Written for fightfair at lj for the fe-exchange holiday exchange. :D

It wasn't swampland, though it stank like a swamp. The shallow darkwater pools that stretched before Naesala weren't filled with bogwater, just remnants from yesterday's freezing-rain, and the shoots that poked thin from the muddy earth were more like overgrown weeds than true marsh-grass.

It wasn't swamp, wasn't plains—and the only things that hinted what the land once had been were the rare, scant trees, each standing alone, and each of them either drooping as if sick or twisted as though hurricane-battered. Around their trunks, where there should've been piles of brown fallen leaves, there was just mud and gnarled roots. None of them had borne green this past summer.

"I don't think you and Leanne sang your galdrar loud enough when you were fixing up your forest," Naesala had snarked once to Reyson, "this edge just looks pitiful." It had been a joke, of course, just a joke, but Reyson replied with a glare so sharp that he shut his mouth at once. Hadn't been that funny, anyway.

In the forest's heart, those same kinds of trees grew straight and sturdy. Even now, with winter fast approaching, the sight of them was a comfort: the trees of Serenes seemed to grow more neatly, more orderly, than trees did elsewhere, and the air seemed warmer around them. There, it was as if there'd never been a massacre, as if there had never been a fire, as if it had simply been forgotten. But out here, on the forest's tattered edges, the land remembered.

For the third time in the past half-hour, Naesala slipped and stepped in a patch that was more rainwater than soil; he grit his teeth as the freezing water seeped into his boot and gave his wings a crooked flap to regain his balance. Just ahead of him, Rafiel was slowing his pace, a faint frown flickering over his face.

"What?" Naesala asked, his tone more cross than he'd intended, sidling up to the heron. "Did you lose him?"

"I think…" Rafiel tilted his head, like a quail searching for the source of a sudden noise. Then he nodded decisively to his right: "There. He's moving east."

Hawks in Serenes. It just felt wrong.

Earlier that morning, Naesala had been lingering in forest's heart while the hawks were arriving: descending from the sky in great screeching droves, jostling and joking and shoving about, laughing too loudly, trampling down the earth wherever they walked.

Felt wrong. Not that Naesala was any great mediator of order, not the way the herons were. Hell, even he felt wrong in Serenes—whenever he came here, he felt like his steps were out-of-sync with some deep rhythm he couldn't hear, felt like each ruffling of his wings was an affront to the herons' delicate sensibilities. That was just how it was, how it had always been. But he still couldn't help but feel like the incoming flocks of hawks were wrong in a deeper, more unsettling way. It wasn't their land.

What exactly he was even doing here himself was a mystery to him—the ravens wouldn't be arriving en masse for another day or two, and besides, he wasn't their king anymore. Settling them in was someone else's problem. He'd told Reyson as much—but Reyson had snipped at him, told him he needed to be around to help see the bird tribes through this nation-building, if he was going to bother with this diplomat business at all and do something decent for a change.

But after a couple hours he'd grown tired of the hawks' collective squawking and the dark glares they kept sending him—he knew he deserved them, he knew they weren't going to try anything right under the herons' beaks, but he still didn't see any reason to just sit there like a lame duck while they glowered. So Naesala slipped away—winged his way towards the edge of the forest and flew until he couldn't hear the herons or the hawks anymore.

He found himself a branch to settle on and sighed. The trees here were thinner, the shade less full—but it was quiet, at least. He stretched his wings, turned—and was surprised to find Rafiel already there, lingering just a few branches away.

A long time ago, Naesala might've been startled, seeing him appear so suddenly—but by now he knew Rafiel had a knack for that sort of thing. Instead, he offered a crooked grin: "What're you doing out here? The screeching meatheads got to you too?"

Rafiel's silence was as good as his assent.

Naesala's eyebrows shot up. "Really, now? Better keep that from Reyson; you know how he gets on about his dear Tibarn."

Rafiel fumbled to explain: "It's not—I like Tibarn, I do. But..."

"Spare me the monologue," Naesala said, waving a hand and leaning back against the trunk of the tree he was perched on. "No use fretting now. Let's just take advantage of the merciful quiet here and rest a bit, yes?"

That they'd both wound up on the northern edge of the forest today was no mistake. The other end of the forest—the southern edge—that was where Rafiel had been lost before, and Naesala had never felt comfortable there since.

When word of the disappearance had reached Kilvas, over twenty years before, Naesala had flown to Serenes to investigate himself. The herons were good people, wise people, but they had no practice in matters like this—if anyone knew about uncovering treachery, it would be him.

