CHAPTER 1 -
VERONYKA
VERONYKA GATHERED THE BONES of the dead.
Joints
of venison blackened and burned on the spit, and racks of ribs stewed
so long that they were dry and brittle as driftwood. She dug through
rotten lettuce and potato peelings for tiny, sharp-as-daggers fish bones
and the hollow, delicate bones of birds.
The small owl perched
on her shoulder hooted softly in distaste at her most recent discovery.
Veronyka shushed him gently, piling the bird bones inside her basket
with the rest and standing.
It was late evening, the cool night
air threatening frost. The village streets were empty and quiet, with no
one to notice the solitary girl digging through their garbage heaps.
The clouds above glowed iron gray, obscuring the full moon and making it
almost impossible to see in the darkness. That was why she’d called the
owl to be her guide. His eyes were precise in the black of night, and
with a nudge to her mind, he showed Veronyka the way over rocks and
boulders and under low-hanging branches. In her haste, she tripped and
stumbled anyway; Val had told her to hurry, and she knew better than to
keep her sister waiting.
Excitement and anticipation crackled in her veins, tinged with no small amount of fear—would tonight finally be the night?
Veronyka’s
breath created clouds in front of her face as she made her way back to
the cabin she and Val shared. It was small and had been deserted when
they’d found it, the bright blue paint peeling on its front door and the
shutters broken, probably used during the warmer months for hunting and
then abandoned during the rainy winter season. The weather was getting
drier and hotter with each passing day, so they wouldn’t be able to stay
much longer. Another home, come and gone.
As the cabin came into
view, Veronyka’s insides contracted. The thick column of smoke that had
been billowing from the chimney when she left was nothing more than a
thin stream of ghostly wisps. They were running out of time.
She
ran the last few steps, the flimsy wooden door thwacking against the
stone wall as she pushed her way into the single room. All was darkness,
save for the orange flicker of the glowing embers. The smell of smoke
was heavy in the air, the taste of ash bitter on her tongue.
Val
stood in front of the round hearth in the middle of the cabin, turning
at the sound of Veronyka’s entrance. She wore an impatient, agitated
expression as she snatched the basket from Veronyka’s grip and stared in
at its contents.
She snorted in disapproval. “If that’s the best
you can do . . . ,” she said, tossing it carelessly aside, half the
bones spilling onto the packed earthen floor.
“You said to
hurry,” Veronyka objected, looking around Val to see that the fire
burned hot and low beneath a pile of new kindling. These weren’t the
boiled or spit-blackened bones of animals, though. These were large
white bones.
Human-looking bones.
Val followed her line of sight and answered the unasked question. “And still you took too long, so I went looking on my own.”
A shudder ran down Veronyka’s spine despite the heat.
She
tugged at the heavy wool cloak that was wrapped around her shoulders,
and her owl guide, whom she’d completely forgotten about, ruffled his
feathers.
The movement drew her
sister’s attention. Veronyka froze, her muscles tingling as she awaited
her sister’s reaction. Would she fly off the handle, like she often did,
or would she let the animal’s presence slide?
The owl twitched
nervously, shifting from foot to foot under Val’s gaze. Veronyka tried
to soothe him, but her own anxiety was rippling across the surface of
her skin. A moment later his clawed feet dug into Veronyka’s shoulder,
and he glided soundlessly out the still-open door.
Veronyka shut
it behind him, taking her time before she faced her sister, dreading the
argument that was sure to come. They were both animages—able to
understand and communicate with animals—but they had very different
views on what that meant. Val believed animals should be treated and
used as tools. Compelled, controlled, dominated.
Veronyka, on the other hand, felt kinship with animals, not superiority over them.
“Loving
them is weakness,” Val warned, her back to Veronyka as she crouched
before the hearth. She added some of the smaller bones from Veronyka’s
basket to the growing flames, piling them carefully around the sides of
two smooth gray eggs, blackened and streaked with soot. They sat amid
the glowing hot embers in a bed of bone and ash, tongues of fire licking
up their sides.
Though Veronyka couldn’t see Val’s face, she
could imagine the fervor in her eyes. Veronyka expelled a slow, somewhat
exasperated breath. They’d had this conversation before.
“The
Riders didn’t treat their mounts like pets to be cuddled and fawned
over, Veronyka. They were warriors, phoenixaeres, and their bond wasn’t
love. It was duty. Honor.”
Phoenixaeres. Even with Val’s
scolding, excitement blazed in Veronyka’s heart whenever her sister
spoke about Phoenix Riders—animages who’d bonded with phoenixes. The
literal translation of the ancient Pyraean word was “phoenix masters,”
something Val often reminded her of. Only ani-mages could become Riders,
because only through their magic could they hatch, communicate with,
and ride the legendary creatures.
