Shapeshifters Read Free Page B

father.”
    I was too young to understand death, but I understood that my friend was upset and so I had to find him.
    I stood to sneak out before my mother returned. I had known Rei all eight years of my life, since he was three years old and I was newly born. He would listen to me more than anyone else. The falcon tried to stop me from leaving, but he had no authority over me and I refused to listen to reason.
    My first breath of death hit me as I flew over the field. Yes, I knew of the war, but I had never seen the carnage up close, smelled the blood before … and in the middle of it all, my friend Rei, hunched protectively over his father’s body, crying.
    I landed at his side.
    I hardly had a chance to speak before the serpent appeared. Rei pushed me behind him; they scuffled, and I saw the fangs slice into my friend’s skin. Someone else attacked me from behind, butwhen I fought back, I was struggling with something as harmless as a wool blanket.
    I realized suddenly that I was dreaming a scene I relived in my mind almost every night. I had been knocked out; Rei had saved my life. His brush with death had changed him, forcing him to grow up faster. After that day he had made a point of training. He had joined the avian army when he was thirteen and the Royal Flight when he was fifteen, and he had been the captain of that group for three years now.
    Despite knowing I was asleep, I could not wake. Lucid dreams had been a curse of mine for years.
    I walked the battlegrounds in my mind, through the woods and fields that I had been drawn to ever since Rei’s father died. Pain, bloodshed, war. They had stained me that day.
    I walked from the dream of Andreios to one of my alistair, the man who had been promised as my protector when we were both barely more than infants. Vasili had frightened me a little when I was a girl; he had seemed so cold and strong. The blood I saw in my dreams, he saw every day as a soldier. Yet I learned to understand him, and then I learned to love him—just in time to lose him, like I had lost so many others.
    I pushed the phantom away and found myself face to face with the garnet eyes of ZaneCobriana, the creature whose kind was responsible for every loss we suffered, every tear I held inside. My breath halted in my lungs; my blood turned to ice. I felt my throat constrict as I tried to scream—
    â€œDanica, are you all right?”
    I opened my eyes to find Rei searching the room for whatever had frightened me. His thick black hair had been hastily pulled back from his face as if he had been roused from sleep. He was not supposed to be on duty until this afternoon, but I was grateful he had been the one to hear me shout.
    â€œYes,” I said, but the trembling in my voice belied my answer.
    â€œDream?” he asked. Rei was the only one to whom I confided my nightmares.
    I nodded, sitting up. Morning was here, and if Rei was, too, then there was something important to be done.
    Rei cleared his throat. “Your mother wants you to meet her downstairs, as soon as you are ready.”
    He left me to change, which I did quickly. My mother did not summon me for meaningless trifles.
    I stepped outside my room to find the Hawk’s Keep swarming with avian soldiers. In addition to Andreios, there were five otherguards next to my door alone. Out on the field, I understood this kind of caution. Inside the Keep, it was unheard of.
    â€œMy mother isn’t hurt?” I asked with alarm, my mind latching on to the worst possible reason for this concern.
    â€œShe’s safe,” Rei answered, though he didn’t sound as if he was completely certain. “The rest of the flight is with her.”
    Of course. “Then why the sudden jump in security?” And, before he could answer, “And who in the world is guarding the outside?”
    â€œThere are about two dozen soldiers ringing the courtyard, and another few dozen in the surrounding land,”