“Is it?”
Sighing, I let my head fall back, a weight in my chest and uncomfortable memories stirring. “Maybe.”
Rim hops forward and launches off the ledge. He flies to the bed. “I doubt it.”
Smiling with a mixture of melancholy and comfort, I wrap an arm around his solid body as he settles next to me. “That’s kind of you to say, but I wasn’t very nice to Bale earlier.” I chew the inside of my lip. “In my defense, he was being weird.”
Little Embersol staggers to the edge of the roosts, and Fyrestar unfolds a wing to keep her from falling. Her amber eyes only half open, she croaks a sleepy sound.
Love strikes my chest like a lightning bolt. “You should’ve stayed in your nest.”
Ignoring that, she flutters down to me and settles into the crook of my other arm. What Rim has, Sol wants—and vice versa most of the time. “Bale. Good king. Dad.” Her eyes immediately close again.
Mine widen. That’s the first time any of my birds have referred to the Dragon King as Dad. “Why did you say that?” I ask.
“I hear the other little ones talking,” she mumble-coos, her words slowing down. “They have dads.”
By “other little ones,” I know she means the residents of Drayke Mountain and not the other warbirds. Only Danica has a young phoenix right now anyway, and her youngest is closer to Rim’s age than to Sol’s.
“I didn’t,” I murmur. Gerard was something, but he wasn’t a dad. Dads praise your efforts and sit you on their knees. Dads are interested when you talk to them and don’t look right over your head or vaguely tell you to come back later when they’re not busy.
A familiar ache spreads through me. I wish it wasn’t so real, that hole where all sorts of good memories should be. I have everything I need now, so why do I even care? And despite Rita and Gerard seeing straight through me most of the time, they never abandoned me like my birth parents did.
I squeeze both birds a little closer. Sol’s already asleep again, and Rim tucks his beak into the fold of his wing, closing his eyes.
Fyrestar lands at the foot of the bed. “What did you argue about?”
It takes a moment to pull it all together in my head. I’m not even sure why those raised voices and heated words even happened now, but I think I didn’t help. “It was all really sudden.” I sigh. I want more from Bale than I can have, so maybe I tend to lash out at him unfairly sometimes. “What I am, I guess.”
“What you are doesn’t matter. It’s who you are that counts.”
My throat thickens. “I know that’s what I’m supposed to think, but somehow, I can never convince myself.”
“What did Bale say?”
It’s hard to answer at first. Finally, in a hoarse voice, I manage, “He told me to get over my abandonment rage.”
Flames flare in Fyrestar’s eyes. He clicks his beak, angrier than I’ve seen him in a long time. “You might not need the people who left you, but that doesn’t mean some answers wouldn’t be nice.”
I nod. That sums it up perfectly. I stare at the ceiling and its rough, jagged rock. The floor and walls are rock, too, but smoother. The whole room is a big cave carved into the mountainside, with elaborate roosts carved even deeper into the thick peak. It’s getting cold now that autumn has set in.
I shiver, even with three phoenixes surrounding me and providing their inner heat. Maybe Bale is right, and I should get a rug or two. Glarraden House is full of them. Rugs, tapestries, knick-knacks, paintings, sculptures…So many sculptures. The collection is Gerard’s pride and joy, but I always hated all those expressionless faces and empty eyes staring me down when I could barely get a real person to look at me.
I don’t want extra stuff here because there was always too much there. If I’m still alive when Rita and Gerard finally fade from life and return to the stars, I’m going to empty the whole house and start over with just my birds.
From out of nowhere, the feel of Bale on top of me in the shallows of the lake rushes back and heats my blood.
Closing my eyes, I push out a frustrated groan. It’s not as easy to expel the memory of his warm breath on my neck, his big hands circling my arms, his body holding mine down, or the almost teasing rumble in his voice. And you’re dead.
Just what every woman wants to hear.
The thought of retiring to Glarraden House one day with my phoenixes used to be enough, but now Bale—with his smoldering eyes, rescuing ways, and spirited conversations—keeps pushing into my long-term dreams like someone knocking on the door who just won’t give up.
A knock sounds at the door right on the heels of that thought, and I twitch, my eyes flying open. Sol tweets a little snore.
I carefully extract myself from the tangle of birds on my bed, not wanting to wake her or Rim. Rim especially needs his sleep before the big flight tomorrow morning. Fyrestar watches me move across the room.
Quietly opening the door, I find Sybil on the other side, looking winded and holding out a wide silver neck cuff. It’s not a full circle and leaves an opening, the metal sturdy but thin enough to bend.