It was all Veronyka had ever wanted. To be a Phoenix Rider like the warrior queens of old.
She
wanted to soar through the sky on phoenix-back, to be fierce and brave
like Lyra the Defender or Avalkyra Ashfire, the Feather-Crowned Queen.
But
it had been more than sixteen years since the last Phoenix Riders had
graced the Golden Empire’s skies. Most had died in the Blood War, when
Avalkyra and her sister, Pheronia, were pitted against each other in a
battle for the empire’s throne. The rest had been labeled traitors for
turning against the empire and were hunted down and executed afterward.
Practicing animal magic without registering and paying heavy taxes had
been made illegal, and animages like Veronyka and Val had to live in
secrecy and squalor, hiding their abilities, in constant fear of being
captured and forced into servitude.
During their glory days, the
Phoenix Riders were guardians above all else, and for Veronyka, even the
idea of them had been a shining beacon of hope when she was growing up.
Her grandmother had always promised that one day the Phoenix Riders
would return. One day it would be safe to be an animage again. And when
her grandmother had died, Veronyka had vowed to become one herself. She
wanted to be the light in the darkness for other poor, lonely animages
living in hiding. She wanted the strength and the means to fight and
protect others like her and Val. The strength she hadn’t had to protect
her grandmother.
Maybe the Phoenix Riders as a military order
were gone, but you needed only two things if you wanted to be a
phoenixaeris: animal magic and a phoenix.
Veronyka moved around
Val to kneel next to the hearth. The phoenix eggs nestled there were
roughly the size of her cupped hands, and their color and texture were
so similar to that of natural stones that they could easily be
overlooked. It was a defense mechanism, Val had said, so that phoenixes
could lay their eggs in secret and leave them unguarded for years until
they—or an animage—came to hatch them. The Riders often concealed
eggs as well, placing secret caches inside statues and sacred spaces, but many had been destroyed by the empire during the war.
Veronyka
and Val had been searching for phoenix eggs for years—in every run-down
temple, abandoned Rider outpost, and forgotten building they could
find. They’d traded meals for information, sold stolen goods for wagon
rides, and made other transactions Val wouldn’t let her see. After their
grandmother had died, Val had been determined to get them out of Aura
Nova, the capital of the empire, and into Pyra—but it hadn’t been easy.
Travel outside the empire after the war had been closely monitored, as
many of Avalkyra Ashfire’s allies had tried to get into Pyra to avoid
persecution. In the years since, with the threat of bondage or poverty
under the magetax, many animages had tried to do the same. Pyra had once
been a province of the empire, but it had declared its autonomy under
Avalkyra Ashfire’s leadership. With the death of its Feather-Crowned
Queen, it had become a lawless, somewhat dangerous place—but it was
still safer for animages than the empire.
Without proper
identification, Veronyka and Val hadn’t been able to cross the border.
Plus, they were animages—if their magic had been discovered, they would
have been put into bondage. So they’d been forced to travel within the
empire, Val leading, Veronyka following. They’d slept in ditches, on
rooftops, in the pouring rain and the sweltering heat. Val would
disappear—sometimes for days—then return with blood on her shirt and a
coin purse in her hands.
Those had been hard times, but they’d
finally bribed their way onto a merchant caravan and been smuggled into
Pyra, their parents’ homeland. Veronyka had been certain that, finally,
their luck would change. And after several long months, it had.
Val had found two perfect phoenix eggs hidden in a crumbling temple deep in the wilderness of Pyra. One for each of them.
Just
thinking about that day brought a prickle of tears to Veronyka’s eyes, a
surge of emotion that she fought to keep in check. Whenever Val caught
sight of Veronyka’s euphoric smile at the prospect of what they were
doing,
she’d meet it with cold, hard truths: Sometimes eggs didn’t hatch.
Sometimes the phoenix inside chose not to bond or died during the
incubation process.
Even now, Val didn’t smile or take joy in the sight of the eggs in the hearth. Their incubation was as somber as a funeral pyre.
A
bone snapped in the hearth, and a cloud of ash rose up. Veronyka held
her breath so she wouldn’t inhale the dead, drawing a circle on her
forehead.
“Stop that,” Val snapped, seeing Veronyka’s hand and
swatting it aside. Her beautiful face was a severe mask, her warm brown
skin painted with black shadows and swathes of red and orange from the
firelight. “Axura’s Eye should not be called for some silly
superstition. That’s for peasants and fishermen, not you.”
