Shapeshifters Read Free

fields was dangerous, as was visiting anyone outside the heavily defended Hawk’s Keep, but how could I rule my people if I refused to leave the safety of my home? I could not know them if I never faced the world they lived in, and that included the spattered blood of the fields.
    For now, I held my tongue. This was not the time to argue.
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    M Y MOTHER LEFT before I did. When she shifted form and spread her wings, a black cloud seemed to rise from the cliffs above us, half a dozen ravens and crows guarding her even here.
    I hung back a bit, hesitating on the black rock and repeating over and over the words No time for tears. I knew there would be no energy left for living if I grieved too deeply for each loss, but each funeral was harder to turn from than the last.
    Eventually, I forced the creeping sorrow back, until I knew I could stay composed when I faced my people, with no trace of anxiety on my face or grief or anger in my eyes.
    As I lingered, a single crow detached from the rock above me. He circled once before returning to his post, assured that I was still here, standing strong.
    There was nothing left to do.
    As I shifted my tired human form into one with powerful wings and golden-brown feathers, I let out a shriek. Fury, pain, fear; they dissolved into the sky as I pushed myself beyond them with every smack of my wings against the air.
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    I T WAS LATE when I returned to the Hawk’s Keep, the tower that housed what was left of my family, the highest-ranking soldiers and the most prominent artisans, merchants and speakers of the avian court.
    With my mother’s command, the seven floors of the Keep had changed from my safe home to my prison. Instead of being a refuge from the blood and pain, the walls were suddenly a trap keeping me from reality.
    With Andreios standing near in case of trouble that never occurred inside, I lingered on the first floor, fifteen feet above the ground-level courtyards and training grounds. I watched the last of the merchants pack up their belongings, some grateful to have rooms in the higher levels of the Keep, but most wary of the world they would be returning to when they left here.
    Market lasted from dawn to dusk. Merchants and storytellers would gather on this floor, along with common people, and during the day the Tuuli Thea and her heirs—her only heir, now—would go among them and listen for complaints. The artisans had nearly been strangled out of avian society by the war, but my mother had started encouraging the ones who remained to show their wares. The avian market was famous for its craftsmanship, and losing those arts completely would have been tragic.
    Along with crafts, custom weapons and other fine luxuries, stories and gossip could be found at the market. This was where merchants, farmers and anyone else who did not fight heard all the details.
    I had seen enough serpiente soldiers fallen beside our own over the years, and now, with the image of Gregory Cobriana branded into my mind, I was reminded once again that they were just as mortal as my own kind. However, fearmakes all enemies more dangerous, and the stories told in the marketplace on this night were as sickening as ever.
    Parents lamented their dead children. One young man broke down in tears, a display of emotion quite unseemly in avian society, as he recalled his father’s death. Gossip traveled like a river: how the serpiente fought like the demons that legends said they had taken their power from, how their eyes could kill you if you looked into them long enough, how …
    I tried to stop listening.
    My people greeted me with polite words, just as they had the day before. Another hawk child was dead, along with a dozen of the Royal Flight, a score of Ravens—another flight, just below my personal guards in rank—and eighteen common soldiers who had joined the fray when they saw their prince fall. So many dead, and nothing had changed.
    â€œMilady?”
    I turned