Claws struck at the cobblestones outside, loud and sharp and intermixed with wingbeats; someone was running, gliding.

Kinénía’s eyes came all the way open, the dream she had nearly fallen into crumbling to dust before her. Her own talons were at once in motion as she rose from her rest, flaring out her tail behind her to balance her ascent. She could hear the claws still, clattering closer to her door, she thought, and with such an urgency to them. Had the Taiyharrens come to collect for their armies? Her heart trembled as she imagined Cinyrítas and all the others of his age, barely older than hatchlings, following the soldiers back to Bright Crescent, where only new-forged spears and iron-hard cots would welcome them. With equal parts relief and horror, she remembered that Cinyrítas was in fact not there at all, he hadn’t returned; might the soldiers take Kinénía, if he was not present? Would he come home to no one and nothing? For a moment she thought her heart might pound its way out of her chest altogether, splattering uselessly upon the ground as her lifeless body followed suit; she wondered absently if death would be preferable to what the war had to offer.

But instead she took a deep breath, allowing the air to lazily come through her nostrils and out again. Surely, she thought to herself, as reasonably as she could manage, it cannot be the soldiers. Why would they run? Perhaps there had been an attack, then? Had the joint efforts of Antumbrai and Khoralín truly been so fruitful that they could have pushed here, so many dozens of villages north of the Falls?

The doorknob turned as the door to which it was attached swung open, revealing the face of her son, bathed in the light of the moons above.

“Cinyrítas!” shouted Kinénía, and she darted toward the door, enfolding him in her wings as her heart beat like lightning, louder than the drums of Rézavaz against her son’s scales.

“Marétía,” he said, nearly whispered; his voice was as breathless as Kinénía’s own. How long has he been running?

“Amíatílo, Songs and stars, where have you been?” she asked after a moment. “All night with no word, no—”

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

“North,” he said, interrupting her and swallowing, as if to suck more air into his lungs. “I’ve been North; I am so sorry, I could not get free.”

“Free? Free of what?” An inkling of what had occurred began to jab at the back of Kinénía’s thoughts, pushing needles in and out of the surface of her mind, but she shoved it down, surely it couldn’t be as bad as she was—

“There were soldiers,” said Cinyrítas, and Kinénía’s heart nearly stopped. “I heard… I was on the banks with the reeds, and I… there was something I… I heard, and I…”

“My son,” said Kinénía. “Collect your thoughts. You are safe.”

“No,” he said swiftly. “I wish I were, but I am not, and until I am gone neither are you. You must listen to me—it is difficult to describe; to make heard, I cannot… there was music that I heard, on my path this morning. Not any music of wings, but…” At this he paused, and said nothing more, casting his eyes to the ground.

“A Song?” Kinénía finished, and Cinyrítas nodded.

“I… it must have been,” he said. “I cannot think of what else I heard… it was like all the world at once, everything I knew, everyone… wrapped up in Her.”

“Lumina?” asked Kinénía, and Cinyrítas curled and uncurled his talons, seeming indecisive, as he stepped out of her arms, wrapping his own wings around his body.

“I… I thought so,” he answered, “but… no, no; it doesn’t matter which it was, Marétía, they found me like that, do you understand? Soldiers from the Crescent, they found me on the riverbank and thought I was Resonant—they—they wanted me to—”

He put his claws over his face and let out a shaky sob, his breathing ragged, its pace increasing with each breath.

“Amíatílo,” Kinénía began. “I am so sorry… they…”

“So I have to go,” said Cinyrítas. “If they found out you had been hiding me, they…”

Neither of them spoke for a moment, leaving the inevitable consequence unspoken, as far from their mouths as they could keep it.

“Alone?” asked Kinénía, her tone harsher than she’d meant it. But it was all she could do to keep the same tears filling her son’s eyes from her own. Cinyrítas only nodded, his gaze filled with sorrow.

“Where will you go?” Kinénía asked him.

“I do not know,” he answered. “I will hide, I expect. At least… until the war is over, I suppose… and then I will… I… I do not know.” He shook his head again. “I do not know,” he repeated. A long moment passed, and he kept his mouth half-open, as though he sought to speak again but could find no such words to do so. “Will… will you come with me?”

“Always, my amíatílo,” said Kinénía, “until arra.”