Day 21, Ninth Moon, 170 AE
I am atop Genya’s Tower now, watching as the world burns below.
I see you in the sky, and you are everything you ever promised: blood, fire, death.
It is sick, I know, but I am comforted that you are here. My heart swells to see you again—even if it might be the last time.
I’m sorry that I failed you—that we failed each other. But life does not often give second chances.
Know that I love you, dear sister, and I always will.
—Pheronia Ashfire
I had a sister once. . . .
- EPILOGUE -
AVALKYRA
AVALKYRA WAS TIRED.
No. “Tired” was a small, weak word meant for mothers with squalling babes and soldiers working the night watch.
Avalkyra was completely and utterly exhausted.
Somehow her life had become a ridiculous game, a series of motions she went through . . . not for her benefit, but for Veronyka’s. She’d been forced to play nursemaid and mother and sister and friend. She’d wrapped the jagged truth of their lives in soft wool and bright cotton, sheltering Veronyka, protecting her from the ugliness of the world—often at Avalkyra’s own expense. She didn’t mind getting her hands dirty—indeed, they had been filthy long before Veronyka—but as the days and years of her life wore on, she wondered if they’d ever be clean again.
Perhaps it was her exhaustion that had made her reveal herself to Veronyka before she left. She’d never meant to keep the secret so long, but the truth, which had once been difficult to hold in her mouth, seemed to stick to her tongue and obstruct her throat. Veronyka was erratic at best with her shadow magic—how could Avalkyra trust such a person with her most precious secret? Even now there was still so much to tell Veronyka, so much she wouldn’t understand.
Avalkyra sat at the edge of her small campfire, staring at the satchel that contained her newly acquired phoenix egg. She hadn’t looked it at since she’d stolen it from the sleeping soldier’s side. It had been difficult to take only one—and to let the empire rat live when she’d promised otherwise. But if Avalkyra had learned one thing in this second life, it was patience. If she’d stolen more eggs, they’d have noticed and hunted her down. And if she’d killed the soldier as well . . . they’d have noticed the missing egg that much sooner.
If she was honest with herself, the egg unsettled her. Avalkyra suspected there was a reason that phoenix didn’t hatch for her inside their cabin, the same reason she hadn’t been able to hatch the half a dozen other eggs she’d tried to incubate before. She didn’t know if it was because her bondmate had forsaken her and decided not to come back, or if there was some other, deeper reason. Whatever it was, she feared this egg would turn out the same as all the others.
Dead. Empty. Worthless.
Avalkyra took a deep, calming breath.
Fear is a luxury.
It was an ancient Pyraean proverb. The full version was recorded in The Pyraean Epics:
When pitch-darkness falls and lanterns fail, fear is a luxury.
When war invades and there’s no escape, fear is a luxury.
When death gladly claims what life forsakes, fear is a luxury.
Avalkyra couldn’t afford fear. Darkness and death were coming, and as for war? It was already here.
In fact, it had never truly ended—at least not for Avalkyra.
She’d been fighting for thirty-four years, and sometimes she forgot why. Her mind wasn’t as blade-sharp as it had once been, and the details of her life grew hazy through the lens of time. This was unacceptable.
She mustn’t forget all she was and all she must reclaim.
She’d been a princess and a Phoenix Rider. She’d been the Feather-Crowned Queen.
She’d fought a war to win an empire and lost the love of her life, her sister, in the process.
When the weight of it all pressed down on her, Avalkyra thought of what she might say to Pheronia now if she were still alive.
I grow weary, xe Onia The world is not the same.
I am scared for her, xe Onia. She is just like you.
Already it was happening, the similarities between Avalkyra’s two lives becoming more pronounced with each passing day. Was this the will of the gods, then, that Avalkyra should suffer not once, but twice? Was this her destiny, to survive, to endure, but always at the expense of the ones she loved?
No. Her second chance could not be squandered. She and Veronyka would live the lives that she and Pheronia should have lived and rule the empire they should have ruled—together.
They would remake history.
To keep the details straight in her mind, Avalkyra sometimes pretended she were drafting a letter. Only, she never seemed able to actually put ink to paper. Every time she tried, she remembered the last letters she wrote. How she’d wished she could rewrite them after they were sent. How they’d gone unanswered until it was too late.
History was a living, breathing, changing thing—even when it was your own. Each day the past looked different to Avalkyra, and her imagined letter would change.
Sometimes Avalkyra was the victim, carried through the events of the war like a leaf caught in the current of the River Aurys.
Other times Avalkyra was the villain—the current itself, dragging everything and everyone she loved down with her. She suspected this was the true story, but some days it was easier to accept than others.
Usually she addressed the letter to Pheronia, but occasionally she addressed it to Veronyka instead.
Today, as she sat alone in the woods, leaving yet another sister behind, she mentally composed a new letter.
Dear Veronyka,
I am Avalkyra Ashfire, and this is my story.
Sure, they’d hit a bump in the road, but Avalkyra was used to setbacks. Nothing of value in life came easy; always there was a price.
Veronyka had asked a question recently, one that Val hadn’t really been able to answer.
But Avalkyra could.
You asked me why I was here, the night of the solstice festival.
The answer I gave you was as simple as it was complicated: I came back for you.
I lost more than the war sixteen years ago. I lost everything.
It was a night I will never forget. The battle fever was upon me, my blood boiling and my arrows falling from the sky like rain. I saw a figure all alone on the castle walls, with no shelter from the storm. I loosed an arrow before my eyes had even focused.
But as my bowstring scraped across my fingers, I realized that figure was her.
Would that I could chase down arrows, that I could command their will and intent as easily as I do living things.
But I could not. My arrow landed true—they always did. Still, I threw caution and crown to the wind; I threw it all away and went to her. My Nyx took a dozen enemy arrows in our reckless flight, and soon we were falling, falling, like a star cast down from the heavens.
As I held my dying sister, the battle raging around us and my cursed arrow embedded in her heart, I wanted to die too.