Page 23 of Flight of Fate

What a vicious pack those gods truly are.

“Couldn’t agree more.” Kaira, naturally, picks the thought right from my head while I’m still shaken from facing a fuckinggodin the flesh.

I barely dare ask, anxious Shaelak will come back to life, but I need to know.“You heard the whole conversation?”I already know the answer but still ask for that flicker of hope they might not have heard the full extent of the drama.

“Every last syllable,” Royad confirms, his expression grave as if he’s already bemoaning his cousin’s death.

Cautious not to disturb the silence that has settled over the temple once more, Kaira elbows the male harder than I’d ever dare, shooting him a warning glare. “At least, now we know how to get you back, Ayna,” she whispers to me with a too-cheerful expression that sets me on edge all over again, my poor heart kicking back into a gallop. If Shaelak decides to smite us for lingering after his appearance, there is nothing we can do to save ourselves, “You merely need to become immortal.”

“Piece of cake,”I think at her without humor.“Tell me when you find out how exactly that works.”

“He said you need to accept your destiny and give up on the mortal world,” Royad reminds us as if it were a recipe for that fateful cake.

Before I can full-on launch into panic about damning Myron to mortality with my inability to turn back into my human form, Royad brushes his thumb over my head in a soothing gesture. “You broke the millennia-old curse of a goddess; you beat the odds every day you survived at the palace in the Seeing Forest; you survived the battles with the Flames. You’ll find a way out of this, too.”

I’m gladsomeonehas faith in me because, right now, vanishing in a void of despair sounds like a really great option to me.

Kaira slides her hand across the altar, tracing the symbols covered in Myron’s blood, eyes darting back to the carving of the God of Darkness every other moment, lest he come back to life. “How about a blood sacrifice?”

Royad sucks in a breath to object, but the door bursts open, splintering into a million pieces and revealing the view of Myron’s powerful form. Feathers float around his shoulders, slowly gliding to the floor as the debris settles around him, and his too-calm face is a mask containing the ire, the fear, the terror that he’ll unleash on the world if he finds even a scratch on my body.

“I’m fine, Myron,”I think, Kaira having the good sense to channel my words to the Crow King.

And the mask crumbles as he falls to his knees.

“Ayna—” His voice is hoarse, a tear sliding from his eye as Royad opens his hand and lets me launch into the air. “I thought…” He shakes his head, black strands dancing into his face. “I don’t know what I thought when Clio told me where you’d gone.”

“Nothing rational, I assume.”A hint of humor surfaces in my mental voice, but it’s as forced as the smile forming on Myron’s lips as he takes in the expressions on Kaira and Royad’s faces.

“How can I hear you?” He sounds as flabbergasted as Royad the first time I demonstrated, but the relief in his tone is genuine.

“Thank your sister-in-law for being amazingly gifted,” Kaira chimes, stepping away from the altar. “And, no, I’m not going to relay her sweet little nothings to you.”

Myron’s lips twitch marginally, as if physically incapable of a full smile, but that slight curve of his lips… That’s real.

“What by Hel are you doing here?” he finds his words again as I settle on his outreached hand, claws digging into the leather protecting his forearm.

“Long story,” Royad says before I can launch back into despair at the thought that this male will die if I fail to shift back, and I’m yet again grateful for the friend I have found in Royad.

“One I’ll hopefully hear.” Myron is speaking to his cousin even when his finger is brushing my neck, my back, the top of my head in gentle strokes, and the order is clear in his tone. Gods, how I’ve missed that sense of connection coming with him hearing me. How I’ve craved the understanding in his eyes as I speak to him in my mind. The tender warmth in his eyes speaks volumes of what this moment means to him, no matter my being frozen in this form, and my heart flutters in my chest like white dove wings.

Myron won’t force Royad to tell the truth, but as his second in command, he’ll be required to spill all secrets—the same way I asked Myron’s secrets of Royad.

It occurs to me in this moment that perhaps Royad wasn’t telling me as his friend but as his queen.

How I’m supposed to feel about that, I’m not sure, but I shove it into a compartment at the back of my mind where all those moving parts seem to be contained and save it for later.

“I was interested to see what Shaelak has to say about my being stuck in bird form. You know, since he was so talkative the other day in the forest. So I thought I’d seek him out—and before you ask, I took Royad and Kaira as a safety precaution.”

Kaira grumbles something unintelligible that sounds like she’s offended, but the grin on her face suggestsproudis more like it. For so many decades, she was told she’s not good enough—not good enough to participate in the hunting trips of the Flames, not good enough because her magic supposedly wasn’t strong.

She is good enough in this court, though. Inmycourt. Bird or no—I am its queen, and Kaira is one of my most valuable assets. And my beloved sister.

“I heard that,”she whispers into my mind, and I sense her invisible embrace like a physical touch as she steps to Royad’s side, looping her arm through his. “Let’s get out of here before that grump of a god decides he isn’t done with us.”

Royad leads the way, me flying overhead while Myron follows on silent feet, falling into a dangerous quiet when his demand for what that’s supposed to mean goes unanswered until we’re all safely back at the Fairy Palace and assembled around the dinner table with the others. This time, the Fairy Queen is sitting next to Recienne, taking my usual spot, while I simply perch on the edge of Myron’s plate, picking berries from his salad and dipping my beak into the red paste that smells surprisingly like spring and winter all at once, and which I’d promised myself before the battle with the Flames I’d inquire the origin of if I survived it.

“Winterberry,” Sanja says as if reading my mind when she watches me gobble down one beakful after another. “It took me months to get over the perfection of it when I first had it,” she amends, and her cheeks blush slightly when Recienne reaches for her hand, whispering into her ear that he remembers something else she couldn’t get over the perfection of for months when she first had it.

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