“Your tama!” I exclaimed.
She grinned, brushing them with her fingers. “I hear you’re due for a new design yourself.”
“You mean late for a new design,” Kiva remarked, arms folded. “We’ve been up here for twenty minutes! It’s cold!”
“It’s going to be way colder in Korovi, you know,” I replied with a roll of my eyes. A few weeks ago, Kiva’s mother had stopped answering her letters. When the third one didn’t receive a response, she’d decided to seek her mother in Korovi herself. She left tomorrow.
Auma leaned into Kiva. “Kiva’s temper will keep her warm,” she said.
Kiva wrapped an arm around her. “I thought that’s what I had you for.”
A faint blush rose in Auma’s cheeks, and Elko let out a bark of laughter.
“I thought you were late?” Ericen asked, his tone close to disapproving. Punctuality was yet another thing he and Kiva agreed on. They’d started keeping track, making a game of it. Whichever one agreed with the other had to buy them a drink.
“I’m going, I’m going!” I waved to Res, who nipped at Zara’s wing teasingly, then leapt into the sky before the other crow could retaliate. She took off after him, the two quickly turning to shadows in the sky.
The others followed me inside where the upper levels of the castle were slowly being restored. They walked me to a room at the far end of the hall where a quiet murmur of voices trickled out.
Elko clapped me on the shoulder. “Good luck, crow queen. It’ll only hurt a lot.”
I glowered at her, earning a snicker from Kiva.
Ericen stepped between us, filling my vision with only him. “You’ll be fine.”
“Come with me?” I asked him.
His eyes brightened, and I slipped my hand into his, tugging him toward the open door. I slammed it in Kiva’s laughing face.
Inside, Estrel waited with Lady Kerova. A long table with a thin sheet sat before the house leader, a chair and small table beside it, laden with needles and ink. I shivered, and Ericen squeezed my hand.
“You know it’s against tradition for anyone but the abdicating Corvé and the inker to be present for this,” Estrel grumbled. She sat on a small couch, a cup of tea in a saucer resting in her lap. It was a special blend Caylus had sent me from Trendell.
“Then we shouldn’t be too surprised that Thia is dispensing with it,” Lady Kerova said in her serene tone.
Estrel rolled her eyes. “Whatever. You, turn around.” She gestured for Ericen to face the wall. Only she would speak to the king of Illucia like that.
I chose not to tell her it wouldn’t be the first time Ericen had seen me undressed.
Ericen obeyed with a smirk. I removed my flying leathers and the shirt I wore underneath before lying facedown on the bed. As Lady Kerova sat down beside the small table, a second chair slid up beside me. I heard the shifting of the needles, the slosh of ink, and then Ericen’s hand slid back into my own.
I closed my eyes and held on.
* * *
Several hours later, the Corvé tattoo was done.
I felt the wings stretching down my back, every inch of skin sensitive and raw. Before I dressed, Gavilan’s sun crow healed the worst of it, progressing the tattoo to several days old and enabling me to slide my shirt back on with ease once he and his crow had left. No sooner had I than I was hiking it back up, trying to see the gold and black lines that now covered my back in the full-length mirror on the wall.
Something clicked into place inside me at the sight of it. I let my shirt drop, feeling tears threaten.
I’d made it.
Through fire and blood and war, I’d made it.
I’d become the next royal Corvé.
When I faced the room again, Estrel stepped up before me, enveloping me in a tea-scented hug. It was so different from the leather and crow scent of her I was used to. Different, but still her.
