Page 4 of Wings of War

“I suppose.” Tryndar heaved a sigh. Then he wrinkled his nose. “You smell.”

Fieran sniffed at his shirt. A bit ripe. A shower was definitely in order.

“There the two of you are.” Mama strode down the steps. Her hair—red as Fieran’s—draped in its customary braid down her back. She wore a simple, Escarlish-style brown skirt and light blue shirt. “It’s time to come in and wash up for breakfast.”

“Aw, Mama.” Tryndar hopped to his feet. “Do I have to?”

“You can leave everything set up and come back after breakfast. But you can’t eat bacon with grubby fingers.” Mama turned Tryndar’s hands over, showing off the black, sooty marks from rubbing against the iron handrails.

“Bacon is eaten with a fork, not fingers.” Tryndar’s nose wrinkled in that very elven way of showing disgust that he’d inherited from Dacha. Along with his propensity to use a fork for bacon rather than getting his fingers greasy.

But the sight of his dirty hands was enough to send him scampering toward the house.

Mama swept her gaze from Tryndar to Fieran, her eyebrows raising. “You need to wash up before breakfast even more than Tryndar.”

Fieran peered down at himself. The rail had left a dirty streak down the center of his clothes, smeared into the darker spots where sweat had soaked through his shirt. Not that more dirt mattered at this point when added to all the sweat and grime from training.

“Don’t want to smell me while eating?” Fieran grinned and gave her a quick good morning hug. Because what else was he going to do but distribute hugs when he was this gross and sweaty?

Chapter

Two

After his shower, Fieran followed the raucous sounds of laughter to the dining room.

Most of the family was already gathered there. Adry lunged past Elliana, Fieran’s youngest sister, to reach for the plate of bacon. Her red hair in a braid similar to Mama’s, Ellie lifted her book out of the way and stuck out her tongue at Adry. Louise smothered her pancakes with syrup while Tryndar bounced in his seat as he valiantly tried to keep his syrup from drooling into his eggs.

Mama sat at one end of the table, her green eyes bright as she listened to the cacophony. Tryndar was telling her about his soldiers. Adry chattered about practice that morning.

Fieran plunked into his seat and took the plate of bacon from Adry. “Telling Mama all about my embarrassing sword practice this morning?”

“Nope.” Adry gave him a far too innocent expression in return.

“Of course you didn’t.” Fieran piled bacon and eggs on his plate.

The door opened, and Dacha strode inside, his hair wet down his back. He took his seat at the head of the table, though he didn’t add anything to the general hubbub. The elven moss earplugs tucked into his ears kept the noise level from becoming too overwhelming for him.

Fieran claimed one of the daily newspapers that had been tossed into the center of the table and flicked through it. The headlines were filled with speculations about the possibilities of war alongside another scandal from the Escarlish royal family. Fieran didn’t know that set of cousins—well, cousins several times removed—but they were forever getting up to some scandal or another, much to his ninety-seven-year-old uncle Averett’s chagrin.

After flipping to the second page, Fieran stilled, taking in the column. Both the Tarenhieli and Escarlish Flying Corps were actively recruiting new pilots. For the past year, the Flying Corps had been recruiting trained pilots. But they were now ready to take on new recruits with the intent to begin joint operations between the two Corps in the near future.

Flying. The rush of air. The whoosh of the breeze beneath the wings of his aeroplane. Something inside Fieran soared.

Better yet, Dacha had never fought in a flyer. He was a warrior of swords and hand-to-hand combat. If Fieran fought the coming war in the infantry, he would always be the second-best warrior, after his dacha.

But he could make his own legends in the sky.

Not that he resented his dacha. But always carrying the burden of those legends grew wearisome, especially when he could never measure up.

Fieran shoveled the last of his eggs into his mouth, grabbed both his plate and the newspaper, and hopped to his feet. “Adry, Weezer, I’ll meet you at the carriage house to drive into Aldon.”

Louise rolled her eyes at the childhood nickname. Adry just flapped a hand at him, still locked in conversation with Elliana, who was sneaking glances at her book.

If Fieran were to guess, all Ellie wanted was for Adry to stop talking so she could disappear back into her book, which appeared to be the latest Star Forest novel, a very fictional, highly inaccurate adventure romance story about an elf warrior falling in love with a human princess in the bygone days when the elven empire ruled the continent. The novels had recently been turned into a moving picture sensation sweeping across both Tarenhiel and Escarland.

Sticking the newspaper under his arm, Fieran hurriedly washed his plate and fork. Then he dashed out the back door, slid down the iron railings to avoid Tryndar’s toy warriors, and raced down the path.

Uncle Iyrinder and Aunt Patience’s house was tucked into a glade in the forested parkland. While the two-story house was built in the square, box-like Escarlish style, it had live trees at each corner with a roof formed of interlaced branches. Several neat gables peeked through the branches, adding more light for the upstairs. The front porch had pillars formed of living trees.

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