Naesala still remembered the shape of the trees there, remembered where the trail had ended—he could've flown there by memory this very second, if he'd had to. Right in the gulf between two gnarled oak trees, he'd found one of Rafiel's sandals, caught in a tangle of roots, and the heron's footprints stopped a few paces after that. There was a clump of feathers caught in the bough of a tree, a spatter of blood. Then nothing.

When Tibarn found out, he exploded. Typical. Tried to pin the disappearance on him, an accusation that Naesala had railed against. He'd wound up in a shouting match with the hawk king, wound up shifting raven, and they'd nearly come to blows with each other—Tibarn bristling with outrage, and Naesala with indignation. (Ironic, really, considering what he would be getting up to later, during the Mad King's War. But he'd been a different bird before that.)

While Tibarn was blustering and issuing useless threats to Begnion, Naesala quietly began pruning through his network. There wasn't much that separated the art thieves and the speculators from the slavers, when it came down to it, and he had plenty of connections to the former. The trick was making them talk; most humans didn't feel comfortable sharing their secrets with laguz at all, much less the raven clan. But he knew his confederates had their ways—more than once, beorc fingers were placed before him in offering, alongside scraps of information.

When word finally did make its way back to him, it wasn't pleasant: Rafiel had been taken. Taken by a pair of slavers who'd died in a bar-brawl two weeks after the deed, and no one else seemed to know who the heron'd been sold to—must've been a tiny, private auction. But Rafiel had been sold—sold, then gone missing. Last time anyone had heard word or seen feather of him had been over two months before.

Gone. Just like that.

That night Naesala had held a vigil on his own, crouched before a candle in a high, windowless room in Castle Kilvas. He'd meant to stay up all night—that was how you were supposed to honor the passing of the dead, he knew—but at some point he found the whole thing too damn annoying—the silence, the darkness, the injustice, all of it. He'd been clenching his jaw for the better part of an hour when he finally reached out for the flame and clasped it in his fist, killing it. He'd left, then, and spent the rest of the night raven-shaped and flitting unsteadily around the palace grounds.

The next day it was almost as if nothing had changed—almost. He was grinning, sneering, meeting with dignitaries, trading gold, running the kingdom like usual. But he wore black now, and there was a slight singe on his palm from where he'd put the candle out.

"Naesala. I hear someone."

Naesala had just been on the verge of a nice midday nap when Rafiel decided to pipe up. What a bother. Sighing, Naesala opened his eyes and tipped his ears toward the trees: "Sure you're not hearing things?"

"No, it's not a sound, it's another mind—it's—it's another heron, I think." Rafiel was wringing his hands as he spoke. "He's out there."

"Out there?" Naesala tilted his head toward the marshy wasteland behind him—that chunk of forest that had never quite come back, after the massacre. "He must not have very good taste."

Rafiel didn't reply. Naesala had thought that was the end of their chat, and was closing his eyes to doze again when he heard a few twigs snapping behind him—he twisted around and saw Rafiel walking toward the marsh. "Wait, what are you doing?"

"We should go find him." Demure and straightforward as ever.

Naesala clucked his tongue in annoyance. Who knew what all took refuge in a place like that—probably bandits, or slavers, or any other of a half-dozen things he didn't care to bother with right now. "You're sure it's a heron? There hasn't been any word of others for decades, Rafiel..."

Rafiel just kept walking.

"Fine," Naesala sighed, "but this better not take long; Tibarn'll really wring my neck, this time, if he thinks something's happened to you."

Naesala had only ever been a fringe member of the royalty, holding onto a scrappy little lineage and a few challenge-battle victories that had somehow earned him a princely title. That title, minor and meaningless though it was, earned him something of a following: he had attendants, gold, connections inside and outside Kilvas, and a penchant for securing black market businesses. He used that authority and wealth freely, indiscreetly—mainly for his gambling habit, and also doling out favors for his confederates, amassing trinkets, and the like. He'd expected to whittle his youth away that way, a carefree living with which he was perfectly content—

—that was, until the plague came.

Ten days into the plague, a handful of major noblemen had died, and an unsettling chill had fallen over the palace. By the fiftieth day, the royal Kilvans (what remained of them, anyway) were all-but-hysterical—if a raven wasn't grieving, then he was jumping at every sneeze and cough around him, or boarding himself up in some obscure room, or shouting wild accusations in the halls, blaming the King, the Goddess, the gamblers and degenerates, anyone for the disaster befalling them now.

