We’d failed, and I didn’t know what to do.
The throne room had emptied long ago, leaving me alone with Kiva, Caylus, Res, and the slow, creeping feeling descending about my shoulders.
We’d failed, and now Rhodaire would fall.
I stared at the empty thrones and heard Elkona’s damming words again and again. Useless useless useless.
We’d failed, and it was my fault.
“Thia—” Kiva began but stopped when I shook my head.
Res nudged me with his beak, but I couldn’t look at him. Caylus hovered nervously at my side. My eyes snagged on the empty cushion where Estrel should have been.
Suddenly, their presence was too much. All of it was too much. Before any of them could say anything more, I broke for the open doorway. The wide corridors spread before me in a welcome maze, allowing me to lose myself in them.
I remembered another time not so long ago when I ran. When everything inside me felt too sharp to touch. Too broken.
I’d rested all of Rhodaire’s hopes on this alliance, and in the end, it was my inability to lead, my failure as a rider, me, that brought it tumbling down.
I don’t know how I found her room. One moment, the hallways had swallowed me up, and the next, they’d spit me out in a familiar place.
My hand hovered over Estrel’s closed door. A wave of emotion rose inside me. Hurt, confusion, and a coiled fury I was afraid to touch, lest it spring to life and consume me. Fueled by more than just my anger at Estrel, it felt a drop away from roiling into an uncontrollable sea.
I slammed my fist into Estrel’s door twice. I half hoped she wouldn’t be there, that it’d turn out she’d been called away on some urgent business. But after a brief pause, a voice I would know anywhere called, “Who is it?”
“Me.”
Silence. Then, “Now isn’t a good time, Thia.”
I stilled as an unfamiliar coldness descended over me. Not a good time? Not a good time? I seized the handle and, finding it unlocked, flung open the door.
The room looked like a wind crow had gone berserk inside. The blankets were thrown to the foot of the bed, a toppled vase lying in pieces at the base of a cabinet. A nightstand beside her bed had been overturned, and pacing a worn path in the floor rug, there was Estrel.
What remained of her hair was a tangled mess, and she had deep purple shadows under her brown eyes. She must have covered them with powder earlier to hide her exhaustion.
Her eyes widened. “Thia.”
“It failed,” I snarled.
“What?”
“The alliance!” My voice rose. “It failed, I failed, and you weren’t there!”
She stared back at me, and the fear, the uncertainty that filled her dark gaze, nearly broke me. I couldn’t reconcile the woman before me with the one who’d been like a mother to me. The one who’d caught me saddling Iyla in the dead of night and, instead of reprimanding me, had climbed into the saddle at my back and taken me for my very first flight.
I could still feel the bite of the cold wind against my skin, the power of the crow beneath me, the security of Estrel’s arms at my sides… She drew a ragged breath, and the memory slipped from my grasp.
“I’m sorry, Thia,” she breathed, wrapping her arms about her stomach. “I—I couldn’t—” She shook her head and kept on shaking it. It would have killed my mother to see her like this. It killed me.
A slow heat rose under my skin. “You abandoned me again.”
Something hardened in her expression. She drew herself up, and for a moment, I saw the strength and presence of Estrel Cade, one of the most formidable riders Rhodaire had ever seen.
“You think this is about you?” she demanded. “Fine, let’s make it about you. I still got news out here, you know. Don’t talk to me about abandoning people when you hid in your room while Caliza ran the kingdom by herself.”
I recoiled but didn’t relent. “At least I’m doing something now! You were like a mother to me. I needed you, and you left. I wanted to be your apprentice, to be Corvé after you. I looked up to you. I still do…” I trailed off, breathing heavily.
A mirthless laugh escaped Estrel’s lips. “Your mistake, Little Peep. People who put their faith in me only end up getting hurt.”
I shook my head, my throat burning. “No. That’s not true. I need you! I thought I’d lost you along with her. I thought you were dead, but you’ve been here the entire time. If my mother could see you—”
“But she can’t!” Estrel roared. “And it’s my fault! So forgive me if I’m not ready to rush headlong into another battle that will only take more people I love away from me.”
My jaw worked, but no words came out. Surprise had drowned out my anger like water to a flame. “What are you talking about?”
Estrel swayed, then collapsed onto the edge of the bed behind her, burying her face in her hands. When she pulled them away, my breath caught. She was crying. “She was still alive when I found her,” she croaked. “I tried to save her, but the flames were too much.”
I stepped slowly forward, not fully trusting my legs to keep me upright. They’d become lead. I dropped onto the bed beside her. “You went after her. Into the rookery.”
Estrel wrapped her arms around her stomach, squeezing tight. “There were three Illucian soldiers in there with her. She’d killed them, but they’d wounded her. There was so much blood, and the flames were everywhere. I couldn’t breathe. I made it to her, but—” She stopped, shaking her head. “My clothes caught fire. I couldn’t hold on to her. I couldn’t stand the burning. I pulled away, and the floor collapsed underneath me. I woke in the infirmary a week later.”
I didn’t know what to say. This wasn’t Estrel’s fault, just like it hadn’t been mine. But I knew the guilt twisting knots in her face. I knew its heavy swing like a pendulum in the chest. I knew how it waited at the bedpost and watched every movement, filled every word. I’d held it close. So did Estrel.
