Two

Cardail was on fire.

Or at least, it had been. Thick plumes of smoke rose from the charred remains of the town, great swaths of black cutting through the town like the aftermath of fiery talons. Jagged holes gaped in the place of windows, and broken doors hung off hinges. The street along the seaside was eerily empty. A graveyard of splintered wood and torn sails was all that remained of the ships once docked in the bay.

It looked like Aris after Ronoch.

“What happened?” Caylus asked.

“I’d wager fire, but I s’pose lightning could have done it.” The voice of the ship’s lookout, Talon, floated down from the rigging above. “Your crow doesn’t sleep fly, does he? Either way, that town’s right charred through. Like a Duren’s Day cuttlefish.”

“Enlightening, Talon,” Kiva intoned. “Your skills are wasted on this ship.”

He winked and flashed her a grin.

“It was Razel.” The Illucian queen’s name was a bite of steel in my mouth. “We thought she might attack Rhodaire to draw me out.”

“We don’t know anything yet.” Samra regarded the town with folded arms and an impassive gaze. “Let’s not jump to conclusions.”

Kiva snorted. “A Rhodairen town along the coast to Aris from Illucia was set on fire. Seems like a pretty clear message to me.”

I eyed the ship wreckage, memories of fire and smoke threatening to claw their way out. Res trilled softly and nudged my head with his beak. My hand reflexively found his feathers, seeking his warm reassurance.

“Can you navigate through the debris?” I asked Samra.

She looked at me as if I’d asked whether she knew Res had feathers and didn’t answer. Around us, the crew was already in motion, adjusting sails and ropes. Caylus peeled off to join them, something he’d often done during our time at sea. Apparently, children in the Ambriels were trained to sail the same way Rhodairens learned the crows and Illucians the sword. It seemed to soothe him, if only for a while.

Kiva swayed slightly at my side. I put a steadying hand on her uninjured shoulder. “You should go back to bed.”

“And let you and bird brain go into the mysterious smoking town without me? Not happening.” She flashed me a smile that was half grimace.

Res clipped his beak in annoyance, releasing a puff of wind that fluttered Kiva’s braid. I rolled my eyes. Where Caylus and Res got on wonderfully—likely a result of the copious amount of treats he fed the crow—Kiva had never been much of an animal person. That and she was literally incapable of not insulting everyone she met.

It took several minutes for the crew to steer through the wreckage and bring the ship safely into port. When the gangplank lowered, Samra led me, Res, Kiva, and Caylus down onto the dock.

“I thought I said no crow,” Samra said.

“That was before we found the place ransacked,” I sniped back. Her constant orders were starting to grate on me. We were supposed to be in a partnership, but Samra seemed to think I was one of her crew. It didn’t help that she had a way of seizing control of a conversation, making me feel like I needed to defer to her. How was I supposed to convince her to ally with Rhodaire, to think of me as an equal, if she treated me like a child?

The captain spared me a brief scowl before charging on ahead. She slid a thin mask over her face, the same half-black, half-white one she’d been wearing when I first met her in Caylus’s workshop. Anyone who saw Res would know us in a heartbeat, but she’d remain anonymous.

We moved together through the deserted streets, picking our way through overturned crates and the smoldering remains of goods and scattered belongings. A child’s stuffed crow lay singed and still smoking in an empty doorway, an overturned cart of woven rugs that had been slashed to ribbons across from it. Shattered glass mixed with ash, and the scorched leaves of trees turned to blackened skeletons.

I took every step with my breath trapped in my throat, waiting for the all-too-familiar sight of gleaming bone and melted skin.

Kiva’s boot caught a stone and she lurched forward. Before I could react, Res was there, his outstretched wing guiding her back to her feet. She shot me a look, daring me to comment, but I didn’t have the spirit for mirth any longer. Not as the slow reality of what had happened sank in.

“Where is everyone?” she asked. “You don’t think Razel ki—”

“No.” I refused to think it. These people were not dead. If Razel had attacked to draw me out, if my escape had led to these people living through what I had… “No,” I said again.

Caylus slowed beside a pile of debris. He knelt and reached for a strip of blue cloth. My first thought was Illucia, but the shade was wrong. It wasn’t the royal hue they bore but a bright, sea-blue ice.

