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The day she called me a moron, I’d already fallen from a cliff with my wings bound behind my back. The smile tugging on my lips at that particular memory is a momentary flicker before my face settles back into grim lines. I can see the mirror of my features in Royad’s gaze as he studies me with those unfamiliar blue eyes yet the most familiar expression I’ve known for centuries.
“Ephegos took her.”
In an instant, ire slides through my veins like mercury. Power rises in my blood as I try to calm it down by telling myself I need to know all the facts before I set the world on fire. “Where did he take her?” It comes out as a growl, and I’m surprised my features don’t sprout feathers and my voice doesn’t turn into a caw.
No more. The curse no longer dictates how and when I shift or how much of me turns into a monster. I’m no longer frozen in a half-state, unable to transform fully into my human form. The curse no longer tries to disguise anything remotely attractive about me into the face of a monster whenever a female is likely to look at me with anything more than disdain in her eyes. The gods know I’ve done all I could to keep the feathers and talons off my body whenever I was around Ayna, just to give her a chance to see something more than a blood-lusting bird.
No, I’m no longer a slave to that curse, but I can’t deny that I’m a slave to my instincts. And my instinct is to find Ephegos and rip out his throat before asking questions.
“Don’t keep me waiting, Royad.” I’m barely in control of the need to lay waste to the clearing with my returning power when it is surging through my body like a tidal wave slipping its leash. If I don’t know where she is right now, I might actually lose my mind and do exactly that.
“I don’t know.” His tone is cautious, his posture that of a warrior ready to fight, and he’s right to be wary of me. I’m not stable, and Ayna’s absence is only a small part of it. I was the carrier of an ancient curse for over a century, the responsibility binding everything I am, including the full extent of my fae magic. And now, that power is let loose, and I’ve never learned to control it. If I’m not careful, I might actually hurt my cousin by accident.
Smart as he is, Royad takes a step back, lowering his hands in a placating gesture, and the look of him afraid of me drives a bolt into my heart—a heart that was dead until recently and only started beating the day Ayna touched me without flinching away. I remember every time she ever touched me, every place her fingers trailed my skin, my feathers. A shudder rakes through me at the mere thought of her hands—so beautiful and powerful, so delicate and gentle. They might be shattered already under the force of Ephegos’s vengeance. Because that’s the only reason he’d take Ayna away—even when he believes I’m dead. Because that’s the sort of Crow he is.
My chest aches all over again at the betrayal of my oldest friend. Not my family the way Royad is and always has been but something just as close. For a solid century, he’s been my confidant and spymaster. He knew every thought, every plan regarding my kingdom. Every time I doubted that breaking the curse was even possible, he was the one encouraging me to keep trying. To try just one more time. Had I known that Sariell was his sister…
“I need to find Ayna.” It’s a fact, and Royad doesn’t object. He’s known me all my life, and even before the curse, he’d seen me lose my mind the day Ayna sprinted from the palace and nearly got herself killed by two of the traitor Crows. The fine hair on my arms stands up at the mere memory of it, and the sensation is so new it almost distracts me from the fact that Ephegos betrayed us all. He watched closely how I fell for my wife, urged me to pull out my charming self even though all Ayna ever triggered was to brutally be myself. No masks, no filters. I never pretended to be anything other than the monster I am. And she loves me anyway.
The thought alone boggles my mind in a way few things can boggle an ancient mind such as mine. But the curse is broken, and Ephegos knew I was in love. He faked his own death to join the people he chose as his new allies. Seeing him there at the palace, returned from the dead at the side of the Flames, it fucking hurt to the very core of my being. I trusted him with my life and my safety, with the safety of my people and with Ayna’s safety.
Now he took her away to take revenge for Sariell’s death.
Had he only told me that she was his sister, things might have gone differently. I might have tried harder. Then, there is notryingto fall in love. Either one does or one doesn’t. And Sariell, smart and pretty as she was, could never have captured the heart of a resigned king ready to spend the rest of all eternity in isolation for all the crimes his people committed. For the slaughter of entire species, for the abuse of land and resources, for the warfare and torment they brought upon an entire continent. Sariell would have never been the answer to the curse even if I’d known who she was to Ephegos.
