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  Chapter 1

  I emerged out into the day and had to squint hard against the brightness of the sunlight. After five whole days underground, even the dimming light of evening was enough to make me screw my eyes shut and hiss.

  “Mercedes,” Zoie said from behind me as she, Shay, and Horus walked out of the cave. Her black cat ears flattened against her skull, and she pressed her hands to her face.

  I wasn’t surprised she was more affected by the light. She could see excellently in the dark, and it had been invaluable in our time underground. Right now, though, her night vision was more of a curse than a blessing.

  “I missed daylight!” Horus cried out, and even though he also screwed his eyes shut against the brightness, he threw out his arms and gave a deep sigh. “I missed fresh air! I missed not having stone over my head!”

  “I have to admit, I prefer being above ground, too,” Shay said with a soft laugh, and when she stretched out her arms, her wings followed suit. She had an impressive wingspan, and the shiny feathers shimmered under the evening sun and turned even richer shades of red, orange, and gold.

  Not for the first time, I felt speechless when I looked at her. I’d always thought she was nothing short of amazing, but these past few days, I’d struggled to keep my jaw from dropping whenever I saw her. Since healing the Heart of Aventoll, which was in the deepest cavern of the you-wouldn’t-know-it-from-looking-at-it-but-it’s-a-seriously-fucking-massive cave we’d just walked out of, the phoenix-woman looked more radiant than ever.

  Some of it was because the Heart of Aventoll had been healed, and since she was connected to it, she’d felt the sickness plaguing the Heart. Some of it was due to the fact we’d successfully carried out a mission to permanently cleanse Aventoll of demons. But a lot of it was due to the fact that, for the first time since she’d been a teenager, on the cusp of becoming a young woman, Shay felt whole again.

  She’d had her wings and her chances at a decent husband stolen from her by a botched operation and a cruel, jealous father. For years, she’d suffered, living as an afterthought to the person who was meant to love and care for her: her first husband, Bala Ren. Even after I’d arrived in Aventoll, and Zoie and I had welcomed the phoenix-woman into our family, Shay worried we would reject her because she wasn’t able to have children. We’d proven to her over and over that it didn’t matter, so long as we had her, and even though Shay eventually realized we were telling the truth, I could see how much it hurt her that the choice to become a mother one day had been taken from her.

  And now, Mercedes had given it back.

  Supposedly, Natavian women who were born with wings needed to have those wings removed in a Culling Ceremony if they wanted to have kids, but after several months in Aventoll, I was beginning to suspect this was more propaganda spouted by the Asher Council as part of their plan to keep the population reliant on Duelists. The sky warriors of Nata were once one of very few groups that had been able to effectively fight against the demons without having Asher powers, and I thought it was strange those women needed to choose between cutting off two of their limbs or becoming mothers.

  “I think Aventoll prefers having you above ground, too,” I said with a smile, and when Shay finally blinked her eyes open, she stared at her how brightly her wings were shining.

  It was almost like she soaked up light and reflected it back at everyone. But seeing as she was the Incarnate, and now a fully-realized one at that, I wouldn’t have been surprised if that was the case.

  “Do you want to fly?” Zoie then suggested, and her blue eyes sparkled with a childlike mixture of mischief and excitement. “Did you ever fly when you were a child?”

  “No,” Shay admitted, and she frowned a little, though it was more thoughtful than sad. “A Natavian woman’s wings only become large enough to support flight around the same age they would ordinarily be Culled-- sixteen, maybe eighteen. And my father believed… well, a lot of Natavians believe… it’s bad luck.”

  “It’s thought if a woman flies before her wings are Culled, they’ll be difficult to remove, and the operation might go wrong,” Horus explained with a forlorn look over at his sister.

  I could see he was also stunned and delighted at the sight of the phoenix-woman’s wings, and I could only imagine how much pain it alleviated from him, too. He’d been forced to watch his ‘father’ take advantage of his sister, and then he’d been exiled and sent so far away that he hadn’t been able to do anything to protect her. Not to mention the cruelty Horus had himself suffered at Archus Doler’s hands.

