuck his beak in the narrow gap between our bodies, sniffing Caliza.
She yelped, stumbling back, and stared openmouthed. “Thia, he’s beautiful.” She started to reach out a hesitant hand but pulled it back. She’d never been comfortable around the crows. But no sooner had she begun to retreat than Res tucked his head under her hand, trilling gently.
Caliza gasped. Then her hand settled and she let out a small laugh, which slowly grew. “Thank the Saints,” she whispered. “Thank the Saints.”
* * *
After receiving my letter with our itinerary, Caliza had thought it prudent to check in with me in person. And, she admitted after Kiva’s incessant needling, she’d missed me. In return, I told her about our training with the other riders, introduced Samra and Caylus, and rehashed our encounter with the mercenaries in Isair.
All this we exchanged over cups of ice-cold talcé in the lobby of the flight training complex. The building had been built almost entirely of frosted glass imported from Jindae, the seams a dark, satiny metal. I knew from experience that the door to the left led to a barrack, the one to the right to the armory. Between them sat an expansive training ground.
The whole thing had been repurposed to train troops after Ronoch, but I could still see the remnants of the flight course through the sheer back wall.
The sight of it sent a shiver through me.
Caylus stood before the wall, inspecting either the glass or the grounds beyond it and muttering to Res. The crow pretended to listen but kept leaning closer to Caylus’s talcé glass, which dangled forgotten in his hand.
Samra had gone to oversee restocking the Aizel, and Kiva stood talking to some new recruits off near the armory. Most of the active-duty soldiers had been pulled up for battle, leaving the complex eerily quiet and empty.
When I asked about the state of the kingdom, Caliza informed me that Razel had retaliated when I left Illucia. Her troops had pushed all the way to Edir.
Caliza expected they’d have to give up the ground as soon as Edir was evacuated and push south to Elaris. The town was well suited to battle, having been developed as a midway point in the kingdom to serve both as a transport for supplies out to the border as well as an easily defensible base after the last war with Illucia had resulted in heavy damage to Aris.
She bit her lip as she finished speaking, fingers worrying at a few strands of hair.
“What is it?” I asked.
Her gaze jumped to Caylus, then Kiva, and she stood, offering me her hand. “There’s something else I need to tell you.”
I took her hand, allowing her to lead me into the barrack building and into the privacy of a small office with only a simple desk, chair, and bookshelf. A thick, creeping dread unfurled inside me at the hesitance in Caliza’s expression. The last time she’d looked at me like that, she had told me she’d engaged me to Ericen.
“Maybe you should sit down,” she said.
I crossed my arms. “Just say it, Caliza.”
She took a deep breath.
“Estrel is alive.”
Distantly, I was aware I’d stopped breathing, but the knowledge felt so far away. Everything felt so far away, as if I were looking at the world from below water a hundred feet deep.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
Estrel was alive.
She was alive, and she’d kept it from me.
Estrel had been horribly burned in Ronoch, then vanished from the healer’s ward in the days after. When she hadn’t come back, I’d known something must have happened to her. It was the only reason she wouldn’t have contacted me. The only reason she would have left me alone.
Then Caliza said she was dead, and everything made sense. Except she wasn’t dead, and now nothing made sense.
She’d left me with no mother, a sister I hadn’t understood, and scars that wouldn’t go away no matter how many nights I prayed. She’d let me believe she was dead long enough for the wound to scar over, but only just. Long enough that hearing this news tore it open once more.
My knees struck the ground, but I didn’t feel it. Someone moved at my side, and Caliza was there, wrapping her long arms around me as I buried my face in my hands and cried. Res tugged on the cord, sensing my pain. When I didn’t respond, he pulled harder. It felt like someone was trying to tear my heart out, but it was already gone.
The door at our back slammed open, and Res leapt in. When he couldn’t identify an immediate threat, he let out a low, whining caw, nudging my back with his beak. I reached out, burying my fingers in his feathers.
When at last I could breathe normally again, my chest felt hollow. As I pulled away from Caliza, sitting back into little more than a heap, familiarity settled. I knew this feeling. This heavy emptiness, as if there were nothing real inside to hold me steady, but a thousand shackles pulled me down, down, down.
Res shifted forward, his wings spread, and flopped across my lap in a mess of feathers and soft coos. He simply lay there in the silence, his mere existence a false promise of new chances.
No matter how many chances I had, this was always where I would find myself: broken.
Eventually, I stopped shaking. I shifted, my limbs stiff and sore, until my back was pressed against the wall. Res moved with me, our bond thrumming with his calming energy, and I latched on to it. It was like being washed out to sea, carried farther and farther out by each retreating wave.
I looked to Caliza. “How?”
Caliza sat back against the wall beside me. “She came to Aris on the night you left Sordell. She didn’t say where she’s been or why she left, only that she’d heard about the engagement. I told her you’d be in Eselin by Belin’s Day, and she left for Trendell that night.”
“How is that possible?” I croaked.
“I don’t know,” she said softly. “I thought she was dead.”
I traced the scars on my left hand with a finger, memories of the searing bite of fire and acrid smell of burning flesh pressing in. The world wobbled, my stomach rising into my throat, and I clenched my hands so tight, my nails dug into my palms, forcing deep breaths until everything settled.
Whatever reason Estrel had for abandoning me, it would never be enough.
Someone knocked gently on the door. Caylus stood there, his broad shoulders taking up much of the frame, a cup of steaming tea in hand.
I almost laughed. Of course he’d found tea. In a kingdom that never drank it, in a military complex he’d never once set foot in, he still managed to find a cup.
Caliza squeezed my arm and stood, leaving me with Caylus, who took her place beside me. He handed me the tea, and I held fast to its warmth, sitting in the comfortable silence Caylus always brought with him.
This had always been how it’d been between us.
He took my hand in his like I’d done for him, and I felt the rough lines of his many scars, the places where his body had broken alongside so many other things. But I also felt the calluses he’d earned from his workshop, the small burns that came from baking muffins in the morning or absentmindedly touching a still-steaming teakettle.
He’d begun to rebuild his life, to rebuild himself. Piece by piece. Day by day. Like I had. Like I still did. This feeling was a part of me, but it wasn’t all of me. I couldn’t just will it away, but I could learn to work through it, and I had. With the help of my friends and family, I had.
Maybe together, we could actually do it.
I am more.
More than this feeling of darkness. More than the urge to give up. More than my pain and my past.
I let out a soft breath. Estrel was alive.
It still didn’t feel real, even as my insides felt as though they’d been carved out with a jagged knife. Somewhere, deep beneath the pain and confusion that had threaded through me, relief flickered. She was alive.
Alive, and waiting for me in Trendell.