I am more. I concentrated on the words, on the truth behind them.
“I can’t convince you not to blame yourself,” I said slowly. “But I don’t blame you, and neither would my mother.”
Estrel looked up, meeting my gaze tentatively.
“You knew her as well as anybody,” I continued. “She’d be furious if she knew we’d wasted a second worrying about what we could have done to stop her, knowing full well she’d have done it anyway.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You’re not reminded of what you did every time you see your reflection.” She lifted her left arm, turning it so the burns along the top were fully visible. The last remnants of a tattoo that’d once said Iyla shone on her forearm. “You should have seen the way people looked at me. Like my skin was a portrait of Ronoch, a reminder of everything they’d lost. I couldn’t take it.”
That was why she’d left, why she’d let people forget about her, even going so far as to let them think she’d died. Maybe she’d even spread the rumor herself. I understood, but I didn’t accept it.
“You think you’re the only one with scars?” I ripped the leather glove off my burned arm.
Estrel’s eyes followed it, widening.
“Didn’t you ever wonder who pulled you out of the damned fire?” I leapt to my feet. “Didn’t you care?”
Estrel’s mouth worked, but no words came out. Understanding dawned slowly on her face as I glared at her, my hands balled into fists.
“I heard the stone collapse. I ran, thinking my mother was dying, and found you lying in the rookery entrance. I pulled you out and doused the flames, but not before my sleeve caught fire and I burned along with you!”
She shook her head, and the pain that flooded her expression pulled the anger right out of me. I drew a deep breath, forcing myself to calm down. Kneeling beside her, I gently closed my scarred hand over the twisted skin of her burned wrist. She tensed at first, then slowly relaxed.
“You can’t fixate on this,” I said. “We can’t. I understand you want to run away. So did I. Sometimes, I still do.”
And I had. Away from the throne room, away from Rhodaire’s impending future of blood and death, from Elkona’s voice hissing useless useless useless.
I swallowed hard. “But we have to move forward, and that means facing the problems we have now, the ones we can still do something about. My mother would have wanted us to fight. Please, Estrel. I don’t know how to fix this. I need you.”
Estrel held my gaze, unblinking. But in the end, she turned away. “I can’t do this right now, Thia. I need to be alone.”
My grip slackened on her hand, and she pulled it away. I rose, stumbling back a step, and turned for the door. My blood pounded in my ears as I slid my glove back on.
She wasn’t the woman I remembered, the one who’d taught me how to hold a bow or massage a crow’s tired wings with careful fingers. That woman had been sharp as talons and twice as strong. She’d been a jungle cat in human form, a storm trapped in a bottle. This Estrel was an impending wreck. All I wanted in that moment was to ease her pain, but I didn’t know how. I’d barely learned to help myself.
Even now, as I walked ghostlike through the open corridors, the snake crept along my shoulders, whispering to me to give up. That familiar weight wrapped me tight and held me close. Halfway down the hall, I simply stopped. I don’t know when I ended up on the ground, my knees pulled against my chest, my arms wrapped so tight around them, they’d surely bruise.
I don’t know how long I stayed there. Only that I wanted to disappear. To sink into a quiet darkness alone, where my own mind could no longer haunt me.
* * *
Res found me still sitting with my back against the wall.
His incessant tugs along the bond only made me feel sicker, and I buried my face in my hands as he nudged me with his beak, a low, concerned trill reverberating in his throat.
Someone slid down along the wall beside me. I didn’t have to look to know it was Kiva.
“It’s over,” I said quietly. “We can’t win.”
Guilt ground along the bond. I lifted my head, placing a hand on Res’s lowered beak. “It’s not your fault. You’ve done so much for us already.” So much for me. “I love you, magic or not, alliance or not.”
It was I who had failed. I who didn’t know how to begin handling this. Without the alliance, Razel would overrun Rhodaire. She would destroy it piece by bloody piece and take what she wanted from the ruins.
Would she try to force Res to serve her, or would she destroy him too?
I swallowed hard. “How do I tell Caliza it’s over?”
“You don’t.” Kiva spoke without hesitation. She rose, turning to face me on one knee. “Because this isn’t over. It can’t be. We have to keep trying.”
I looked away. “I had my chance. I failed. They’re never going to listen to me now.”
Her voice was uncharacteristically soft when she asked, “Why is it the only thing you ever give up on is yourself?”
My hands tightened into fists, but she pressed on.
“You took a crow egg into Illucian territory and discovered how to hatch it. You organized a summit of kingdoms unlike anything this continent has ever seen. You even befriended the damned Illucian prince, for Saints’ sake! You’re one of the most stubborn, determined people I know, but when it comes to supporting yourself, you’re the first to doubt and the first to give up.” Kiva stood. “Well, I’m not giving up, Thia. Not on this alliance, and not on you.” She held out her hand. “One step at a time.”
I stared at her outstretched hand. A hundred possible failures rose before it.
You only fail if you stop trying.
It was something Estrel had said to me, when I’d missed target after target with my arrows or found myself flat on my back in a sparring match for the tenth time in a row.
Never stop fighting.
I took Kiva’s hand.