Old King Kilvas announced that there would be a royal retinue leaving for Serenes on the morrow, asking some sort of aid or assistance of the herons. The herons were closer to the earth than them, after all, closer to old magics—they could manage it, if anyone could. It wasn't until the king called upon Naesala to be one of the leaders of that retinue that Naesala realized how much had changed: with the queen dead, with the crown prince dying, and with half the strongest nobles dead as well, it just so happened that he was a handful of ill-timed deaths from claiming the throne himself.

Too close for comfort.

So Naesala had headed toward Serenes. The contingent he was helping to drag along was a mostly useless lot; fat or aging crows who seemed to be living off little more than titles and stories of past deeds. At least they didn't lag too far behind; the whole of them seemed to think if they fled Kilvas fast enough, they'd be able to escape the plague. But when one of them fell ill five nights into the journey, that hope died quickly; the unfortunate fellow was dead by morning.

When they arrived in Serenes the next day, the whole royal family stood there to greet them—evidently, the news of Kilvas's troubles had preceded them. Kilvas's Prince Raza took the honor of a private audience with King Lorazieh (an honor Naesala was only too glad to decline), and the rest of them were ushered to where they'd be staying—a set of strange, earthy little buildings that seemed to blend in with the trees—nothing like the stern stone palace of Kilvas, but comfortable enough.

Naesala, however, winged himself away from the group soon after. The herons were almost smothering in their hospitality, coddling them with food, drink, an evening's entertainment of performance-dance and song—maybe it suited the other ravens, who seemed to revel in the sudden luxury, but not him. It made him claustrophobic more than anything. So he slipped away and flew until he found the forest's northern edge, settling in a high tree and sighing. Alone.

When he turned around and saw one of those herons not ten feet away from him, he nearly jumped out of his feathers. He managed to keep himself from yelping, though—and after a moment he recognized the stranger as Lozarieh's son. Serenes's only royal brat, so far—and he'd been among those who had greeted the group upon their arrival. Rafiel, wasn't it?

The heron prince just stood there, staring back. Like Naesala had thought before—unnerving, the whole lot of them. Creepy. And too quiet. "What?" he sniped at last.

"You're troubled."

For a second Naesala stiffened; he recalled the rumor he'd heard that herons could read minds. How had Rafiel known that? But then Naesala cracked a wry grin—it couldn't have been a hard guess: "Ravens dropping dead left and right with some illness no one knows a name or cure for, kingdom's shot straight to hell, and we've come begging to your lot for help—sure, I'm troubled."

Rafiel frowned. "That's not it. You think you know what's causing this."

Naesala scowled as a vague shiver ran through him. That didn't seem like just a clever guess. And Naesala didn't think he knew, he did know. In a fashion, at least. Naesala was no scholar, and he had no idea how the mechanics of it worked—this string of illnesses baffled even the most magicwise ravens of Kilvas—but he knew a thing or two about people, and Old King Kilvas was acting too damn edgy, these days. Naesala had looked down the card-table at folks like him before; shifty side-eyers who couldn't bluff to save their lives and placed their bets too high. Naesala wondered sometimes how that fellow had become king, nervous and brittle as the man was—not that Naesala ever minded much, before, but things were changing fast. Because the more the royals dropped dead around him, the closer he came to the throne, and—

Naesala cleared his throat and offered a crooked smile. "I've got suspicions. Everyone does."

"Don't be afraid," Rafiel said, his voice low and soothing. Naesala quirked an eyebrow at that; he was annoyed, sure, and pissed, but not afraid—

"If you come to rule them, you'll do well."

—or that.

The closer he came to the throne, the closer he came to having a whole damn country riding his back—a weight he didn't want, not in the least. How the hell was he even a consideration for succession? Of course he'd do it, if it came down to it—and the way that old king was acting, shakier and quieter with every passing day, it might be for the best—but it would be a pest, a bother, a burden. He didn't want to be responsible for that poor bloke who'd died with them a day before, didn't want to guard a whole nation, all those people—

"What," Naesala snapped, "are we playing prophet, now? And stop that mind-thing, whatever you're doing. It's rude."

"I-I'm sorry," the heron prince stammered. "I just thought you might want to know."

And just like that, the heron was shrinking backward, pulling his wings against his back. What kind of royal was that—quailing at a few snippy words from a guest, not even bothering to press his advantage or talk back? Such deference was rare in Kilvas, rare most anywhere—this heron prince sure didn't seem like anyone Naesala had ever stared down a card table at before.