  Not for the first time, I wished Doler could come back from the dead, just so I could kill him all over again. For what he’d done to Shay, for what he’d done to Horus, and for what he’d done to Sha-Kane.

  Yet again, the truth stuck in my throat like a lump, and I had to swallow hard before I could speak properly.

  “You don’t have to worry about that now,” I told Shay, and I stepped forward to take her face in my hands. “You don’t have to choose between being your true, whole self and becoming a mother. Not you, and maybe not any winged Nata woman ever again.”

  “I’d like that,” the phoenix-woman answered with a tearful smile. “I… I know some women would happily choose to give up their wings to become mothers, and others wouldn’t want children even if it didn’t mean losing their ability to fly, but… oh, Mercedes, it sounds so childish, but all the time I was growing up, I wondered why we couldn’t have both.”

  “It’s not childish,” Zoie said firmly, and she took one of Shay’s hands in her own and threaded their fingers together. “You’re not childish for wanting to have it all. I always wanted to be a Varthan warrior when I was a kit, and I am. But I also wanted to be a mother and have a family, and I’ll have that, too.”

  “Mercedes,” Shay breathed, and she grinned at Zoie and me. “I never dared dream of such things.”

  I loved standing this close to her, for a lot of reasons, but most recently it was because I could see the new ring of gold around her pupils. They were a sharp and beautiful contrast to her emerald-green eyes, and they made me just as speechless as her gorgeous wings.

  “You don’t need to dream of them anymore.” I smiled at them fondly. “They’re true.”

  “Aventoll is changing,” Horus agreed, and he rested a hand on his sister’s shoulder. “Thanks to Alex, and thanks to you, Shaylee. You just purged the world of demons-- forever.”

  “I can feel it,” Shay sighed. “I can feel the shift in the air, the land. It feels… healthier.”

  “I think I can feel it, too,” I said.

  Something about the light felt brighter, the air felt purer. Or maybe it was just because I’d been underground for several days. I hadn’t been as on edge as Horus, but I certainly hadn’t enjoyed being so far away from the sun and the sky.

  “I wonder if any of the others can,” Zoie said and cocked her head thoughtfully. “Amaya and Anwaar are quite attuned to the nature of Aventoll. And Nova.”

  “We can ask them when we get back to the Manta,” I suggested with a grin. I was looking forward to reuniting with the rest of my family.

  Zoie smiled at that and reached out her other hand to take mine and squeeze it fondly.

  “We’ve still several hours to go, though,” Horus warned us, and he was right. When we’d first come to the Isle of Hearts, it had taken almost a full day just for us to get from the coast to the cave entrance. “It’ll be nightfall by the time we arrive.”

  “I’d happily take a nighttime stroll through a forest after several days down in a stuffy cave,” I said with a laugh.

  I thought of the memories I’d been shown by the old temple’s peculiar guardian, a woman who looked human and been made of memories, a woman who’d given her life to save mine. She’d shown me flashbacks of the temple at its peak, and of the Priestesses who had lived there and stayed underground for months at a time.

  It must have taken a special kind of devotion to Mercedes to serve in one of those old temples, even if they’d been huge and grand and beautiful. Certainly, I doubted that devotion could be found in the upper levels of the Order, given everything we’d learned about it-- and the Council of Ashers-- in the past few weeks.

  “Me, too,” Horus said firmly.

  I suspected he was eager to have a few hours outside, with no roof over his head. Even if he couldn’t fly like Shay now could, he was still part bird.

  “I want to try it,” Shay suddenly declared, and she looked over at me with an excited glint in her eyes. “I want to fly. I want to know what that feels like.”

  I grinned and let my hand slip from hers, but I kept a tight hold on Zoie’s. She, Horus, and I all watched as the phoenix-woman slowly spread her magnificent wings, and in the last golden rays of the sun, they shone in such rich shades of red and orange that it was as if they were made of fire.

