Daughter of the Tempest

Chapter 1

Nyssa

When someone vanishes in the Aviary, you don’t ask questions. You keep your head down, your mouth shut, and pretend they never existed. It’s just one of the many prices we pay as members of the Sorrows’s secret order—one of the countless rules we are bound to follow.

But this time, it’s Aella that’s missing, and they’ll have to pry her memory from my cold, dead hands.

Maybe I’m overreacting. Gods know I’ve been accused of dramatics before. But she’s late.

Two hours late.

I’ve already imagined six different ways she could have been captured—at least one involving a canal and her tragically crooked sense of direction when she’s brooding.

My hand tightens around the rectangular pendant I found on my desk when I arrived back at my room earlier this evening, the sharp corners digging into my flesh. I recognized it instantly as one from Aella’s collection, even before I saw the note beneath it.

If I’m not back soon, use these years of my life to live your own.

There was no signature, but I didn’t need one to know it was from Aella. Nor did I need to be clever to grasp her intent. When I flipped the pendant over, my breath snagged at the unmistakable markings etched into the back of the bronze.

A goiteía charm.

The charm itself isn’t rare; plenty use goiteía marks to harness the soul magic gifted to our kind by the gods, willing to trade seasons of their lives to imbue objects with power. But the realization that Aella had carved the marks herself was alarming—she’s always despised this kind of magic.

I toss the pendant on the desk, and it clatters down beside the note and the candle that has melted down to a flickering bud. A weary breath slips free as I sink onto the edge of my bed and attempt to corral my racing thoughts.

The door groans open.

My heart hammers in my throat, and I reach for the dagger beneath my pillow. The panic ebbs as a familiar figure steps into the candle’s waning glow.

Shadows shift in the hollows of Myna’s face, and my stomach knots as sharp thorns of unease prickle beneath my skin. There’s a raw scrape on her cheekbone, dark mottled bruises blooming along the edge of her jaw, and her right arm is cradled in a sling.

“Myna?” My grip eases from the dagger as the sight of her sends a jolt of shock through me. “What happened?”

“Xan took her.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head, trying to clear the fog clouding my thoughts and make sense of those three simple words. “You’re wrong. She saved him. Why would he—”

“Sparrow.” Her eyes soften with a look I can only describe as pity, and my knees threaten to give out. “A Songbird saw it happen. And the Eagle knows.”

I’m on my feet so quickly the bedframe screeches and the room seems to tilt.

If the leader of the Aviary himself, Lord Amon Malis—the Eagle—knows of Aella’s betrayal already, she’ll hardly stand a chance. She left to help Xan escape only a few hours ago. And the Eagle’s reach is everywhere. His Songbirds, spies tucked beneath every eave, whisper songs and secrets into his ear, and his punishments are delivered on swift, night-drenched wings. I’ve witnessed the consequences of defiance. I’ve heard the screams lingering long after the bodies disappear.

My throat tightens. “So what’s the plan? Wait here until he drags me to the dungeons?” As Aella’s closest confidante, I’ll be under equal suspicion now.

“You run.” Myna’s jaw is set with determination. There’s a slight tremble in her hands, but unlike me, she’s moving forward. She’s thinking. Scheming. “If you leave now, you have a chance.”

Her words only cause my thoughts to scatter further, colliding and splintering in every direction. One name emerges through the chaos, and I latch on to the clarity it brings.

Lucaz.

“I have to find my brother.” For so long, we were all each other had, until we arrived at the Aviary and met other orphaned children like us—until I found Aella. Lucaz has always been my South Star, steady when the sky won’t stop turning. If anyone can help me figure out what to do next, it’s him. And if I’m going to make it through this, I need him to know the truth—about Aella, about everything. “He needs to know what’s happened.”

A grimace twists Myna’s face. “Alpha Flight is gone.”

I blink, uncomprehending. Only days have passed since we returned to the Sorrows with Alpha Flight, the Aviary’s elite team of spies and assassins we’d joined to infiltrate Eretria. If they sent them out once more . . . if they sent them out without me . . . are they hunting Aella?

She must see the questions written plainly on my face, because she shakes her head. “I’ll explain later. Right now, we need to move.”

Guilt coils around my chest and tightens. “I should’ve gone with her,” I whisper, the words strangling me as they leave my throat.

“It’s too late for that, but you can still survive.”

The word strikes a primal chord inside me. Survive. I cling to it, letting the raw instinct sharpen my focus. I refuse to let this be my end. I will fight for my next breath, and I will fight to make sure Aella gets out of this too.

I take a shaky breath, forcing the panic down, straightening my spine.

All right, Nyssa, time to stop spiraling and start scheming.

My gaze darts around my room. Myna is right. I can’t stay here. The Aviary is a cage, and if I don’t move now, I’ll be caught before I even have a chance.

In three quick strides, I cross the room, kneeling to strap on my sandals before retrieving the pack tucked beneath my bed. I’ve already checked it three times this evening. Aella and I had planned to make an escape if our rescue attempt took a turn for the worst. But this pack has been long prepared even before this, like a promise that if the day ever came when the Aviary turned its sights on me, I wouldn’t go down without a fight. That I’d be ready.

Still, my hands move on instinct to check the contents. A change of clothes, a small knife, a set of lockpicks, a pouch of drachma, and a waterskin. It’s enough to get me started.

The weight of the pack settles on my shoulders as I straighten. I snatch up the dagger from my bed and find a thigh harness and two gravers for carving goiteía from the nightstand at its side, adding them to the pack as well.

I glance at the desk, at the flickering candle and the note and charm Aella left behind. I pocket the latter, then hold the note over the candle’s flame. Part of me wants to keep it, to hold on to her words. But neither of us can afford to carry further evidence of what we’ve done.

The fire catches, and even as her words burn to ash, they echo through my mind.

Use these years of my life to live your own.

There’s no time for anger. No time for grief. If I let myself feel it now, it’ll drown me.

I take another breath, deeper this time, and let it out slowly as I focus on what needs to be done. First, get out of the Aviary. Second, find a place to hide. Third . . . when things settle down, find her.

“If your escape plan involves sewers,” I say dryly as I turn toward Myna, “I’m throwing you in first.”

The ghost of a smile hovers on her lips before she jerks her chin toward the door. “Not this time.”