And the sight of it turned him to stone.

Just as I started to ask, rocks clattered in an alley to our side. I whirled as a thin form leapt into view, bow drawn and aimed at Kiva.

“No!” I leapt toward her at the same moment the string resounded with a snap.

I waited for the thud of metal in flesh and the wave of pain, but it didn’t come. My eyes had closed involuntarily, and I slowly peeled them open.

The arrow hovered inches from my face.

It dropped to the ground with a clatter, taking my breath with it. I nearly wilted, but Kiva seized my arm. Res’s eyes glowed bright silver.

He’d done it again.

In Illucia, Res had shown signs of magic beyond his expected storm abilities. Somehow, he’d wielded a shadow crow’s power to hide and shook the earth with the magic of an earth crow.

Now he’d stopped the arrow like a battle crow.

“H-How?” the shooter stuttered. His thin voice stilled me. He was only a boy. Ten, maybe eleven at the most. The bow was too big for him, the quiver sagging loose at his hip. He fumbled for another arrow but dropped it, nearly losing hold of the bow in his attempt to catch it. With a curse, he turned to flee—and ran straight into Samra.

She caught him by the forearms, hardly seeming to notice his struggle. “Explain yourself.”

“Let him go!” My voice cracked as I surged forward. Samra frowned, and I straightened beneath her dark gaze. “He’s a Rhodairen citizen, a child, and I said to let him go.”

She watched me with that same unreadable look, holding on a moment longer as if to test me. Then she slowly unfurled her fingers.

The boy stumbled back, rubbing at his wrists. “Please don’t hurt me,” he begged. “I thought you were them.”

“We’re not going to hurt you,” I said softly.

His umber eyes were round with fear. Then they settled on something over my shoulder, and he let out the smallest gasp. “A crow!”

Res straightened, puffing out his feathers and lifting his head.

The boy’s eyes somehow grew wider. “But that means you’re—” His mouth fell open as the realization of who I was clicked into place. “Saints, my sister’s not going to believe this! She said the rumor the princess found an egg was a lie! I told her it wasn’t. I told her! Oh, what’s his name? What kind of crow is he? Can I pet him?” The words flew from the boy’s mouth almost faster than he could form them, the near arrow mishap already forgotten.

I grinned. “Resyries. Storm. And yes, I think he’d like that.”

The boy shot forward as fast as the arrow he’d fired and threw his arms around Res, burying his face in his feathers. The crow’s wings curled around him in a protective arc.

“Storm,” Samra said slowly, as if testing the word for weakness. “Then how did he stop that arrow?”

“That’s not all he did.” Kiva’s voice came quietly, tentatively. She was staring down at her injured arm with a careful, uncertain awe. Slowly, she rolled it forward and then back without a hint of pain.

“Thia, I think he healed me.”

* * *

The boy’s name was Jaycyth—Jay for short—and the bow belonged to his mother. She was a soldier who’d been called up for reinforcements when the Illucian threat appeared on our border. He lived in Cardail with his older sister, his father, two hounds named Stick and Stone, and a frog called Toad.

All this he told us before we even turned the corner at the end of the street.

“I don’t think he needs to breathe,” Kiva muttered to me at one point.

Jay also told us his family ran the town inn, which was where the rest of the villagers had taken refuge, wanting to put distance between themselves and the coast. He was supposed to be gathering fruit from the orchard when he spotted our sails.

We turned another corner, revealing a small courtyard bustling with people and animals before a squat, two-story building with a sign that read The Edgewood Inn. Sure enough, the line of a small wood rose behind it, casting a shadow over the people hauling buckets of water from the well at the square’s center and lining up to receive food from a vendor roasting spiced chicken.

It felt good to see Rhodairen faces, to hear Rhodairen voices. A smile spread across my lips, remaining plastered there the deeper into town we went, the familiarity of my people like a warm winter coat.

“Jaycyth!” A deep voice barely preceded a thick-chested man as he broke through the crowd. “Where in the Saints’ name have you been? I told you to come straight back.”

Jay burst forward, seizing his father’s shirt and tugging. “Look who I found!”

I moved aside, letting Res step forward from the shadows of the alley. A gasp sounded across the courtyard, an excited murmur swelling through the crowd alongside shouts of “A crow!” and “The princess!”

