repeated wisdom and not something he’d come up with on his own. “They never really die. Just when one bursts into flames, another rises up to take its place.”
“Unless you break the cycle,” Veronyka whispered.
Sev tilted his head, considering her. “Or you ride them to the bitter end.”
Day 2, Eighth Moon, 170 AE
My dearest Avalkyra,
They say you plan to fly in force on the capital. Please, sweet sister, do not turn our home into a battleground.
We must speak again before this war makes corpses of us all.
I know I am no longer welcome in Pyra, and make no mistake, your army is not welcome here.
But you could come, Avalkyra. Alone.
I will wait atop Genya’s Tower every day after nightfall. Please come.
I have so much to say.
All my love, Pheronia
I was frightened at first, but I knew I must not fear the flames. I am the flames.
- CHAPTER 43 -
SEV
VERONYKA’S VISIT LEFT SEV in a dark mood. Darker mood. It hadn’t been sunshine and rainbows inside the infirmary, fighting through pain, ebbing in and out of consciousness, and listening to the wails of the dying and the unhappily living.
Sure, it had been nice to see her again, and it was good to know that she had survived this mess. It had also been good to talk about Trix, but with thoughts of her came thoughts of Kade. And no matter how he tried to see the positive, the fact of the matter was, he’d lost them both far too soon.
In the first few hours after Sev had arrived inside the infirmary, the terrible truth of all that had happened closing in, a bleak part of him hoped that Veronyka’s sister was here as well—the one who’d stolen his knife—and that she would make good on the promise she’d made outside her cabin. There was a moment, as he lay on his pallet half asleep, that he swore he did see her, but Sev had been tired and heavily drugged. There’d been no sign of her since, so it looked like Sev would just have to go on living.
The healer woman had said he was lucky the quarrel didn’t strike bone, and that chronic pain and limited movement were better than a shattered, useless limb.
The guard being treated next to him said he was lucky it was only his arm and not his chest, for surely a wound to the lungs or heart would have ended his life.
Lucky.
Sev couldn’t help but think Teyke was playing a cruel joke on him. So much luck, and yet he didn’t feel lucky at all.
They didn’t understand. It wasn’t the wound that made Sev slump on his pillows and stare absently into space. If anything, he saw it as a badge of honor. He had earned the pain and the scars; they were a part of him now and marked him as a survivor. No, it was the people he’d lost that left him feeling broken and hollow inside.
Trix was dead. Kade was surely dead as well. Sev had no idea what had happened to Junior, who was far too young to die, and the sheepherders Tilla and Corem. He hadn’t let himself think much about them until he’d arrived here, his message delivered and his task complete. Now, with every breath, a vast space of unfeeling emptiness opened wider and wider in his chest. Or was it so much feeling that Sev didn’t know what to do with it, or how to identify the sensation? He had gone from nothing to everything to nothing again, but things were different now. He was different.
He couldn’t go back to not caring and not seeing, back to the way his life had been before.
Sev wanted, needed, to keep fighting.
The question was, how?
He could take one of the eggs he’d carried, join the Riders, and leave all the deceptions behind. Become a heroic warrior, like his parents. But something about that didn’t quite sit right. In truth, he couldn’t picture it. He wasn’t a hero, much as he’d wanted to be. He wasn’t much of a warrior, either. Kade was those things, and it had cost him his life. Sev wasn’t even a strong animage.
He was something else. Trix had said Sev was just like her, and Trix was a spy.
Could Sev pick up where Trix had left off? Kade had called him her worthy successor, and Sev had scoffed at the idea. Maybe, years from now, he might be skilled and accomplished enough to agree. But they hadn’t