As we passed Nazeeran Lake, which bordered one side of the encampment, a trio of riders and a line of warriors came to meet us. When I recognized Ama astride Nafalla in the middle, relief hit me so hard I nearly cried. To see her conscious and riding removed the heavy cloak of fear I’d worn since I last saw her. She didn’t look completely recovered—she was still far too pale, and her shoulders slumped like she didn’t have the strength to holdherself fully upright—but she wasn’t almost lifeless like the last time I had seen her. Queen Jazela and her royal consort, Prince Malik, rode with her. He smiled warmly at me when he caught my eye. The prince and Queen Jazela had been together since I was a baby. This was in contrast to my mother, who had always said she had many suitors before I was born, but there had never been any that I could remember. It wasn’t unusual amongst our people not to have a life partner, but lately, I had wondered more and more about the man who sired me.
As Ama rode beside Queen Jazela, the family resemblance was easy to see. Their large dark eyes were framed by long black eyelashes and thick but well-arched eyebrows. Fairly prominent yet elegantly defined noses led to full, bow-shaped lips. And though Ama and I were slightly lighter, we all shared the same golden-toned skin and thick black hair.
Ama immediately dismounted from Nafalla and came to my side as I did the same from Shazeera. She pulled me in for a tight embrace, and I noted with dismay how much weaker her arms felt around me as I breathed in the familiar scent of sage and cloves.
“Thank the Earth Mother for bringing you to me safely.” She pressed a kiss to my forehead.
“Are you feeling stronger?” I asked her, taking in her too-pale skin and slightly hunched shoulders. “When did you regain consciousness?”
“Not until the second morning,” she admitted, and I frowned. I had never seen my mother lose consciousness before, much less for that long. “Poor Nafalla and the others traveled through the night to keep from disturbing me. It’s how we managed to arrive before you, even with everyone forced to go so slowly. But I’m regaining my strength,” she said with a little squeeze to my handwhen she saw my distraught expression. “Just slower than I would like.”
That was the part that concerned me. What if she never fully recovered her strength this time? As that disturbing thought rattled around in my mind, Ama turned to include General Isa in the conversation. “Anything to report?” Ama asked her.
“One Eagle Rider attack, my queen.”
Ama’s eyes widened, and she stiffened as her gaze jumped from me to General Isa as Queen Jazela sucked in her breath in horror. “You were attacked?”
I opened my mouth to lie that I hadn’t been attacked, but General Isa answered for me.
“We sent the First Daughter to safety under cover of trees while we engaged the enemy,” General Isa said. “Thankfully we were still close enough to the forests of the foothills to have her run for cover.”
Ama looked suddenly much paler. “Thank you all for keeping her safe.” She linked her arm through mine, leaning into me a bit.
“What about all of you?” I asked, turning to look more closely at the line of warriors to see if any of them came from our camp. With relief, I recognized Naomi and Kai. “Did everyone get here safely?”
“Yes, you must have drawn the attention of the eagle scouts,” Ama said with a frown.
But as horrible and terrifying as the attack from the Eagle Riders had been, I only felt overwhelming gratitude. If they had gone after Ama and the others instead, I knew she wouldn’t have survived.
Don’t even think about it,Shazeera said with a shudder.
The sound of a rider approaching drew our attention. When I saw who it was, a huge smile stretched across my face.
“Am I too late for the reunion?” Mariyah, Queen Jazela’s daughter and my favorite cousin, asked, grinning as she rode over to me on her chestnut mare, Citrine, and dismounted.
“I’m sure we’ll be around so long you’ll get sick of us,” I said with a laugh.
She hugged me tightly. “I wouldn’t complain if you stayed forever. We hardly ever get to see each other.”
It had already been an entire year since the last time I saw Mariyah. As a rule, the queens tried not to spend much time in the same place. Having two of the queens picked off would be disastrous. Mariyah was already a better heir than I was, having inherited her mother’s power of summoning powerful earthquakes. It was to our everlasting regret that our enemy could fly. The infantry was susceptible to it, of course. Queen Jazela had won many battles by asking the earth to swallow whole battalions of soldiers. But the Eagle Riders were formidable. They put Queen Jazela at risk the moment she set foot on the battlefield.
“The pavilion is ready if you’d like to rest,” Ama said.
Suddenly, the weight of everything—the terror of being attacked, fleeing from our home, and worst of all, losing contact with Shazeera—settled on me like iron chains. I still felt drained from the encounter with the Eagle Rider, and I wondered if summoning the wind had also taken a toll on my body in the same way my mother’s magic drained her. Beside me, Shazeera drooped with exhaustion, too. “I could use a little sleep.”
“Rest up, then,” Mariyah said with a sympathetic look, “and we’ll catch up later.”
Ama sensed my change in mood like she always did and kindly led Shazeera and me to where our pavilion had been erected on the banks of the enormous lake that provided the horses with fresh water. To the west, I could just make out thecraggy mouth of the Nazeeran Canyon, where it was surrounded on both sides by countless tents and pavilions. We walked through lush grass with horses grazing peacefully. I couldn’t see it from here, but I knew the green landscape ended abruptly in scrubland and rocky soil that led to the Great Twin Plateaus and Little Mesa. The grass surrounding the canyon was lush for our horses thanks to Queen Samira in the south, who had used her earth magic to create this oasis for our people.
As I entered the cool, dim interior, my shoulders relaxed…until I caught sight of the map of Equnox. Sucking in a breath, I moved closer to it.
“The battlegrounds have spread this far south?” I asked, trepidation making my hands shake as I pointed to the red flags spread across our land.
With the Zephyrian territories marked, it was easy to see how much of our continent had been swallowed by their empire. They ruled over the Angora Mountains and Ridgeline Foothills to the east, the Black Forest to the north, and the coastal port city of Rhythos in the northeast. With the Modavian Sea to the east, our territory had shrunk to the grasslands in the middle and southern parts of the continent. To protect our people, we kept the battlegrounds to the north near the Black Forest, hundreds of miles from our encampments. But this map showed we were losing ground.
Soon, they would threaten Queen Jazela’s canyon city, where the majority of our people took refuge.
Ama leveled her gaze at me, and there was so much in that look. She was the Queen of All Queens of a people on the brink of extinction. If we didn’t all die in battle, then we would be assimilated by the Zephyrian Empire, losing our ability to live a nomadic life, to follow our horses across the Equnox Plains. “Yes,” she said. “We don’t have much longer.”
