Page 13 of Crownless King

“Ten? But you were just a boy.”

Bending his legs, he placed his feet on the window seat to make himself more comfortable.

“Some say I was supposed to die that day. But really, I was supposed to die the day I was born. All my life has been borrowed time.”

“Why do they say you were supposed to die?” I tilted my head to better see his face, and he raised his eyes to mine.

A gentle smile crossed his lips.

“Do you know why they call us highborn, Sparrow?”

“Because you are the noble caste? Because you reside above the rest? Or at least you put yourselves above the others.” I laughed. “God knows, it’d be hard to find more arrogant people than some of the highborn I’ve met.”

“No, Sparrow.” He rolled his head in my lap. “The name for my kind is far more literal than that. We’re born in the sky, little bird, high above the clouds.”

“How?”

He rested his hands over his middle, lacing his fingers together.

“While giving birth, the mother flies over the Cloud River that connects the many islands of the Sky Kingdom. When the baby is born, it opens its wings as it takes its first breath. The baby flies, until the mother or someone else from her birthing party catches it.”

I flinched at the picture created by his words in my mind. “It sounds dangerous.”

He shrugged. “If everyone has wings, it’s no more dangerous than giving birth on the ground.”

“But what if not everyone has them? What if a baby is born without wings?”

“Then, the baby falls.”

Chills trickled down my back. My fingers stilled in his hair.

“Falls where?”

“Through the Cloud River and down to the Below.”

“How can anyone survive a fall like that?”

“They don’t. Those born without wings die.”

“No… That’s barbaric. And cruel. Criminal.” My heart just refused to accept or even comprehend something like that. “How long have people been doing this?”

“Since the beginning of time.”

“But they say fae babies are so rare. They’re treasured and loved. How could they get rid of them so cruelly? Just because they lack wings?”

He lifted a hand to my face and stroked my cheek with the back of his fingers. “Shhh, little bird. I didn’t mean to upset you. A birth like mine doesn’t happen very often.”

“But if it does happen, it’s not survivable. That’s why there are no highborn alive that can’t fly. Except for you.”

“Except for me,” he echoed.

Voron might not be as unique as I had thought. But his survival absolutely was.

“What happened, Voron? How did you live?”

He frowned.

“That I don’t know. Either my mother gave birth on the ground, which is excruciatingly painful for highborn women and against tradition. Moving their wings alleviates the pain of childbirth. Or she or someone else caught me, not letting me fall.”

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