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Plummeting.

There was no way out of this—not for me.

But out of the dark clouds, amidst the chaos, the screaming wind, blood, and fire—a jet-black Smoke Phoenix with his Rider underneath.

Torran.

The rogue white bird stopped fighting. For one impossible beat, its silver eyes locked on the dark phoenix.

Then Draga’s silver-tipped arrow struck the rogue directly through the throat.

The white phoenix crumpled in on itself, and again a Death Cry deafened me. The piercing sound echoed between the mountains and lifted the feathers of the other phoenixes. But this time it was so much closer, louder, more visceral.

It folded its wings. Snow swirled around white feathers as it fell through the darkness below. Then the sky lit up in a silver ball of blinding flames, and my whole body convulsed. I couldn’t breathe. My throat was raw from screaming, and none of it made any difference at all. She had still been killed. She was so very rare, and now she was gone.

I curled into a ball and stared out over the dark lands below. I had hated how the Riders had corrupted the birds with their bonding. But there were so few phoenixes left. How could these Riders kill the last of them?

37

Pain exploded beneath my skin as I came to. One eye opened, the other caked shut with blood, but the smell alone told me that I was back. The icy dust of the Barren Lands had always clogged every pore, and now that I had been out of its clutches, it was worse. I pushed myself up onto all fours. Every bone, every muscle throbbed and groaned, but luckily my hatred knew no bounds and would always keep me going.

Craven City, the crumbling mining town-made-city after all the others were destroyed, stretched out below me. A prison by location. Without a caravan or a warded horse carriage, there was no way out again but through the air. The blood of my people baked into the market square ground, which was known as Death’s Door.

The cage dropped at speed, and my stomach lurched as we aimed for the market square. I hit the ground with a juddering jolt and fell to my knees as the cage was dragged across uneven cobbles. Curling instinctively around my ribs as agony rolled through me. The drug still fogged my movements, and the cage bars blurred as I reached for them. Then I could see them again. Then they shunted out of my grip. My clarity came in uneven waves. Torchlight flashed through the bars as shadows moved around me. Voices echoed overhead, distorted and metallic.

“She awake?”

“Barely.”

“King wanted her breathing.”

A laugh followed. “As long as she can kneel on the stone, he’ll be happy.”

I forced myself onto shaking elbows and peered through the bars with my one good eye. Barren guards surrounded the cage, their bronze armour gleaming red beneath the braziers lining the courtyard walls. Above them towered the palace itself, all sharp sandstone arches and towering columns carved with phoenix wings spreading upward toward the night sky. Frayed banners hung from the towers, each weighed down by icicles and bearing the Barren crest.

Snow had settled on the roof and windowsills.

The cage had come to a stop in the centre of the walled market square. There were battlements around the top, with at least eight phoenix-killing ballistas and huge silver-tipped arrows pointed at the sky. One side backed onto the palace entrance to enable the King to walk out onto his balcony and address his people. Which he saved for killing days.

I had been here only a couple of times before—hidden in the crowds—when I watched my aunt and uncle be murdered. When three Annatalian women escaped, and the guards brought them back. Each memory came with the sharp stench of burned flesh and ash-clogged air. Since then, I had found important tasks to complete in the library when the call came to gather.

The sides were covered walkways with columns and archways, and above that were balconies for the nobles to keep above the common people. A guard stood next to each column, their focus trained on me. As if I were the danger to the people and not the ones in power.

I had heard stories of spies trying to get into the palace through the square, but the King was said to be bloodthirsty and loved to hunt anyone suspected of being on the palace grounds. On the right-hand side of the palace, near the wall, was the barracks. I had seen those rooms multiple times, under cover of darkness when I was sneaking in to steal documents from the head guard’s office. Finding out the movement of troops along the canyon and where the new rope bridges were positioned. The rebellion and, more recently, Thorn, needed that information, and it had been worth the risk.

The cage door swung open with a scream of rusted hinges. Rough hands seized my arms and dragged me forward, hard enough that my knees smashed against the stone.

I bit back the cry threatening to escape.

“Stand.”

The command came from somewhere above me, but my legs refused at first. The poison in my blood had turned them weak and heavy. A guard hauled me upright and snapped a metal collar around my neck, and blackness burst across my vision as the runes settled into place. My shoulder blazed, and then a chill stole down my spine.

When I had regained enough composure to raise my head, Barren nobles, miners, and lower-status people surrounded the square. Hundreds of curious eyes swept over every inch of my ruined body. Annatalian servants lingered beneath the archways, pretending not to look, while nobles crowded the upper balconies, wrapped in fur-lined cloaks against the winter’s night.

Skyworld sconces flickered on every arch and column, and fires burned in cages around the square in a bid to keep the YuleMots away. The ninth night of Yule celebrations had not started, and it was a symbol of the King’s power that so many would risk being out in the open. Music still drifted through the open windows above us as musicians tuned their instruments, the sound mingling grotesquely with the metallic taste on my lips and smoke in the air.

A movement overhead caught my attention—from a phoenix’s tower at the edge of the palace. Blaze—deep, blood-red. Fire—orange. Flame—bright red and orange. Air—all the colours of the sky. Ignite—all the colours of the birds. And separated at one end was Smoke, crouched highest of all upon the western tower, its silver eyes fixed entirely on the courtyard below. It was black as the darkest night, and there was only one Smoke Phoenix that had ever chosen a Rider.