The Storm Crow (The Storm Crow, #1)(10)

“How?”

I opened my mouth, then closed it, brow furrowing. How did the eggs hatch? They weren’t like normal bird eggs. Something else happened to them, because every year on the winter solstice, they all hatched at once. For some reason, this one hadn’t, despite surviving Ronoch when no other eggs had.

Maybe it couldn’t. Maybe Kiva was right, and the egg was nothing but an empty shell. I shook the thought away. However small the chance was the egg could hatch, I had to try.

Problem was, I’d never seen it done.

*

We climbed out of the rookery together and returned to the castle. Kiva gave me her cloak to wrap the egg in, and I hugged it against my chest, still not fully believing what I’d found. The egg’s humming settled deep into my bones, resonating like the echo of a thunderclap. It felt so familiar, so alive. Like a piece of me had returned.

Something fluttered in my stomach, a feeling I’d almost forgotten. Something I hesitated to name, lest it disappoint me. Still, I clung to the rising hope, feeling as if I balanced on a glass precipice, waiting for it to shatter and send me careening into the nothingness like so many times before.

After Ronoch, we’d searched the rookery for surviving eggs and found nothing. When the third floor collapsed, nearly killing two riders, the search was put off until we could stabilize the rookery. But in the face of starvation and mass destruction, it had been forgotten.

We’d decided to ask Caliza about the egg. She’d shunned the crows most of her life and probably wouldn’t know a thing, but we had no one else. Most of the Corvé were gone; they’d been targeted on Ronoch, just like the crows. Those that remained had never helped my mother with the hatching.

I looked at my feather bracelet. Only Estrel had.

We stopped by my room, where I hid the egg in a drawer of rarely worn sweaters in my closet armoire and changed into a clean dress. My elbow had stopped bleeding, so I wiped away the dirt and left it be. Then we sought out Caliza.

What would she say to me? Would she apologize again? I snorted at the thought, then crushed the tiny voice that hoped maybe she’d changed her mind. That never happened.

We found her in her office talking with a tall, broad-shouldered woman with pale hair. Larisa Mirkova, Kiva’s mother and captain of the royal guard. They paused as we entered, but I still caught the tail end of their conversation. They were talking about the failing crops again.

Kiva saluted her mother, only relaxing when the captain nodded. Caliza met my gaze. Her expression remained impassive, but I knew what she was thinking: had I accepted my fate?

I held her gaze without blinking: not even close.

“Sakiva,” Captain Mirkova said, her Korovi accent heavy. Unlike her daughter, Captain Mirkova had lived half her life in Korovi. “You should be helping with afternoon training. This is irresponsible of you.”

Kiva stiffened beside me, but she didn’t rise to her mother’s bait. She’d always had more discipline than me.

I faced Caliza, getting straight to the point. “What do you know about hatching crows?”

She frowned a very specific frown, the one she’d used since we were children whenever I talked about the crows. “Why do you want to know?”

“Humor me.”

Caliza’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know anything more than you. They’re all born on Hatch Night, on the winter solstice, but Mother said that was ceremonial.”

“But what makes them all hatch at the same time? And why did they never hatch where we could see them?”

“I don’t know, Anthia. And it doesn’t matter. I’m very busy right now. I don’t have time for this.”

There it was. It doesn’t matter. She rarely said anything else to me about the crows. They’re gone. It doesn’t matter. Move on. I could tell her about the egg, but she wouldn’t care. She wouldn’t believe one crow could save us. She’d never believed.

“The least you can do is answer a question or two,” I said. “You owe me that.”

Something flashed behind her eyes that had her turning her face away. “I really don’t know more. Let it go.”

Disappointment filled me, weighing me to the spot. Caliza had been a long shot, and now even that hope had been crushed.

What if the secret to hatching was lost forever?

Swallowing against the tightness in my throat, I stormed out of Caliza’s office, Kiva on my heel. With the need I had to do something suddenly left without an objective, I felt untethered, my motivation leaking from me like blood from a wound.

I slowed to a halt in the middle of the entrance hall, my energy all but gone.

“Thia?” Kiva asked cautiously.

“I don’t know what to do.” I buried my face in my hands.

Kiva laid a hand on my shoulder. “Let’s go for a ride. Some fresh air might help.”





Three


It felt strange being outside the castle grounds. I’d barely left my room since Ronoch, and I’d never once stepped into the city. I hadn’t yet found the energy, the strength, to see what had become of Aris.

I already wanted to leave.

The Brynth Wing, once home to the earth crows, looked nothing like its former self. Managing the huge fields had become too big a task without the crows, who had been responsible for most of Rhodaire’s farming. We had no system for the water, once delivered by water crows, and many of the crops weren’t native to Rhodaire’s humid climate, only surviving thanks to the storm crows. Nearly half of the wing’s crops had failed. Without as much to tend and harvest, the farmers had to let workers go.