Perhaps the curse forbade Ephegos from telling me and influencing my perception of the female—not that it would take any blame off him.
The female’s pretty brown face and hazel eyes flash before me as I think of the day she married me with half as much reluctance as all the other brides before her. It makes sense now that she wouldn’t be as afraid of me as the others. That she’d be prepared for what she’d find when she was wed to a monstrous king whose brides died year after year because he couldn’t fall in love. Because he couldn’t make anyone fall in love with him.
Not worthy.
For so many decades, I wasn’t worthy. But Ayna made me worthy. Whether I believed I was or not, she saw something in me that wasn’t Crow and monster, that wasn’t cruel and dangerous. She saw something that no one else could see, and it cost her freedom—it almost cost her life.
My chest tightens with terror at the memory of the moment she pushed me out of harm’s way, taking the blow of Ephegos’s sword. The blood spilling from her side is something that will haunt my sleep until the end of my days.
She was ready to sacrifice herself for me. And I couldn’t let her die. I couldn’t let the only woman I’ve ever loved die before my eyes. I couldn’t have lived with seeing hers close forever. So, when the time came to make a choice, I chose her life over mine.
“We need to find her.” My tone is back to flat and cold the way it used to be before Ayna, because if I don’t find her, this new well of emotion inside of me can never reach the surface, or I’ll combust. I shove it down as I meet my cousin’s gaze.
Royad nods once, but there are thoughts swirling in his eyes that I can’t read as anything other than concern we won’t find her, no matter how far we go.
“Spit it out,” I order in the voice of his king, not his family, and Royad obeys because he knows me better than to believe this mask. He sees behind it where agony is fighting fury, where love is the only thing keeping me holding on by a thread so I don’t unleash my power on this forest and destroy everything in my path as I set out to find the woman I just died to save.
“It’s been days since the battle.” The lump in his throat bobs as he swallows, probably wondering how much of the unfiltered truth I can bear to hear then deciding he’d rather give me all of it than have me find out later he held something back. Smart him. “It’s been days since the battle. We thought you were dead. Princess Cliophera was about to take Ayna to the palace in Aceleau the way you asked her to do if anything happened to you.”
I flinch at the memory of the day I struck the bargain with the fairy princess. She’d help Ayna master her water magic, and in return, I’d never again demand a bride. I’d keep my people in the Seeing Forest where we’d be forgotten as the unwanted history of Eherea, a continent where the Crows never belonged anyway. But she agreed to something else: If Ayna survived until Ret Relah, she’d take my wife in and protect her when I no longer could. Because I knew back then that she’d never be safe here with me even if I managed to keep her alive for a full year before I let her go as part of the deal Ayna struck with me.
For weeks, I believed that was all it was, that she looked at me the way she did because of that deal, that the heat in her gaze was all an act. But the night she kissed me for the first time?—
My heart gives a wild thud that could have been the sound of her name or that of thunder by the way it shakes me awake.
With a quick dip of my chin, I prompt Royad to continue his story.
“We thought Ephegos and the Flames had fled and the rebellious Crows were all dead. The princess was about to sweep Ayna into her arms and return to Aceleau. But we were wrong.” The way his features contort does the opposite of giving me hope. “The combination of Crow power and Flame fire creates explosions of the sort that can take down an entire palace.” He shudders at a memory I don’t share even if I was there that day. “The palace started to collapse. I grabbed your body, unwilling to leave you behind, even if you had fallen in battle. And Clio took Ayna, and together we ran from the palace—at least, I thought she was right behind me.
“When I made it out the main gate, the palace came down. Cliophera and Ayna weren’t behind me. A Flame was. And she handed me this.”
Royad reaches into the pocket of his leather pants, drawing my attention to the new scar running down the front of his abdomen. He must have earned it while defending our home—a home now lying in rubble.
