Page 31 of Feathers of Ash and Hope

“In Telos.” I give him a sugary smile.

His eyes narrow. “You want to tell me they know you're with the Third Aerie?”

I scoff.

“Ara,” he snaps.

“Do you think I'd be here if they knew?” I place my hands on my hips and look at him incredulously. He knows my brothers as well as I do, so I don’t know why he even asks.

“Fuck.” He runs a hand over his eyes. “Okay, let me think. We could…”

Stay calm.

“I'm not leaving, Joel,” I state.

“Ara, you can’t …” He steps toward me, shaking his head.

Okay, that’s enough.My fists clench.

“You have no idea what I can or can’t do.” And he has no idea what’s at stake for me either. “I’m not a child, Joel! You can’t just send me home,” I hiss.

Joel opens his mouth to reply when the door behind him opens, and another rider pokes his head in.

“There you are. We’re waiting for you, Cassius. Kyronos is getting impatient.”

“Fuck. Right, I’m coming.” The rider leaves, and Joel turns back to me. “This conversation isn’t over.”

Oh, it is so over.

Joel shakes his head at my stubborn silence and leaves.

At first I'm worried that he'll make good on his threat to inform Dar, but when he still hasn't shown up two days later, I start to relax. Joel's eyes are on me whenever I cross his path. He’s probably still plotting how to get rid of me. I ignore him, but make sure I don't run into him alone. I can do without a repeat of our nice little chat.

If he thinks I’ll change my mind, he’ll be waiting forever.

I only have to face two riders in the Aerie regularly. My squadron leader, Joel, and my division leader, Centurion Tate Kyronos.

The fates have a cruel sense of humor.

I’m sitting next to Calix in the strategy meeting. The room is filled to bursting even though some riders are out on patrol,and it is the biggest of the classrooms—the one referred to as the theater because of the little podium at the bottom of the swooping rows of chairs.

All four division leaders stand in front of a big map of the southern part of Belarra. Red lines indicate what I can only guess are the patrol routes. Little symbols of crossed swords appear along some of them, and I blink. One of them has to be gifted with Illusions.

Centurion Vega steps up.

“We had increased activity all along the mist line over the past week. I expect it to get increasingly worse, like every winter. There were already some coordinated attacks, seemingly focused here and here.” He points out two places close to the border with Muntos, with nothing but farms and villages around.

Coordinated attacks?

Since when did nightmares and monsters coordinate their attacks? I’m looking around, but everyone else just nods along like that’s nothing new. Are the mist creatures so much different in the South than ours in the North?

“One rider and his bird were wounded by arrows, no casualties.”

Arrows?

I try to remember when anyone was shot by an arrow during an attack at our fortress but come up empty. Bites, stings, and slashes from abnormally sharp claws, shattered and broken bones, burns from fire, poison and acid, even damage by hurled rocks and trees—my mother and brother deal with all that regularly, but arrows?

However, the other reports are very similar to the first one, except that the northern division lost a rider.

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