Sleep for very few hours. Dream of a crown that was too heavy for his head.
Wake up exhausted, but alive, one day closer to his father’s end, and his beginning...and then do it all over again.
Arawn was eighteen when he made his Descent.
He was paired with a beautiful fledgling, a female hatched from the very same sire as his father’s. He called her Cyrra, for the tips of her feathers blazed a molten gold so bright that when they hit the sun, it looked as if she were on fire.
When his grandfather was a child, he’d completed the Rite, an ancient ceremony in which a Rider earned their wings. They’d soar across the Expanse by night, alone, and gather a rock from the base of the Sawteeth mountains. And if they made it back alive, not devoured by the wild raphons that flocked there?
They’d earn their saddle and their wings.
With the war and the shadowstorm, the new test of a Rider and war eagle’s bond was different: a harrowing drop along the Citadel’s northernmost cliff, where the ancient Aviary temple stood.
He’d watched it countless times as a youngling, standing in the training room to pray for each Rider by name. It felt like a dream, now that he was about to complete the Descent himself.
“Scared, Crown Prince?” Soraya asked.
Just as she had years ago, when they first joined thenomagesin war. But now she sat to his right on a war eagle of her own. One that would be given to her to ride in war, if she survived today first.
“Of course I’m scared,” Arawn said.
It was true back then, and it was still true now.
He looked left, from where he sat on his own War Eagle’s back. The world around them was springtime and softness, emerald leaves and flowery vines snaking up trees. A little bird flitted past his vision.
Cyrra snapped at it, her enormous beak just barely missing.
Five other Riders were with them, all of them in a solid line where the training pen usually stood. They all rode on borrowed saddles. Ancient, simple leather things that were unmarked by runes...for today’s flight would be done the same way as the old Rite once was.
Without magic to help them stay in the saddle.
They would complete the Descent with their wits alone.
“We’ll make it a race,” Soraya said from her saddle.
Her eagle was the brother to his, feathers still tipped in white, for it was smaller than most. The runt of the hatching, but easily the fastest, thanks to its size. A perfect pairing, now that Arawn considered it, for someone like Soraya.
He frowned as he considered her offer. “The Descent is not agame.”
The head Eagleminder walked past, checking for any final adjustments to their positions. A final bit ofhopethat they would not be splattered upon the snow when the test was said and done.
“It could be,” Soraya whispered. “Winner gets two drinks at Absolution.”
“You’ll have two anyways,” he said, and smiled at her.
A true smile, the kind he often gave now when she was near. It had come on slowly, at first. As ifjoywas something he hadn’t learned how to attach to his own name, but as the years had gone on...Soraya brought it out of him.
The way Kinlear once did.