Interesting.

"So what all is there to do around here?" he asked, stretching his arms above him. "Can't all be berry-picking and kumbahyah-singing, am I right?"

Naesala and Rafiel kept walking through the bog clear through the afternoon. Somehow Rafiel seemed to walk so much more smoothly through the swampy mess than him; he strode with the sureness of a priest walking an aisle to an altar, whereas Naesala was just lucky he hadn't sunk into the mud yet.

Once—only once—Rafiel stopped. He stopped right where he was walking and his whole body seized up—he shut his eyes, like he did sometimes when he was reading a particularly gnarled string of thoughts, and after a moment he brought a clenched fist up to his chest, as though bracing himself.

When Rafiel opened his eyes again, Naesala asked: "What was that?"

"Nothing." Rafiel shook his head. "Let's keep going."

Naesala had been telling lies so long that sometimes he couldn't tell himself whether he was being truthful or not while he was talking. But Rafiel wasn't half as practiced; the lie was written all over the lines of his face, as if the mere utterance were painful to him.

Naesala considered calling him on it. Decided against it. Shrugged. "I just hope we're getting close," he said loudly as Rafiel picked up the pace again. "My boots are ruined."

Once Naesala had gone to Sienne to meet with some Begnion dignitaries and wound up getting corralled into a talk from some stodgy academic. The academic was a pudgy man, with a fat, round face and a mole on his nose—he remembered that face clearly, even when all the rest of the louts had faded from his memory.

"It is generally acknowledged in contemporary Begnion legal theory," he'd begun, "that the laws of the land ought not be mere arbitrations formed from the machinations of the minds of judges and rulers, but that they ought to serve as reflections of the natural law, laws that follow from inherent rights of man."

Legal theory. What a snoozer. Beorc spent so much time quibbling about such trivialities; the only reason Naesala had bothered coming here was to butter up some potential clients, and he was fast regretting it.

The academic droned on: "It then follows that, by natural law, that at best only half the laws we make which apply to humans can also apply to subhumans—for subhumans, being half-animal, can only have half of those things that we regard as human. Only half the emotion, half the morality, half the conscience of us humans."

Naesala arched his eyebrow cooly. The rest of his face was perfectly still; though he was still just some minor prince, he knew better than to betray his thoughts recklessly. He dragged his eyes towards Bishop Bradley, the principal character responsible for bringing him here; Bradley's eyes were fixed firmly on the speaker.

Hmph. Rolling his eyes, Naesala snorted, kicked up his boots, propped them on the chair in front of him, and stretched his wings, paying no heed to the whispered protests and glares of the attendees sitting beside him. He couldn't sit there and be insulted, after all, if he didn't bother hearing the insults. After a few minutes he'd closed his eyes and was faking a rather impressive snore.

After the talk finished he received no apologies, even from Bradley, and he sought out none. He left without a word and made a mental note not to bother with the bishop again; the fellow didn't have that much gold, anyway.

But sometimes Naesala wondered. The talk had stuck strangely in his mind, surfacing in his memories when he least expected it—or least wanted it. Because maybe, maybe, he wondered if what that scholar said of laguz nature was true—true of himself, at least. Half-animal, half-human—maybe he had too much animal in him to feel, the ways others felt.

After all, even the youngest, most hot-blooded soldiers in Kilvas had balked when they'd reached the cusp of the Phoneician mainland during the war. They had balked, but he hadn't—and if Naesala hadn't been right there nipping at their tailfeathers maybe they wouldn't have done it, maybe they would have fled, maybe they never would've killed any hawks at all—but now that blood was theirs. And that blood was his.

Tibarn, he never could've done it—if their places had been reversed—never could have destroyed Kilvas, never could have betrayed his fellow laguz. He wondered what Tibarn might've done instead if he'd been the one bound by a piece of parchment and a mark on his arm. Try to rip the damn thing straight off, probably. Failing at that, lead some mad charge into the Begnion mainland against the senator. Break his own nation before he broke his precious honor, before he broke himself.

Naesala had watched them before—wild ravens. Not laguz-ravens, plain ravens, the kind that didn't grow taller than your knee, didn't shift, and spent their time pecking at scraps of bread in city streets. Clever little bastards. They'd throw stones in a vase to get to the water at the bottom, he'd been told; once he saw a whole flock of them harrying a man in the street who was holding a loaf of bread until the man, startled, dropped it, and a pair of the winged rats flew off with the spoils.

