Hera tilted her heads.
“I can’t go with you into the battle. You’ll need to trust me. When it’s over, you can come home with me, or, if you’d rather, you can return to the sea. Would you like that? To go home, to the sea?”
She tore up a clump of dandelions and chewed them lazily.
“It’s going to be loud and frightening. I will come for you when it’s over. If you have to throw the man off your back, then you do that. But you need to be calm.”
Evander sat up and leaned against Hera’s chest, felt her breathing. In the tumult of the past five years, she had been his one constant. How could he let her go to battle? His lovely little pet, his companion, who he knew better than he knew himself.
An untamed phoenix soared over the stars, its orange feathers glowing like sparks—beautiful in its wild innocence.
How many phoenixes had been defiled by this war? How many youths burned, dragons dashed to pieces, lovers left to bleed out on the roots of a dragon willow?
He watched the clouds wheeling over the moon and then, between the clouds and the ground, he saw the silhouette of a great, dark bird.
Raska again.
She circled him and landed in the grass, eyeing Hera nervously.
“If I see you at the battle tomorrow,” he said, “I will mount your head in the sitting room in my house someday.”
Raska was silent.
“You are not to come near me, no matter what happens. You are not to return me to my mother.”
Raska shook her head and lifted her wing to show a patch of raw skin on her shoulder where the feathers had fallen out. They were odd—golden at the roots, white at the shaft. He stared at them, his brow furrowed. He’d never noticed before, but the black in her feathers wasn’t natural. It was tar-like, a grime.
“You haven’t much time left, have you?”
Raska chuffed.
Did he feel sorry for the miserable creature? She’d haunted his steps for weeks now, threatening him, frightening him. But she was trapped, the same as he. So, perhaps, he couldn’t fault her for wanting to buy a few more weeks of life.
“I’m sorry, Raska. I can’t go with you.”
She shook her head and met his eyes, urgent. Tentatively, she reached out her beak and nipped his wrist.
“What?”
She nipped it again, harder this time. He pulled his hand away.
“I don’t understand.”
Raska dropped her head, and her shoulders drooped. Then she flapped her mangy wings and melded into the inky sky.
Chapter fifty-three
Evander
Evander faced the Dread Five crew. They looked like nervous children on their first day of school, with their red dragon scale vests flashing out of their jackets. If he’d thought it would help, Evander would have spun on his heel, marched down to the commander’s office, and demanded that he send them home to their mothers. But there was no saving them now.
Evander wasn’t one for speeches, but they were waiting.
“The reason we are flying in first isn’t because we are being punished,” he said, trying to force his quiet voice to carry. “It is because the Scathmore Barrens belong to you. You are reclaiming it so your mother can plant a garden in this soil, so your father can build fences for his dragons, and so your little brothers and sisters can play among the wildflowers. When spring comes, and spring will come, the Sunbird will return. The Botania will restore the waste. You can all go home.”
The crew nodded, their eyes brighter.
“Mount up,” Evander ordered. “This will be easy.”