  “Mercedes…” I heard Horus breathe quietly as he stared at his sister, and I knew even if Shay had wings when they’d been children, they hadn’t been as incredible as these. br />
  Tentatively, Shay began to beat her wings. The feathers shimmered and rippled in the sunlight, which only made them look more flamelike, and after a few heart-stopping moments of anticipation, her feet slowly started to lift off the ground.

  “You’re doing it!” Zoie cried out, in that sort of hushed way when someone was excited but didn’t want to be too loud and ruin the moment. “Shay, love, you’re flying!”

  “I… I am…” the phoenix-woman murmured as she stared at the couple feet of distance between her shoes and the soft earth of the forest clearing. “I’m flying!”

  She got more confident then, and she soared upward sharply until she was just a red-and-gold speck in the twilight sky. She swerved left and right in graceful arcs through the air, and even from down on the ground, we could hear her jubilant whooping. It was like watching her sing or dance. It was more than just beautiful to look at, it was so acutely an expression of her inner self, of her feelings. It was as intimate as a kiss.

  When Shay finally touched back on the ground, her eyes were wide and shining with sheer elation, and she jumped forward to hug Zoie and me around the neck.

  “That was incredible!” she said to us both, and when she relaxed her grip, we both pressed kisses over her cheeks until she began to giggle.

  “It was,” I agreed. “You’re incredible.”

  “I never thought I’d see anything like that in my life,” Horus agreed with a smile. He seemed a little dazed, like he still couldn’t quite believe it.

  I had to wonder what it was like to be the brother of a near-goddess.

  Though I supposed it would feel kind of similar to being the husband of a near-goddess. We both loved Shay, and we were both fiercely protective of her, as well as kind of awed by the fact she simply existed.

  “Come on,” I said to Shay, and I took her hand again with a grin. “I can’t wait to see the looks on the other’s faces when they see you have wings.”

  And, sure enough, when we arrived at the Manta several hours later, well into the night, there was a round of stunned and delighted cries. I suspected some of it was due to the fact we had returned safely, but most of it was definitely because Shay’s wings really were that beautiful.

  “By Mercedes!” Amaya nearly shrieked when we stepped into the hallway, and she rushed to hug Shay so quickly the phoenix-woman was nearly knocked flat. “Your wings! What happened?”

  Bodin, Vel-Rala, Jenner, and Anwaar followed shortly behind her, and the entrance hall came alive with excited chatter.

  “Shay healed the Heart of Aventoll,” I said proudly.

  Amaya was so stunned she stopped hugging Shay so she could stare at me incredulously, and then a bright grin overtook her features before she tackle-hugged me, too.

  “It’s good to see you too, Maya. Were you worried?” I caught one hand under her chin to tilt up her face so I could kiss her deeply.

  “Maybe a little,” the oryx-woman admitted with a sheepish chuckle, and I noticed she was slightly flushed red from our kiss as she let go of me so she could hug Zoie.

  At the same time, Rylan burst into the room and gave a whoop.

  “Dad!” he cried out, and he raced across the hall and ran into me with as much force as Amaya had collided with Shay. “You’re back! I missed you so much, you-- Mercedes!”

  He’d finally noticed Shay’s wings, and it was fair to say my adoptive son gaped for a full ten seconds before he remembered to pick his jaw up off the floor and hug Shay as tightly as he’d hugged me. He’d had yet another growth spurt, and he could now look Shay in the eye. If he had another, he’d be my height-- or even taller.

  “You look beautiful,” Rylan told Shay earnestly.

  “They are pretty, aren’t they?” the phoenix-woman replied with a smile.

  “No,” Rylan said and then frowned. “Wait, no. I mean-- yes, they are, they’re very beautiful. But I was talking about you. You look happier. More like… you.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” I said to Rylan with a grin, and I laid my arm across Shay’s shoulders. “And we missed you, too, buddy.”