All intellect, all cunning. No heart.

As he and Rafiel walked deeper into the swamp, those same small ravens began to swirl overhead, caw cawing in the crisp evening air. The muck stank thickly around his feet as he kept pushing forward.

"He's here," Rafiel announced.

"Where?"

Rafiel gestured with a tilt of his head. Naesala turned and scowled—he couldn't see a damn thing. The sun was low, bleeding red near the horizon, its light obscured by distant rows of trees. With a crisp flap of his wings, Naesala shifted—his raven-eyes could see better, farther, more clearly, so long as there was still light to see by—which there wouldn't be, much longer, if they didn't hurry. He clacked his beak impatiently at Rafiel, and the heron kept walking.

In the reeds at the far edge of the field, Naesala could just make out the heron-shaped silhouette of the laguz Rafiel was talking about, wading in the water. But as they got closer, as he saw the heron more clearly, he felt a chill growing in his chest: the heron's eyes were black and blank, its motions stiff and graceless, like some wounded wild animal, not at all like a Serenes herons. It was pecking at something on the ground (Naesala couldn't see what), pecking a few times, walking away, then circling back, worrying over the same six inches of soil.

He recalled the eyes of Prince Rajaion in Daein, dark and feral and lost and mad.

"Rafiel," Naesala whispered, but Rafiel cut him off: "No, that's not what happened. He's just been alone a long while." Then, to the heron: "Zarieth. Zarieth, can you hear me?"

The heron—Zarieth—did not react, still pecking at the ground. They sloughed closer, closer, until they were within three wingbeats of the laguz. The heron noticed them then, and spooked—staggering back one, two, three lanky steps, darting its head every which way, standing tall and tense. He might've flown away altogether, except for his right wing—gimpy, jostling around at a strange angle with each flap.

Rafiel began to hum very softly. It took Naesala a moment to realize that Rafiel was humming a gladr—he'd only ever heard those unearthly melodies sung aloud. But it still had its effect: a soft glow enveloped the other heron, the characteristic glow of a laguz shifting, and the laguz began to change—pulled into human form by that melody. His wings became arms, hands, fingers, and the heron become a man—he fell forward as he shifted, face-first into the mud, and his arms sprawled before him.

The heron's—Zarieth's—robes were so tattered and mud-streaked and moldy that they looked more like filthy cobwebs. This close, Naesala noticed that a curious scent clung to the heron. Something rotten. He couldn't quite place it—ravens didn't have the noses of cats or wolves—but it made the feathers on his back ruffle uncomfortably.

After a pause, the heron wrenched his head from the mud and looked straight at Rafiel: "Royal. You are royal." The words were spoken like an accusation.

"Yes. I am Prince Rafiel of Serenes. Perhaps you remember me?"

"Yes," Zarieth hissed, "yes." Then he spat on the ground in front of Rafiel. "Useless, useless, all useless, useless useless royal Rafiel!"

Naesala edged toward Rafiel. He didn't like this fellow's tone.

"All gone, all gone," Zarieth went on. "Never again and scorchburned." The heron lowered its head and stalked closer. The way the heron moved was strange—more like Tibarn and Ulki, heavy and ungracious, and not all like how Rafiel and Leanne walked. More like a hunter.

Reflexively Naesala stepped closer to Rafiel and spread his wings high, arching them protectively around the prince. When he spread his wings like that he seemed large, large and fierce, almost as large as Tibarn.

The swamp-heron, however, seemed undeterred. Now that the he was talking he couldn't seem to stop, babbling in a voice that seemed too high and feminine for the sharp crowlike angles of his face: "Their flames will end us all, ended us all, flames like forge and forest, forest-ending. But they drove me here, they couldn't burn me here, I came here and they can't take me, can't!"

Naesala glanced sideways. Rafiel's eyes seemed just as pained as Zarieth's eyes seemed crazed, and Naesala wondered suddenly what it was like, to touch a mind like that.

"Your shape," Zarieth muttered, his eyes flashing lucid for a moment as he stared at Rafiel, "that shape, this shape, not safe. Humans come here, traders, slavers, take you—stay heron-shape instead, stay heron-shape live forever stay live stay."

Rafiel frowned. "How long were you in heron form, Zarieth, before we came here?"

