Page 19 of Flight of Fate

And she doesn’t even know about the changes in him—the dark power and black veins around his eyes. The all-black spreading from his irises.

Perhaps they are right. Perhaps I should be taking one of Shaelak’s creatures with me when visiting the god’s temple.

“Can I ask you a favor, Kaira?”

My sister lifts her head, waiting for me to continue.

“Do you remember when you pulled thoughts from Herinor and projected them into all our minds?”I still vividly remember the day when Myron was ready to kill the male and Kaira stepped in to save him.

A shudder rakes through my sister as her mind seems to drift back to that moment, and she nods.

“Could you do the same with me? Could you project my thoughts into someone else’s mind?”

She tilts her head, considering, and utterly ignores Clio whose gaze is bouncing between Kaira and me in a silent prompt to include her in the conversation.

“I can try.”Without warning, she grabs for me, picking me off the table so fast I loose an uncrowish squeak, and sets me on her lap, palms lying flat against the sides of my body.“Hold still.”

So I do.

“Guardians, what’s happening now? Are you going to braid each other’s hair next?” Clio asks, exasperation brimming in every word.

“You can’t braid feathers,”I retort, and Clio’s eyes go wide.

“Ayna?”

“Oh my gods, it’s working.”My heart launches into my throat as I glance up at Kaira, who’s grinning broadly.

“I can hear you.” Clio sounds like she can’t believe it.

I don’t waste time on becoming emotional when my mind is spinning with what this means for Myron and me. I could talk to him—if I dared.Reallytalk to him.

“I need to get to Shaelak’s temple, and I need to get there today. If you are truly my friend, you won’t tell Myron a word about it.”Clio starts to object, but I cut her off before a sound leaves her mouth.“But you can tell Royad I need him.”

Circling above the roofs, I follow Kaira and Royad, who make their way on foot through the haze creeping into the streets this late in the afternoon. Their cloaks billow on the crisp breeze like black banners, but as fairies rush from door to door, no one pays them any heed, everyone too occupied with their own errands. I haven’t visited this part of Aceleau during the day, but it is only marginally less dark than on a moonlit night as we turn into the narrow alley leading up to the temple.

I’m still in shock that I spoke with Clio and she actually heard me, not Kaira’s translation. It was nearly impossible to convince the Fairy Princess to stay behind when Kaira, Royad, and I set out to the temple, but my argument is that someone needs to tell Myron when he asks for my whereabouts, and I’d rather it’s the Fairy Princess he won’t dare touch than one of the servants he might annihilate in a surge of panic.

Tucking in my wings, I descend from the height of the roofs, landing on Royad’s forearm, which he holds out for me, a grim smile gracing his scarred face. Kaira hasn’t linked us the way she did with Clio, but it’s not necessary yet. It was more important to actually get here first.

“Looks like no one really prays to the God of Darkness anymore,” the Crow male notes as he pulls open the age-worn oak door with a creak, revealing a small, high antechamber with four gray stone pillars carrying a decaying wooden ceiling.

Kaira follows us inside the building, her hand on her dagger out of reflex while Royad lifts his palm to summon a flicker of silver power.

“It’s a temple,”I groan into Kaira’s mind.“No one will attack us here.”

“Except for the Brother Guardian himself,”she retorts, pointing at the space beyond the antechamber where the marble statue of a tall male with two swords strapped across his back stands guard over a simple stone altar.

My wingbeats echo from the high walls as I flutter in a circle, assessing the carvings on the seam beneath the ceiling, the faded paintings of the night sky along the dome peaking above the altar.

It seems Myron was the only one using this temple in a long time, the single line of his bootprints along the dusty floor proof he was here, and on the altar?—

Royad’s nostrils flare at the same moment I pick up the scent, and I land on the cracked stone, inspecting the specks of blood that have dried in the symbols etched into the rock.

“Get off the altar,” Royad warns, but I’m too busy not panicking at the scent and the hundreds of possible scenarios it comes with.

“If anyone hurt him, I’ll hunt them down and eat their eyes—slowly.”I mean it. Kaira knows it, too, because all she says to me in her mind is,“I’ll hold the bastard down while you feed on them.”

Between Royad and Kaira, I have the two most loyal people in the Crow Court at my side. The best ones to aid me when the time comes.

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