  “We missed all of you,” Zoie agreed heartily as she kissed Amaya right between her eyebrows, where her third eye would be, though I wasn’t entirely sure if Aventollian augurs believed in that sort of thing. As the cat-woman then rubbed her nose over Amaya’s in a butterfly kiss, she added, “And we have so much to tell you!”

  “It was… an adventure, to be sure,” Horus said with a laugh. He had his hands around Anwaar’s waist and was resting his head on the ibex-woman’s shoulder. He looked more contented than I’d seen him in days. “But right now, I’m looking forward to a long rest and a large meal.”

  “I’m sure we can whip something up for our triumphant heroes,” Bodin chuckled. He was holding tightly on to one of Vel-Rala’s hands, and I suspected he had no plans to let go, not until we knew exactly how to stop her from being inducted into the Order as their Prophetess.

  Our plan so far had been to stall for time until we could find the buried Archives on Eng and determine once and for all, firstly, if Vel-Rala really was the Prophetess, and secondly, why the Order wanted the Prophetess so badly. I suspected they wanted to limit her contact with the outside world, so they could more easily control her, and so no one would know if they pretended the Order’s words were actually the Prophetess’. They had an agenda to maintain, after all, and a Prophetess who was able to speak freely and truthfully, instead of saying what the Order needed her to say, would be a serious complication.

  It hit me then, as I watched Bodin and Vel-Rala, newlyweds and expecting parents, that healing the Heart of Aventoll might have strengthened the Order’s supposed ‘claim’ to the Prophetess. The cockatoo-woman managed to escape the Order’s clutches for a time because she was pregnant with the only heir of an Asher: Bodin Hana. But if Ashers were no longer necessary, because demons were no longer a threat to Aventoll, then the Order might use that as an excuse to take Vel-Rala sooner rather than later.

  Not that it mattered, because we were never going to hand her over. Her, or anyone else the Order thought the Prophetess was.

  “I would kill for some hot food, actually,” I admitted with a sheepish laugh, and I rubbed at the back of my neck as my other hand snaked around Amaya’s waist. She giggled as Zoie and Shay made appreciative noises at the mention of hot food. “Something that can’t be packed into a ration box.”

  “No worries,” the raccoon-man said with a smile, and he headed off to the kitchens, still with his hand in Vel-Rala’s.

  “Other than the lack of variety in your food, how did it all go?” Jenner then asked. He had his ever-present notepad in his hand and the tip of the pen pressed to the paper, and he was clearly ready to take meticulous notes.

  Next to him, Rylan had taken his own notepad out from somewhere, and I was pleased to see the koala-man had such a dedicated protégé.

  “Well, I guess,” I said with a shrug. “We succeeded in healing the Heart, which was our main objective. Everything other than that is just… window dressing.”

  “But what was it like?” Jenner pressed. “The chamber of the Heart? Were there any historical artifacts? Anything about the history of Aventoll? Anything that could tell us about how Aventoll functioned before the Council and the Order were formed? Or after?”

  “We didn’t find anything to help us find the Archives on Eng,” I told the koala-man, because it was obvious this was his primary concern. “But that doesn’t mean we’re giving up.”

  “And that’s not to say we didn’t find anything historical,” Horus said with a knowing grin. “First thing tomorrow, I’ll get into details, but for now-- have you ever seen a perfectly preserved temple dedicated to the Old Ways?”

  I hadn’t thought Jenner’s already-large koala eyes could get any larger, but clearly, I’d been wrong. He stared at Horus even more intently than he’d stared at Shay, and she now had the most beautiful pair of wings I’d ever seen.

  “A… perfectly preserved temple?” Anwaar asked in a hushed voice, and she gaped at her husband. “Horus, my love, you have to show me.”

  “Me, too!” Amaya cried out, and she looked between Horus and me. “You saw an Old Temple? The Order’s always been so tight-lipped about the Old Ways. No matter how often I asked to investigate those records, I was always denied. They said the records were too rare and limited for someone, even though I was meant to be the next Prophetess.”