I stepped forward. “You must be Jay’s father.”

My words broke the man’s stare, and he dropped quickly to one knee. The action rippled through the square as person after person knelt. It struck me in a way I couldn’t quite explain. It wasn’t just the formality of it, something we rarely adhered to in the capital where the royal family’s presence was as likely in the local tavern as the grand hall. No, it was the looks on their faces as they took in first me, then the crow at my side. The way their bent backs straightened and the edge of exhaustion in their eyes softened into something warmer.

Into hope.

“Please, stand,” I called across the square. They listened, rising as one. “My name is Anthia Cerralté, princess of Rhodaire. You may have heard the rumors that I discovered a crow egg and took it with me into the heart of Illucia. Well, you can see now those rumors are true.”

A murmur coursed through the crowd. Jay jumped excitedly, still clutching his father’s shirt.

“With the help of Resyries’s magic, we will protect Rhodaire. For now, I’ll offer you whatever help I can.” I looked from person to person as I spoke, meeting their tired eyes. “Will someone tell me what happened here?”

“Mercenaries,” said Jay’s father. “They came in on ships from the north. There were Illucian soldiers with them but only a handful. Most of them were Ambriellan.”

Caylus stepped forward, proffering the bit of blue cloth he’d found in the rubble. “Did their ships have a kingfisher on their flag?”

Jay’s father nodded, and Caylus paled. Samra let out a low string of curses.

“What?” I asked.

Caylus’s hand closed about the cloth so tightly, his knuckles flared white. “Malkin.”

The man who’d stolen so many years of his life, the one who’d forced him to work and to fight until it’d destroyed him physically and mentally.

He was working with Razel.

I wanted nothing more than to wrap my arms around Caylus and hold him, but I felt the weight of a hundred pairs of expectant, hopeful eyes.

“What did they want?” I asked, though I feared the answer.

Jay’s father shook his head. “They didn’t say. They didn’t really hurt anyone even. Just ransacked the town, piling everything they could out into the streets and setting it alight. It was strange, really. Even the fires were odd. It was like they just sprang up fully formed, and they ate through stone. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

I had. It was just like Ronoch. The fires had come swift and fierce as the blaze of a fire crow, searing through everything like paper. We’d found oil on the stones and in the rookeries, but even that seemed inadequate to explain how fast the fires had spread and how hot they’d burned.

“We aren’t the first though,” he continued, folding his arms. “Enair burned a couple days ago, just the same way. Like a—”

“Like a signal,” I finished quietly. A signal for me. Razel didn’t know where I was, and she intended to draw me out. What better way than setting fire to towns along the coast, knowing I’d eventually have to make land to resupply? Even if I didn’t see the smoke or find a burnt town, word would spread.

“Which way did they go?” Kiva asked. “We’ll hunt the bastards down.”

“Not with my ship you won’t,” Samra said. “I agreed to take you to Trendell, not to hunt down that night-cursed spider.”

I rounded on her. “They’re not going to stop! They’ll keep burning towns unless we stop them.”

“And give Razel exactly what she wants? You’re playing straight into her hands.”

Frustration tore through me, and I forced a deep breath. “Razel thinks she can control me. She thinks I’ll come running to protect my people only to end up cowering in fear at the fire around me. But I won’t. She’s underestimated me, and I’m going to make her pay for it.”

“It’s only a matter of time before Malkin starts hurting people,” Caylus said, eyes trained on the strip of cloth clutched between his fingers. “If only for his own sick entertainment.”

Cold fury prickled down my spine. “I’ll show them what happens when they attack my home.” The connection between Res and me thrummed to life as I spoke, rising with my words. I faced the gathered crowd as a sudden wind gusted through the street. “Queen Razel wants to scare us. She thinks I’m weak. That Rhodaire is weak. She’s wrong.”

Res let out a low call, and thunder boomed in the gray sky. The wind rose, swirling slowly at first before gathering into a steady gale. It caught the smoke and the ash and carried it away, out past the shore and over the sea, leaving behind a clear, cobalt sky.

Kiva grinned up at it as someone in the crowd called out, throwing up their fist. More echoed them, a cheer filling the air.

Samra watched me with dark eyes, her frustration practically palpable.

This wasn’t over.