After years of strife and separation, when they’d come face-to-face again, it had been too late. Those dreams had been dashed.
But this time… Veronyka was different. Things were different.
She was a shadowmage, after all, and a Phoenix Rider. She was more than Pheronia could have ever been, and together they would be truly unstoppable.
But that same magic that made Veronyka strong had also convinced Avalkyra that the words didn’t need to be spoken—that they understood each other because of their bond. And so she’d made the same mistake she’d made with Pheronia. Despite all the ways Veronyka was superior to Pheronia, she hadn’t been raised with the knowledge of who and what she was. She didn’t understand that they were chosen, destined to rule.
She still didn’t know.
It had been too dangerous to risk when she was young, her shadow magic wild and unpredictable. And now? Avalkyra had given Veronyka pieces of what she needed, but not the whole picture. Until she had a plan of her own, revealing to Veronyka her true heritage would only complicate matters.
Avalkyra thought she’d had a plan—hatch a phoenix, raise it until it was big enough to fly, then start gathering her allies and make her move on the capital. This had been her plan for years. For a lifetime. And it had failed repeatedly, spectacularly, over and over again.
Avalkyra needed a new plan, but no matter how she looked at it, she needed a phoenix. What kind of Ashfire queen would she be without one? She’d be like poor, powerless Pheronia.
No, Avalkyra needed a phoenix to ride into battle, a fiery beacon to light the night and warn the empire of her second coming. Without that, she’d be a shadow of her former self. A pale comparison.
Maybe she already was.
While her shadow magic was as strong as ever, honed over two lifetimes, her animal magic felt weakened. Whisper thin. Whatever she’d gained in shadows, she’d lost in her desperate bid for new life. She could not give these phoenixes what they sought. No matter how much life she gave them, no matter the heaps of bones and white-hot pyres, they refused to come forward.
Then, as if summoned there by thought alone, the endless, haunted silence was punctuated by a distant, steady pump.
Wingbeats.
For a wild moment Avalkyra thought it was Nyx—a stupid, foolish thought. Nyx had not come back. The bond endured—Veronyka and her phoenix had proven that. If Nyx were alive, Avalkyra would feel it.
No, this phoenix was larger than Nyx. Older. A female, her long purplish feathers marked her as a centennial—possibly many times over, so dark was her plumage—and her beak was narrower, her neck longer. As for the crown atop her head… well, it put Avalkyra’s crown of feathers to shame.
A surge of anger blossomed in her stomach. She would fashion a new crown and take the feathers from this phoenix’s corpse if she wanted. She was Avalkyra Ashfire. She was a queen. None would shine brighter or burn hotter than her.
Avalkyra glowered at the creature as it landed before her, anger still bubbling in her stomach and clawing its way up her throat.
Though the phoenix was impressive in both size and age, she did not seem… stable. There was something broken and fractured in her eyes, in her twitching, erratic movements. She kept tilting her head or darting her gaze this way or that… as if looking for something, and Avalkyra was not it.
Unlike most phoenixes, who emanated light and warmth and sparking energy, this creature felt dark and cold and wary.
“Who are you?” Avalkyra asked. Minutes passed, and when the silence continued to stretch on, Avalkyra pushed out with her magic. Tell me who you are! she demanded, but the phoenix’s mind rebelled against her touch. She had impressive strength, and yet there were also gaps along the barriers of her mind… cracks and fissures. These weren’t born from ineptitude or inexperience. No, the weakness in this phoenix’s defenses came from trauma.
Centuries of trauma.
And deep within Avalkyra came the knowledge that while the body might endure or be resurrected anew, the mind did not survive so many lives unscathed.
“What do you want?” she asked instead, though she wasn’t sure why. Why should she care what this old bag of bones wanted? “I am your queen, phoenix, and here in my domain you will answer me.”
Those words got the firebird’s attention. Her gaze, which had been wandering off to the side, snapped back onto Avalkyra with sharpened focus.