The Storm Crow (The Storm Crow, #1)(2)

“What in the Saints’ name do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

“Um, talking to Iyla?” I offered. Lying had never been my strong suit. To her credit, the crow let out a low caw, as if she were indeed part of the conversation.

My mother didn’t smile. I didn’t expect her to.

“Relax, Alandra.” Estrel emerged from the nearby staircase at my side, her long, dark curls bound in a thick braid like mine. “I gave her permission.”

The only person who could tell my mother to relax without getting eviscerated was Estrel, my aunt in every way but blood. She and Estrel had grown up together. They even looked like sisters, though my mother was taller and leaner.

My mother frowned, and I straightened beneath the sharpness of her steel-colored gaze. Her eyes always reminded me of knives, forever sculpting me in an endless quest for perfection.

“I executed a perfect dive,” I offered, as if my ability to perform riding techniques far more advanced than my seventeen years might soften her gaze.

It only made her eyes narrow. “Taking another rider’s crow out for a joyride to perform dangerous maneuvers is not only foolish, it’s insulting.” I flinched. “If you want to prove yourself capable of being a leader among the riders, you can start by not disrespecting every rule and custom we live by.”

I refused to wilt beneath the heat of her words. “Well, maybe if you spent more than a waking second in my presence, I’d know the rules better.”

Estrel drew a sharp breath, but my mother went stiller than a shadow crow concealed in darkness. For a fraction of a second, I swore something pained flashed through her iron gaze, but it vanished quickly.

The circlet of silver feathers on her brow gleamed like molten starlight. “I expect you back here before the hatching.” She turned to Tyros, who leapt from his perch to the wide window ledge, a perfect tableau of strength against a backdrop of approaching night. With a grace I hadn’t yet mastered, she swung up into the saddle. Wings tucked in tight, Tyros leapt. They plummeted from view, gone for barely a breath before they soared up past the window, climbing into the darkening sky.

“That went well,” I muttered.

Estrel smacked the back of my head, and I winced, rubbing the spot though the blow hadn’t hurt. “Stop stealing my crow!” Despite the snap in her voice, an easy grin filled her face, and she let out a low laugh when I smiled back.

There wasn’t a single other rider or a single other crow I’d ever dream of doing what I did with Iyla. Any other crow would snatch me by the leg with its beak and toss me off, princess or not. That was, until I had my own.

My gaze dropped to the gold and black edges of Estrel’s Corvé tattoo that reached up over her muscular shoulders, denoting her as one of Rhodaire’s nine crow masters. While the heads of each house saw to their people, each wing’s Corvé saw to its crows.

Tonight, I would choose my own crow. I would become a rider. And one day, I would earn the tattoo and become the royal Corvé after Estrel.

“The Sky Dance starts in an hour,” Estrel said. “Then it’s back here for the hatching. Are you and Kiva going into the city tonight?”

“To Rua’s.”

She smirked. “Take a breath. Enjoy the night. You’ll have your crow soon enough.”

Soon enough felt a lifetime away as I bolted down the winding rookery steps, dodging a rookhand balancing plates of meat, and out into a perfect Rhodairen winter evening. The air was cool but not cold and filled with the possibility of rain. Storm crows would keep it at bay, though I wished they’d let it fall. I’d always wanted to see a Sky Dance in the rain.

The wind buffeted my escaped curls into my face as I shot along the gardens, through the castle gates, and into streets filled with thick green trees and climbing vines trickling down buildings like rivulets of rainwater.

I veered onto the main road between the Caravel Wing and Thereal Wing, then cut right into the Thereal section of the city, slowing as a wave of music and laughter washed over me. I made for Rua’s, a bright-blue building on the corner where a crow had been painted in sunset colors across one side, done by a street artist in the night.

Native brown-skinned Rhodairens walked alongside colorfully dressed, dark-skinned travelers from Trendell, a kingdom far east of Rhodaire. Both were dwarfed by the pale, long-limbed Korovi of the northern kingdom. People came to Rhodaire from all over the world for Negnoch. I even spotted a few revelers from Illucia, the border kingdom to our north, though they were probably only here for festival discounts on Rhodairen weapons. Or maybe they were guards for the visiting Illucian dignitaries.

That was probably what had my mother on edge: their presence, and their queen who threatened war. She’d already taken two kingdoms.

Someone seized my arm, spinning me around. Kiva grinned down at me, her moonlight-colored hair freed from its characteristic braid and down to her shoulders in waves. She still wore her castle guard uniform, making her look older—sometimes I doubted she owned anything else. She even had her sword at her hip.

“I was starting to think you weren’t coming!” she shouted above the clamor.

“And let you eat all the orange cakes?”

“Typical. Here for the food.”

I nodded at her uniform. “Hoping to impress someone?” She’d been flirting with a girl at Rua’s for weeks now.