Chapter 69
Ciana twirled the golden feather between her fingers, watching how it refracted the soft light of her room.
Mariah had given them three of Cielle’s feathers before they’d left Kreah. They’d burned the first the night they’d read that world-altering passage in a journal thousands of years old. They’d raced out of the archives, Eliza the archivist blinking in surprise but not stopping them to ask why they were leaving.
It had been nearly three full days since Ciana had tossed that feather in the fire. How long did it take to work? How fast could an Attlehon eagle fly?
Regardless, she was a tightly wound bundle of nervous energy, and this time there was nothing Sebastian could do to help.
They’d had their moment of peace, an incredible escape from the horrors of the past year. Ciana regretted none of it; her only regret was that it had taken her so long to find the courage to put the trauma of her past behind her.
But Sebastian finding what he had in that old journal had been a wake-up call. A rude slap back into reality, their perfect bubble popping with the turn of an ancient page.
It felt like some sort of cruel universal joke. Or perhaps a blessing, depending on how one looked at it. After all this time?—
Wing beats fluttered outside her window. Too large to be one of the small tree finches that roosted in the palace.
Ciana leaped to her feet as Cielle alighted on the awning of her open window, feathers rustling.
“It worked,” Sebastian said breathlessly, standing from where he’d lounged in a chair.
Ciana nodded. The golden eagle’s shrewd eyes were a bit too piercing for her comfort. Cielle cocked her head, trilling softly.
“Yes,” Ciana said. “We have something for Mariah.”
The eagle trilled again and fluttered her wings, as if pleased.
“Here.” Sebastian pushed the tightly rolled scroll into Ciana’s palm.
“You’re sure you can’t just tell Mariah down the bond?” Ciana didn’t turn from the eagle watching them from the window. She was elated to hear that her friend had her magic back—plus something extra. She only hoped it hadn’t cost Mariah anything in return.
Sebastian shook his head. “She closed it. Even if I tried, she’d have to be the one to open it first.” He sighed, still clearly frustrated. “I just wish we knew what was going on in Leuxrith. I don’t like the idea of her being alone.”
“She’s not alone—not completely. She has Callamus and Signe and Matheo.”
“You know what I mean, Cee.”
Right. Ciana swallowed. Andrian wasn’t her favorite person, but the idea of him still being with Kol and the Royals, after all this time, clenched a vice around her heart. The look on his face when he’d knelt before her, swearing to protect their queen with his dying breath, flashed through her mind.
He may be an asshole, but he was a part of their family. They needed him.Mariahneeded him. Ciana hoped that once she got this message, she would be able to get him out.
She moved slowly to avoid startling the great eagle, eyeing Cielle’s sickle-shaped talons curved around the wood, the deadly hook of her beak.
“Please,” Ciana whispered, “don’t attack me. We’re friends, right?”
Cielle clicked her beak, and Ciana swore the bird rolled her eyes.
Reassuring.
Ciana fed a length of soft leather string through the sealed scroll, then with delicate movements, tied it to Cielle’s pale gold legs. The small feathers there were surprisingly soft, like ripped silk.
When she was done, Cielle clucked, using her beak to fit the scroll into her taloned foot. She looked back at Ciana, trilling softly and cocking her head.
“It’s for Mariah,” Ciana said. “She needs to see it, as soon as possible. No one else.”
She felt like a fool for talking to a bird. But when Cielle blinked and bowed her head, she got the distinct feeling that this eagle was no ordinary beast.
Mariah had told her as much, but it was another thing to see it.
