Page 2 of Flight of Fate

Rubbing his hands up and down his arms, Royad points his chin toward the towering, gray structure of the royal residence at the city center. “Let’s get back into the air before he runs into trouble.”

That, we can agree on. I don’t wait for him to shift before I take off and soar into the freezing night, eyes scanning the darkness for the one creature I can’t live without.

Two

Ayna

I’m up before dawn,fluttering my wings a few times before hopping across the cream-and-blue pattern on the pillow, one eye on Myron’s sleeping form. He didn’t bother to change out of his pants and tunic when he returned to this room last night. I can still smell the faint scent of incense clinging to the fabrics. Myron is lying on his stomach, one hand tucked under his cheek, hair tangled around his head. The winter dawn paints him in grayscale, the contrast of his black lashes against his skin so stark he could have been a painting.

It’s the only time during the day when I allow myself to appreciate the beauty of the male I’m supposed to hold in my arms. The one I’m supposed to kiss and love and never let go of. But I’m a bird.

In his sleep, Myron has shrugged off the covers, his tunic exposing the strong column of his neck corded with muscle and covered in faint scars. There should have been whorls of black ink peeking out from under the collar, but our mate mark is gone since Erina tried to un-mate us with a torch to my shoulder. Phantom pain singes my shoulder, right where my wing is attached to my bird body, and I shake it off with a powerful beat,propelling me right for the window, which Myron always keeps open for me to come and go as I please.

Even now—even when there is nothing I can give him, he makes sure I feel comfortable in what he still callsourroom.

The sound of my wings rouses Myron from sleep, and I glimpse a flicker of blue as he opens his eyes; then I’m out the window, fluttering toward the window of the room next door where my sister sleeps with a weapon under her pillow. I caw my greetings before clicking my beak against the glass, the sound making Kaira leap from her bed, knife in hand and a sour expression on her face as she spots me instead of an enemy army.

“How many times have I told you not to do this?” She scrambles to the window, half-asleep even in her readiness to kill, and unlatches it so I can hop inside. “It’s too early.”

“It’s never too early,”I protest through our mind connection, nudging her outstretched hand with the side of my head when all I want to do is give her a hug. I haven’t embraced her since the battle when she was sprawled on the ground, a gushing wound in her thigh and life fading from her eyes.

“Oh shut your grumpy beak, and I’ll get us some breakfast.” Dropping her blade on the rumpled bed, Kaira grabs a set of fleece-lined leather pants and a thick woolen shirt and disappears inside the adjacent bathing room only long enough to have cleaned her mouth and washed her face before changing into her attire. When she reappears, fully dressed, her brown hair falls over her shoulders in tangles. “I know, I’m a hopeless case,” she says as she combs her fingers through her waves, knotting them even more, wincing as she gets stuck in the lengths. “Maybe I should cut it off.”

I shake my head at both statements, wishing I could use my hands to brush out her hair, to braid it for her, but my claws are good for hunting and killing, not for showing affection.

When I merely give her a look, Kaira rolls her eyes and sets off for the door, grabbing her knife from the bed on the way out. I follow, ignoring the looks of the guards spaced out along the hallways. It’s not like they mind seeing me in this form; they all know who I am and what I am, and Recienne has ordered them not to harm me even if I land on their shoulders on occasion. ButImind. Every day I flutter through the palace, I’m painfully reminded that I’m stuck in my bird form.“Are you musing the merits of kicking Vala’s ass again?”Kaira prompts in my mind.

“I don’t think you can kick a goddess’s ass.”Even when that’s exactly what I want to do for her putting me in this position.

At least Kaira treats me like a normal person, ignoring my feathers and lack of human … well, anything … entirely.

“Do you regret it?”She asks that question every day, and every day, I have the same answer for her.

“I will never regret buying you a chance at winning that battle.”That godsdamned battle with the Flames that got us where we are now.“I’d do it all over again.”

“How long do you think she’ll let you be stuck in this form?”Out of all my new family, she’s the only one with blind faith in my recovery from Vala’s newest curse.

“Eternity, probably. Good thing I’m not immortal.”

That costs Kaira a morning-grumpy chuckle.“If there’s one thing we know, it’s that you’re a Crow now—literally. I’d be surprised if the Brother Guardian hasn’t thrown in a few benefits for you when making you his creature.”

“Don’t remind me.”

After the initial shock of my being stuck in bird form, Kaira and Tori made sure they spent enough time with me to get the full story and translate it to the others. The fact that Vala unveiled to me her identity as the Sister Guardian and Shaelak her brother, both Eroth’s children, was the milder shock where my Crow court is concerned.

When he learned I couldn’t shift back, Myron immediately shifted to see if we could communicate when we were both in our bird forms to the only effect of my tearless crying when that tiny hope was smothered by the absence of his voice in my head as he cawed at me.

We turn the corner into the hallway leading to the kitchens, a path Kaira walks more often than the rest of us, it seems, with her affinity for at least two breakfasts before starting the day. I duck behind a glimmering green column, tucking my wings in tight as I dive through the narrow space and, when Kaira shoots me an alarmed look, I call it flying practice.

“You need to stop doing that,”she scolds in my mind.“You’ll scare the guards into eventually putting a spear through your wings.”

She’s not wrong, but there’s little I can do in this form. I can’t even use my Crow abilities, that silver power remaining dormant the way it does with all Crow Fae while in their feathered form.

Only, I’m not fae. I’m human at my core—and I want to feel my arms and legs again. Want to walk so long my feet hurt, want to sit on my ass and complain about a too-tight belt after a filling meal.

The tip of my wing brushes the shoulder of the guard standing at attention by the next door, and he does flinch and grab for his sword, ready to attack.

“It’s just the Crow Queen,” Kaira calls at him as she darts after me to where the scent of freshly baked goods and fried bacon beckons from the door at the end of the corridor.

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