Page 242 of The Reckoning of Starlight

“Never mind.” He sighed. “I’ll just make the line crooked.”

Vesryn lowered his hand at once.

Beyond Naru, Trella, and their six chicks, the valley opened under a clear blue sky. The high country stretched south from the Aetherveil, its slopes veined with meltwater. Far to the north, the floating islands hovered in staggered tiers above the horizon, hazed by distance. Here, sunlight lay unbroken over wildflowers and the nest Naru and Trella had woven from grass and down.

In Alari, the old dracovae stables still stood abandoned, and Aesar intended them to stay that way. The realms had made mounts of the dracovae for too long, barred flight behind stall doors, and bred obedience into carefully chosen bloodlines.

In the years after the war, the dracovae had scattered across the wilds, following warm currents, old instincts, and paths no keeper chose for them. Some nested in mountain valleys or along sea cliffs. Others still flew patrol with the rangers, choosing the long sweep of borders over a mate or nest.

Aesar kept the ledger himself. Reports reached him from rangers and the new Waykeepers, who monitored the overland roads and marked new nests, abandoned clutches, and dracovae sightings along their routes. Too few mated pairs remained, their kind too close to extinction for guesswork.

So Aesar recorded every clutch, every egg that cooled before hatching, every fledgling that survived long enough to test its wings. If the world meant to keep them wild, someone had to know when their numbers fell.

A trill cut through the grass nearby.

One of the dracovae chicks barreled past with a beakful of Vesryn’s severed hair, glossy pinfeathers spearing through wings too large for its body.

Sharyne chased after it on unsteady legs, copper hair bound into two wraith braids, silver eyes bright with ruthless determination.

A few paces beyond her, Fenn sprawled on his stomach in the grass, chin propped on folded arms. Two chicks scrambled over his back and a third picked busily at the rings along one pointed ear. Koln sat next to him with one knee raised, repairing a split bandolier.

“Cut off its retreat,” Fenn called.

“Fenn,” Vesryn said, his attention on Sharyne, “she’s three.”

“And fearless. I’m working with excellent material.”

Sharyne lurched into the chick’s path. The nestling squawked, ducked under one arm, and escaped with Vesryn’s hair still clamped triumphantly in its beak.

Aesar swept one final pass of shadows along Vesryn’s scalp, trimming the last uneven strands. “There. Are you ever going to grow all of it out?”

Vesryn smoothed a hand over his head. “No. Serenna likes it.”

Aesar settled against Trella’s feathered shoulder, her slow breath rumbling through his spine. “That’s hardly the endorsement you think it is, considering she also likes you.”

Vesryn snorted and glanced across the valley, where a turquoise shimmer paced along a distant ridge.

Lykor’s illusion strode back and forth in restless passes. Three lengths of the slope. A pause beside the split stone. Then his head angled toward them, swift enough to preserve the fiction of indifference.

Still vigilant. Still circling.

Jassyn had left that morning with the Accord delegation bound for Centarya, and Lykor had endured the separation with all the grace expected of him—which was to say, by assigning four squads of wraith to shadow the First Keeper’s every step.

But at least the pacing belonged to the valley now and not the inside of Aesar’s head.

Fenn shoved himself up from the grass, shedding chicks in a tumble of down and offended chirps.

Sharyne finally caught the hair-thieving nestling around its scaly middle, squealing in triumph as it screeched its outrage. It endured the indignity for all of a heartbeat before squirming free and vanishing under Naru’s folded wing.

Fenn brushed grass from his leathers and held out one claw. “Time to go, little elfling. We’re going to be late.”

Sharyne’s head snapped up. “See Renna?”

“To the flight trials,” he confirmed, shifting into wings.

“And if we hurry,” Koln added as he rose, “we might claim the best perch in the sky to watch her knock fliers out of it.”

Sharyne scrambled toward Fenn, but Koln snatched her around the middle before she made it two steps and swung her upside down.