But this dream, wherever it had come from, chilled her to her core.
Val had often spoken to her about balance. A phoenix couldn’t be born from nothing—it either died, turning its own body into ash from which it could be reborn, or as an egg, it had to be incubated in the ashes of another. In the wild, mothers had to die in order to give life to their young, and only birthed a single egg at a time. It was the early animages atop Pyrmont who learned how to burn the bones of dead people and animals to achieve the same effect, allowing the phoenixes to live longer and thrive in larger numbers than they ever had before.
When Veronyka had asked what would happen if she and her sister tried to incubate a phoenix egg in a regular fire, with no bones to feed it, Val had given a single answer: “Death.”
And suddenly Veronyka knew why the second egg hadn’t hatched yet. What’s worse, Val knew it too. They hadn’t gathered enough bones for both phoenixes, which meant that Veronyka’s bondmate had had to draw life from elsewhere . . . from the other phoenix egg.
Heart tight with worry, Veronyka moved to get up—and noticed Val standing over her, an ax dangling from her left hand.
The sight of it brought Veronyka back to their first night traveling outside of the empire, concealed within a wagon. They’d stopped at a border inn for the night, and Veronyka and Val had had to sleep in the woodshed. When a drunken villager lurched into the building, leering over them, Val had hoisted up an ax in their defense.
The man had staggered back, fleeing out the open door, but Val had followed him.
When she’d returned, it had been dark, but Veronyka had seen her wipe the ax on an apron hanging from a peg. The next morning the apron and the ax were gone, and Veronyka had wondered if she’d imagined it all—except that Val had a shiny new pocketknife and a handful of coins they’d not had the day before. Val had purchased them a hot breakfast from the inn, and then they had used her new knife to carve wooden beads from real Pyraean trees.
Looking back, Veronyka had to wonder what those beads were truly commemorating.
The ax Val held now was closer to a hatchet, but its edge was no less sharp, gleaming in the darkness. The fire had gone out inside the cabin, leaving the room as cold and gray as the second egg, still among the ashes. Veronyka searched for something to say, but Val had already turned away from her. Before Veronyka realized what was happening, Val brought the ax down upon the egg, cracking it in two.
Veronyka’s sharp inhalation of breath was lost in the crunch and splinter, and her bondmate’s head popped up in surprise.
Veronyka couldn’t help but peer around Val’s legs with icy trepidation. She didn’t know what she expected to see—perhaps the charred remains of a bird?—but what she saw instead was as dense and unremarkable as the inside of a cracked rock. Had it ever been anything more than stone?
Val stood in front of her once more. She nodded her chin at the phoenix next to Veronyka, though she refused to look directly at it.
“You must name it,” she said.
“She’s female,” Veronyka said. She didn’t know how she suddenly knew, but her instincts told her it was the truth.
The phoenix chirruped softly next to her, and a deluge of ideas and pictures flooded their connection. It seemed that overnight the phoenix’s mind had grown and developed tenfold, thanks to the bond magic. The phoenix’s thoughts weren’t yet the fully structured concepts of a human mind, but they weren’t the moment-to-moment impressions typical of most animals either. Though animages could only bond with phoenixes, they tended to have an impact on the minds of regular animals they frequently communicated with too. Horses or working animals that were managed by animages often became smarter in the human sense and much easier to train.
“Unsurprising,” Val said. “Female phoenixes are generally drawn to the female spirit, and the other way around. They usually adopt their gender during the incubation process, based on their chosen bondmate.”
Veronyka nodded, her thumb stroking the phoenix’s soft head. “I think I’ll name her Xephyra.”
Val’s eyes narrowed. She stared at Veronyka for a long time, before crossing her arms and looking up thoughtfully. “?‘Pyr’ means ‘fire’ or ‘flame’ in Pyraean. Coupled with ‘xe’ . . .”
“Sweet Flame,” Veronyka said, still running her fingers along her drowsy bondmate’s silky feathers.
“Or Flame Sister,” Val corrected, given that the prefix could also mean “brother” or “sister,” based on the gender of the name. Val had taught her all about language, how to read and write, and about the stars and the seasons and history.
Everything Veronyka was, she owed to Val.
She held her breath a moment, afraid that the suggestion that this new intruder was as close to her as a sister would make Val angry.
Finally Val spoke. “That is a name worthy of a Pyraean queen.” Her eyes glittered as if the words were the highest praise.
Veronyka felt a surge of pride at having pleased her sister, and yet she feared what Val said might be true, that she and her bondmate could meet the same fate as the Pyraean queens: fire, glory—and death.
After all, while animages across the valley and beyond might rejoice to see flaming phoenix tracks across the sky once more, not everyone wanted the Phoenix Riders to return.
In Pyra, death was celebrated as much as life. Only through endings could there be beginnings. That was the lesson of the phoenix, and it was the lesson of my life as well.
- CHAPTER 3 -
SEV
SEV KEPT HIS EYES on his feet.
It was a survival tactic, a defense mechanism—and a way to avoid stepping in another steaming pile of llama crap.
For the past six months, Sev had adjusted rather poorly to his new life as a Golden Empire soldier. He’d not chosen this path, after all, and resented being lined up alongside a ragtag mix of petty thieves, murderers, and poor children with no other options.
They reminded him of exactly what he was: a poor, thieving murderer.
If possible, he enjoyed his proximity to the empire bondservants even less. They reminded him not of his worst self, but of his best—the part he’d sworn to leave behind. The part he’d had to stifle and suffocate until only the smoking wick remained. Sev might be an animage, the same as them, but that didn’t mean he had to live like one—an unpaid servant for the rest of his life.
And he didn’t have to die like one either, leaving people who needed him behind. Like his parents had done to him.
Of course, no one needed Sev. He’d made sure of that. It had seemed like a good idea as a child, when his world had collapsed around him. Love no one, and let no one love you. Less pain that way. Sev could die tomorrow, and not a soul would miss him.