The Storm Crow (The Storm Crow, #1)(53)

I opened to a page with a drawing of the Wandering Wood, a beautiful forest of massive, colorful trees that looked like someone had spilled a bundle of dyes across their leaves. Pale spring green melded into buttery yellows and robin’s egg blues. There were even trees the bright pink of sunrise and the deep mauve of dusk.

The story said the Wandering Wood was an ancient well of magic that only appeared on the full moon. During that time, it allowed the chosen to come and go as they pleased, but you had to be out of the wood by sunrise, or else you’d be trapped until the next full moon.

Right now, that didn’t sound half bad.

Caylus set his cup on the desk. “You would have known the crows well, right?”

His question plucked at a heartstring, sending a quiver through my chest. “Yes.”

His eyes lit up, and for the first time, he met my gaze fully and unwaveringly. “Can you tell me about them?”

For half a second, I remembered Ericen asking me the very same question and the way my entire being had revolted against the idea. But with Caylus, the curiosity in his eyes, the light—it made my heart beat faster and my stomach turn in anticipation, an echo of the feeling that engulfed me moments before a flight. To my surprise, I wanted to tell him.

I leaned against the workbench. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

So I told him. I told him about the types of crows, from how a shadow crow could deceive your perception of space, camouflaging itself in night, to the way a sun crow’s golden touch could heal a wound in minutes. I told him how a battle crow could turn its feathers to metal and release them on command and about the black-gold weapons the Turren masters made from it.

He asked questions, more than I’d ever been asked. He was quick, easily picking up on the patterns of their magic and remembering the smallest details.

“So a water crow could turn water to ice?” he asked, and I nodded. “Could they create mist then too?”

“Yep. On especially hot days, riders would drop mist from the sky to cool workers in the fields.”

“And your students at the riding school. Not all of them became riders?”

“Only about half.”

Becoming a rider took a lifetime of dedication. Even before contenders entered Kalestel, the riding school, crows would have been their lives. They’d have been raised working with them, learning their strengths and weaknesses, the extent of their abilities, the history of their wings. And after all that, less than half of them would become riders.

Typically, it was a mantle passed down from parent to child, uncle to niece, staying firmly rooted in familial lines. Anyone could apply to Kalestel, and they frequently took students outside of established rider families, but it was rare for a crow to form a connection with one.

In the end, they became involved in other ways. Working at Kalestel, turning to wing-specific trades focused around the crows, like the Garien leatherworkers who crafted the finest saddles.

Caylus tapped his fingers on his leg, absently moving them about for the kitten to pounce on. “It’s strange that it stays mostly in families. I wonder…” He trailed off, his brows furrowing and his head tilting in a way I’d come to understand meant he was faced with a problem he couldn’t solve.

“Wonder what?” I asked.

He blinked. “Sorry. I wonder if forming a bond with a crow has an impact on a person’s physiology somehow. Something passed down generation to generation.”

I grinned. “You’re good. Some Rhodairen scholars thought the same thing. They called it magic lines.”

He leaned forward, eyes bright. “But then the question is what exactly is passed down.”

“Crows form bonds with their riders,” I said, excitement prickling my skin. “Unbreakable bonds, as strong as a real cord strung between them. This journal I read thought it might be related to them.”

He nodded enthusiastically, not even noticing as the kitten pounced, digging his tiny claws into the back of Caylus’s hand. “But the question is, do the chosen riders already have magic, or do the crows grant it to them when the bond forms?”

He leaned back, one finger stroking the kitten’s head as he retreated into another silence. It wasn’t until the room was quiet that I realized what I’d just done. I’d talked about the crows, and I’d done it without spiraling into a pit of dark emotions.

Something about Caylus had made me feel comfortable enough to share, and from there, our shared natural curiosity had driven away any lingering doubts. I wanted to know, and so did he.

A three-beat knock sounded on the workroom door. Caylus rose quietly, crossing the room to open it. My heart thudded with each step, the distance between the threshold and me stretching. Suddenly, I couldn’t remember all the things I’d wanted to say.

A figure slipped in, a hood obscuring her face, as Caylus closed the door behind her. I stood facing her. She wore a simple half-white, half-black mask split down the middle, like the ones worn in the Ambriels during Catternon, meant to symbolize the split between the sea god, Duren, and his dark sister, the Night Captain.

“Princess Anthia,” came a hard voice from beneath the mask. She wore all black, her clothes thick and concealing. Leather gloves and heavy boots adorned her hands and feet, every inch of her obscured. Even her eyes were dark as obsidian.

This was it. This was happening.