at the prospect, but it felt suspiciously like charity. “You don’t want to spend the day with your friends . . . the other apprentices?” she asked.
He gave her a half shrug. “We see enough of each other, and we still have the feast.”
Veronyka nodded, and they packed up their things.
“And you’re a friend, Nyk,” he added, leading the way back up to the village.
“I am?” she asked, a strange bubble expanding in her throat. Friendship had always been a loaded term for Veronyka, a thing just out of reach. She’d tried once or twice in her life, running the cobblestones with the other barefooted kids on their winding Narrows’ street, or sharing whatever meager food she had with some of the beggar kids in the Forgotten District, the neighborhood that housed the city’s orphanages. No matter who it was, Val would shut it down at once, chasing the other children away or swatting the food from the cowering street rats’ outstretched fingers.
“They’re nothing but filthy mongrels,” she’d say. Or, “Feed them once, and they’ll be following you forever.”
Veronyka would look down at her own tattered rags and wonder how they were any different. She’d wonder what was so wrong with feeding them more than once.
Veronyka had known she and Tristan were more than just training partners, but they had gone from fighting to laughing to awkward moments so quickly that she could hardly keep up. Was that friendship? All she’d ever had was her sister, but now that Xephyra—and Tristan—had come into her life, Veronyka realized that Val had never really been enough. There was a difference between friendship and family, between the people you chose to surround yourself with and the people you were stuck with, good or bad.
And just as Xephyra had done, Tristan had chosen her.
“Of course,” he said, nudging her with his shoulder. “More than a friend, really—I mean,” he said, laughing nervously as he realized what he’d insinuated, “you’re a close friend. Closer than the apprentices.”
Veronyka smiled at him, heart light as a feather as they walked through the village, Rex flying above. Veronyka stared at the phoenix, watching golden flame rippling across his body in gentle waves.
“I don’t know how you can stand to be parted from him each night,” she mused. While the phoenixes roosted in the Eyrie, the apprentices lived in barracks similar to hers. Her connection to Xephyra had been so primal, so fierce, that the thought of putting piles of rock and buildings between them each night would have been painful. Of course, what had actually happened was much, much worse.
Tristan looked up. “It was hard at first, when our bond was new and more fragile. But now we’re connected no matter how far apart we are.”
Rex cawed his agreement, soaring lazily above them.
Though Xephyra was gone, Veronyka still felt the lingering remnants of their severed bond, like a broken bone begging to be set. The more she ignored it, the more it seemed to ache.
“Still, it’d be nice to move into the Eyrie with the Master Riders—that’s where they sleep. It was carved centuries ago. All this”—he gestured to the village and the wall that surrounded it—“is fairly new. The village was here to serve the pilgrimage route, but it was mostly small shops selling phoenix idols, feather talismans, and other tourist junk. It had been abandoned since the Blood War, so we basically had to rebuild it all when we arrived two years ago. We added the wall, and the stables and everything inside the stronghold is recent. The caverns inside the Eyrie extend underneath the stronghold and deep into the mountain. Some of the passages were caved in, but we were able to excavate most of them.”
“It must be beautiful,” Veronyka said, wishing with all her heart that she might one day be a part of this world, of the history that defined her people.
Tristan looked at her a moment, and Veronyka worried that she’d given herself away somehow. But she needn’t have worried.
“It is,” Tristan agreed quietly. Then he added, “I’ll show you.”
We were night and day, moon and sun—darkness and light. We were nothing without each other.
- CHAPTER 25 -
TRISTAN
AS THEY APPROACHED THE carved archway that led into the Eyrie, Rex soared overhead in a wide circle before diving dramatically into the darkness beyond.
Nyk’s eyes widened, his face glowing with unreserved wonder.
Show-off, Tristan thought to Rex, whose smug self-satisfaction blazed through the bond.
Nyk’s reaction reminded Tristan of a younger version of himself. He thought