Page 29 of Flight of Fate

He hasn’t been avoiding me the way I avoided him before what happened with Gus and the twins and then in the temple, but something has changed in him, and I can’t put my finger on what it is.

Talk to me,I think at him.Look at me.Even when I can barely stand his scrutiny.

He doesn’t move. So I flutter to the edge of the bed, cocking my head so I can spy past his shoulder where he’s braced his head against the wall behind the bed. Myron lowers the book, eyes locking on me once more, and his chest expands, muscles playing in his neck as he rolls his shoulders like before a fight.

The Eastern Oceans, I read the title of the book he closed in his lap and which is now resting atop his powerful thighs.

A map collection. Of the oceans separating Eherea and Neredyn, his home. I don’t dare ponder what this means and why he’s looking at it now.

“Since the Flame ambush in the borderlands…” he starts again, an emotion I can’t place on his features. “Have you ever thought about the power of promises?” Before I think about what he means by it, he continues, “Like Herinor’s bargain with Ephegos. A bargain is a promise of sorts. It keeps him locked in a certain pattern until he’s released from it. Until the bargain is fulfilled or, in my case…” His throat bobs, voice turning hoarse. “A promise.”

His gaze holds mine as I peer up at him from my perch, head heavy with swirling thoughts, and ready to scream.

What promise?

A knock on the door saves me from losing my mind, and the growl ripping from Myron’s throat at the interruption—despite his reluctance to share what was on his mind—makes the blood in my veins grow cold.

“This better be important,” he snarls. I flutter to the top of the shelf beside the bed, taking up a defensive position or eradicating evidence of how close I’ve allowed myself to get to Myron.

The door swings open, Herinor hesitantly poking his head inside with a stone-like expression on his face. “I know, I know… Only if it’s important, you’ve made that clear.”

I wish I could ask what he means by that, but Myron silences him with a forbidding glare that would send lesser males running.

“What is it?” Myron gets to his feet, bringing himself between the shelf and the door as if shielding me from danger when Herinor just so clearly stated his loyalties to this court and his intentions to become worthy of it.

“Recienne asked me to inform you he’s readying for battle. The soldiers in the north are on the move.” It’s all he needs to say to have Myron launch into action. He grabs his leather jacket and dons it atop his shirt, checking his weapons beforesheathing them at his hips like he’s ready to walk onto a killing field right now. My heart launches into a frenzied gallop. Too soon. We were supposed to prepare more, perhaps find a way to make use of that one bottle of magic-suppressing drug in our possession.

“When is he marching?” Myron follows Herinor out the door then halts just across the threshold, bracing a hand on the doorframe and glancing at me over his shoulder, a crease forming on his forehead. “I haven’t fulfilled my promise, and I know there is no way I can until you turn back into your human form. The old magic of fae promises and bargains will not be patient forever.”

Good I don’t have a voice that could form words, for I wouldn’t have any to say, my mind blank as I try to remember the promise he made. Only when a slight blush graces his cheeks before he turns away, heading out the door after Herinor, do I remember the last promise I fulfilled—and the last one he made.

Promise me there’ll be a tomorrow, Ayna, and I’ll fuck you, then.

Eighteen

Myron

Godsdamned Erina.

I shift into my bird form halfway down the stairs to Recienne’s throne room where Herinor is leading me. The tug in my chest has gotten stronger over the past days, and it’s not the mating bond. That promise I made to Ayna the last night in her human form, what I’d withheld from her to give plentiful after we survived the battle with the Flames—she has no idea that her part of that promise was the easy one.

The world would have continued with or without us in it, but mine…

At least, that magic acknowledges she’s a bird. It hasn’t counted any of these days as the actualtomorrow. That will be once she’s shifted back into her human form, but the magic is eating away at me anyway, making it difficult to breathe at times. Compassion for Herinor’s situation has grown exponentially with that constant thrum of ancient power lingering in my blood, waiting for me to fail.

“Thanks for joining us,” Recienne says by way of greeting as we enter the pompous room, so far from the enemy who once spilled Crow blood on a battlefield. He’s in leather armor, two blades sheathed at his hips and a bow slung over his shoulder.Beside him, Clio is talking to Queen Sanja, who has opted for a pair of loose pants and a thick tunic to see her mate off for battle. Part of me wonders if she would happily walk onto the killing field herself, even in her condition, if it means Recienne will return alive and with all his limbs attached.

Herinor stops a few feet from the others, looking over Kaira’s light leather armor where she is counting her own arrows before storing them in the quiver at her back. For a heartbeat, I believe he’ll tell her not to go; then his features settle into cold indifference, the face of the emotionless soldier I first appointed as Ayna’s guard.

In a flash of darkness, I shift into my fae form, walking up to Recienne, harboring both anger and fear in my chest. I don’t look back to where I know Ayna has followed us. Even if I forbade her to come, she’d make her own choice to join us on the battlefield, but the anger softens a bit, and the fear flares at the mere thought of her near Erina’s soldiers.

Whether or not she understood my not-so-subtle hint about what’s been bothering me, I don’t want to consider. I don’t want to give her the wrong impression, but there’s something about the power of bargains, of promises, that reaches deep into the core of us Crows, and considering Aynaisa Crow—a mortal one, according to Shaelak, but still a Crow—the magic of my promise might affect her as well. A danger. And an opportunity if we play it right. I wish I had the courage to explain to her in depth?—

“Astorian is readying the legion he’s taking north. Tata is leading a second one slightly northwest to fall into their flank,” Recienne interrupts my thoughts with the reality of open war.

“I take it you’re joining from the beginning this time?” I run my gaze up and down his battle-black armor, earning a curt nod and a grin that promises blood and cleaved torsos. But beneath that bravado, a different emotion dominates his features, everymove he makes, every last twitch of his lips, and his eyes give away who it is he’s going to battle for.

“I’ll be fine,” Sanja reassures him, reading him easily while it took me a moment to figure out.

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