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“Shouldn’t you know?” He shook his head.
Ana sighed. “It may not seem like it, but I’m trying to help you. We share a common enemy, which might not make us friends, exactly, but we’re not on opposite sides either. I can’t... I can’t overpower her. She has far more magic than I do. She’s been holding back, if anything. But maybe if I understood more about what happens when I’m not here, I can learn something that will help us both. Do your people haveanyidea why they’re going missing? Why she’s targeted them specifically?”
Varradyn pulled the brick of cheese away from his mouth. “Of course we know. We’ve upheld our end of the alliance all this time, but men are... Men aregreedyand cannot help but take what isn’t theirs to take.” He fluttered his fingers with a dark, sarcastic scowl. “Our magic is sounique,you know.”
“It isn’t the Wynters doing this, Varradyn. I promise you—”
“Is your stepmother not a Wynter, Anastazja?”
“She’s not one of us!”
“Was your father forced at knifepoint to wed her?”
Her face burned with shame. “She’s takeneverythingfrom us, and she’s not remotely done, is she? She’ll keep taking and taking because there’s no satisfying that witch.”
Varradyn tilted his head back in annoyance and laughed. “You’re still walking—flying—free, and you have the audacity to compare our situations as though they are even a little similar? The Wynters brought the old hag into their world and have done nothing to stop her from infiltrating ours. Forgive me if I have no pity for the one who sits before me untethered while I languish inchains.”
Ana breathed out and nodded. “I wasn’t looking for your pity. I’m sorry. You’re right.”
Varradyn seemed ready to respond but returned to eating in silence. Ana turned her gaze outside, watching the snow fall. Minutes passed, the silence slowly releasing its tension.
“The elders, they...” Varradyn hung his head. “They only whisper about it. They seem to know more than they’ll tell the rest of us. But whenever anyone raises a concern, they make us all feel like we’ve imagined our missing brethren. LikeI’veimagined... imagined... my own sister—” He snapped his mouth shut.
Ana’s heart seized. “I’m so sorry about your sister. I truly am.”
“Do you even remember her? Or do they all blur together in your mind?”
“I remember every single one, Varradyn.” Ana swallowed. It was true that she remembered them all, but she’d never learned their names. Learned anything about them. That she’d led his sister to her death was a revelation too painful to address then and there. “But I don’t quite understand... If you know this keeps happening, then why—” She clipped the question, unable to make it sound like anything but accusation.
“Why do we do nothing?” He laughed. “What could several hundred do against thousands? The Ravenwood-Wynter alliance has always been unbalanced. We offer magic in exchange for protection because we cannot protect ourselves if men ever find a way up the mountain, can we? If we go to battle with men, they will lose some in the doing, but we could loseeverything.Our entire existence hinges upon our safety in the clouds, but our sanctuary isn’t even safe anymore, is it? Not when a phoenix can come lure us away with forbidden magic. No... No, they gloss over the whole thing, act like it’s the rest of us going mad when we bring it up.”
“I didn’t—” She almost saidknow.Her conscience skated upon never seeing the aftermath of her endeavoring, but it wasn’t the same as not knowing what happened when she walked away. “I don’t know what to do.”
He leaned back and propped himself up onto his hands. His robe lay open, exposing everything she’d already seen but still felt uncomfortable witnessing. “Only now coming to this conclusion, are you?”
“How can you be so flippant about your own life?”
“How would you like me to be, Anastazja? Screaming in terror? Sobbing in fear?”
Ana buried her face in her hands and moaned. “I don’t know! I don’t know how you should be because I’ve spent so much of my life in fear, I can’t even remember what safety felt like. I’m sorry for everything, but I’m not giving up.” She looked up and into his eyes. “I’m not giving up on you and getting you safely home.”
“How very sweet of you,” he said, his tone acerbic, “but you’ve already said what I’ve known all along. You don’t know how to stop her.”
Ana pushed to her feet and wiped her eyes. She had to get to those letters before the party ended, before Tyreste caught her in his cabin. And then... then she would take one of Ludya’s draughts, slip into dreamless sleep, and try not to think about Niko, about Tyreste, about Varradyn, about her father, about the letters, or about any of it until morning.
“Yet,” she said. “I don’t know how to stop heryet.But she’s going to kill me either way, so I’ve got nothing to lose for trying.”
I’m afraid I have little to report. I’ve had limited success in translating the delivery and am now behind on other translations. Please advise whether I should continue or return to other projects.
Tyr tied the vellum around the raven’s talon in the way Olov had taught him. He’d never sent ravens himself back in Parth, so had never considered there might be a proper way to secure correspondence for long journeys. There was a balance between the right tie and not harming the raven. Even with the perfect knot, there was always a risk of letters coming undone in flight. Some ravens had been trained to retrieve lost messages and carry them the rest of the way in their beaks. But the ravens of the Cross were stubborn, much like the Vjestik, and returned to their posts at the slightest hint of danger.
“Go on with you,” he said, and the raven flapped its wings and soared out through the wide window of the rookery. He turned toward the ravener, who was busy trimming the talons of one of his messengers. “Anything new for me?”
“Not a thing,” the ravener said without looking up. A blunt clipping sound followed and then an indignant squawk. “For a fee, I can tie your messages myself.”
“You say so every time,” Tyr said, almost smiling. He might have, had his heart not felt so heavy. “I don’t mind doing it myself. A good skill to have.”
“A good skill when there’s no competent ravener,” the man muttered. He ran a calloused hand along the raven’s head and down its feathers. The bird stretched its impressive wings with a happy flutter. “Right. Bugger off now.”