Val
was never much for religion, but Axura was the god most sacred to
Pyraeans—and Phoenix Riders—so she usually let Veronyka say prayers or
give thanks. Still, she hated the small superstitions, turning up her
nose and pretending she and Veronyka were somehow above the local
villagers and working-class people they’d lived among all their lives.
They hadn’t had a proper home since they were children, and even that
was a hovel in the Narrows, the poorest district of Aura Nova. Right now
they were squatting on the floor of another person’s cottage. Who were
they, if not peasants?
“Have you eaten?” Veronyka asked, changing
the subject. Val wore that fanatical look on her face again, and heavy
bags sat under her eyes. Val was only seventeen, but in her exhaustion
she appeared much older. Quietly Veronyka moved away from the fire to
dig through their box of food stores, which were getting dangerously
low.
“I had some of the salt fish,” Val answered, her voice
taking on the familiar distant tenor that came over her after too much
time fire gazing.
“Val, we ran out of the fish two days ago.”
She
shrugged, a jerking twitch of the shoulder, and Veronyka sighed. Val
hadn’t eaten since she’d found the eggs. For all her intelligence and
cunning, she often lost track of the mundane activities that made up
daily
life. Veronyka was the one who
cooked their meals and mended their clothes, who worried about sleep and
nutrition and a clean home. Val’s mind was always elsewhere—on people
and places long gone, or on distant dreams and future possibilities.
As
she continued to search through their stores, Veronyka unearthed an
almost-empty sack of rice. They’d have to find something worth trading
in the village the next day, or they’d go hungry.
“You know we won’t,” Val said, speaking into the flames.
Immediately
realizing her mistake, Veronyka closed her eyes. She’d been projecting
her thoughts and concerns into the open air, where anyone—where
Val—could snatch them up. While their shared ability to speak into the
minds of animals was fairly common—one in ten people, Val said, though
it was higher in Pyra—their ability to speak into human minds was as
rare as a phoenix egg. Shadowmages, they were called, and for two
sisters to have the gift was even rarer. Unlike animal magic, shadow
magic wasn’t hereditary, and as far as Veronyka knew, most people
thought it was a myth. It existed only in old stories and epic poems, a
magical ability belonging to ancient Pyraean queens and long-dead
heroes.
While they had to be careful with their animal magic
since it had been outlawed in the empire, they had to be extra cautious
when it came to shadow magic. People in Pyra would often let animages
be, but if anyone were to catch Veronyka and Val using shadow magic,
they would almost certainly be turned in. For every legend of a powerful
Phoenix Rider queen with an uncanny ability to tell truths from lies,
there was also a cautionary tale about a dark witch who corrupted souls
and controlled minds. It was mostly nonsense, Veronyka suspected, but
people often rejected and distrusted things they didn’t understand. She
and Val were safest if they kept their shadow magic to themselves.
Of course, that didn’t stop Val from using it on Veronyka whenever she pleased.
Guard
your mind, Val said, speaking the words inside Veronyka’s head rather
than out loud. Like speaking to animals, shadow magic could be used
to
communicate, or it could be used to influence a person’s will: to order
and command. Val often used the latter to get them food or clothes or
shelter, but she only ever turned shadow magic on Veronyka to
communicate. As far as Veronyka knew. Still, she could see Val was
tempted sometimes, when Veronyka disobeyed and refused to listen, and
she could understand the danger of such a powerful ability.
“I’m
making dinner,” Veronyka announced, drawing her thoughts and feelings
inward and putting up mental walls to surround and protect them, just
like Val had taught her. She was usually better at keeping her mind
guarded, but they’d been tending the fire for two days, and in her
exhaustion, her emotions were raw and close to the surface. Cooking some
food would help distract her from the alternating surges of fluttering
anticipation and aching dread that were in constant flux inside her. The
closer they got to the moment of hatching, the more terrified she
became that it would go wrong, that it would all be for nothing.
Everything rested upon those two round rocks in the fire.
Veronyka
lifted their heavy clay pot and hoisted it over to the edge of the
hearth, the bag of rice tucked under her arm. “We’ve still got some
onions and dried meat to make broth, and . . . Val?”
Veronyka
caught the scent of singed fabric. Val crouched so near the flames that
the hem of her tunic was smoking, but she was still as a statue,
oblivious to the heat, a steady stream of tears making tracks down her
soot-smeared cheeks.
Veronyka’s heart constricted, and she looked
into the flames, expecting to see cause for concern. Instead the
nearest egg twitched and rattled. Veronyka held her breath. The gentle
sound of hollow scraping punctuated the hiss and pop of the flames.
A font of purest, powerful hope welled up inside her chest.
She looked back at Val, asking the question—begging for the affirmation.
Val nodded, her answer barely louder than a whisper. “It’s time.”
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