"Many moon. Many moon-cycles, many as possible, this shape—human shape—not safe—not safe!" Suddenly his eyes fogged again and he began flailing his wings in consternation; a soft glow surrounded him. Rafiel started humming the galdr again—whatever galdr it was that had first pulled the heron into human form—and the swamp-laguz started shouting curses at Rafiel: "Your crooked magicks I resist, resist royal Rafiel, cursed kingly Rafiel—"

"You shouldn't stay in heron-shape for so long, Zarieth," Rafiel pleaded, "it makes you lose your grasp of things. Can't you feel it?"

Zarieth wasn't listening; he was shrieking, flailing, and convulsing like a thing possessed. Sighing, Rafiel relented; he stopped humming, and the laguz finished shifting quickly after that, turning back into heron-shape and arching his wings with a flourish.

Rafiel edged closer; Zarieth staggered back. They were close enough now that Naesala could see what it was that Zarieth had been pecking at and worrying over before, half-submerged in the bogwaters:

A carcass. Some carcass, carrion, smelling rank and drawing flies.

That same scent was the rotten stench that had been clinging to Zarieth. The carcass was days-dead, by the smell of it. There were feathers in it, too. Zarieth's? or the corpse's? The thing was too pecked away to be identifiable, too torn up to tell what it once had been. But herons didn't eat meat, right? They weren't scavengers, weren't—a chilling errant thought struck Naesala—the feathers in the carcass. That hadn't been a heron once, had it?

Had it?

Behind him Rafiel was still pleading: come back to Serenes, follow us, we're safe, we'll take care of you, don't be afraid, come back, come home.

In response, Zarieth made a sound as close to a snarl as Naesala had ever heard coming from a bird laguz and lunged.

Naesala, already raven-shaped, flung himself off the ground to meet the heron. The heron snapped his beak like an ill-bred dog, like a starved nestling. Naesala just wanted to calm the stupid beast down—he tried shoving the heron backwards, and though it stumbled back two wing-lengths and wobbled as it tried to stay afoot, it came at him again a half-second later. This time the heron's frantic snapping caught one of Naesala's wings. It wasn't a strong bite but he'd somehow gotten his beak around what felt like a major tendon; Naesala gave an involuntary croak of agony as he beat his wing. After a moment's struggle he worked his wing away from Zarieth's grasp; Zarieth spat feathers as they pulled apart. Fucking hell, that wing was going to ache in the morning.

Better to try and pin the thrashing thing, keep him from snapping towards Rafiel; Naesala grasped for Zarieth's chest and got a hold, shoving hard down toward the ground. He expected a struggle, but got none; the heron seemed to calm down soon as he was thrown into the mud.

When Naesala stepped back, though, the heron still wasn't moving.

Still, too still. A chill gripped Naesala. Herons are such delicate things. Hadn't Oliver been the one who always said that? Naesala still had trouble thinking of them that way, sometimes, the way Reyson talked—but other herons weren't Reyson; this heron wasn't Reyson.

The heron wasn't moving.

It wasn't moving and his head was sprawled to the side at a strange angle. Naesala began shifting human; as he did so, he reached for the heron and scooped him up in his shaking arms. Now he could get a better look at it—there was no blood, no wound. But Zarieth's long neck was marred; a pair of bones protruded strangely halfway down.

Snapped. Snapped, just like that. How had that happened? Heron-necks were so long, so flexible. Naesala had grabbed at the heron's chest, trying to find something to grab him by and pin him to the ground. But maybe he hadn't caught it right—maybe he'd grabbed the heron's neck by mistake, wrenched it around too quick, or the heron had pulled back too quick—

—and herons are such delicate things.

Bones must be brittle like damn toothpicks. Naesala could feel that now, holding the heron in his arms, running his fingers over the fine bones of his wings. All bird-bones were light, but hawk-bone and raven-bone was light and tough. These heron-bones just felt fragile, like the covering of a thin-shelled egg, easily snapped between two fingers. Maybe this heron moreso than others—how long had he been in heron-form for? Everyone knew it wasn't good to stay animal-shaped for too long; maybe that had made his bones weak, weak as it had made his mind.

Naesala turned to Rafiel. Abruptly, he realized he was probably leaking his thoughts like a goddamn faucet; quickly he closed his mind off, angled his back away from Rafiel, and dropped Zarieth back into the mud.

"I put the damn thing out of his misery, is what I did," he said, his back arched defensively, though Rafiel hadn't said anything. "I mean, not even your galdrar could fix that, right?"

Rafiel didn't answer. His eyes looked terribly dark, and his face, terribly pale. At last he walked over to the dead heron, knelt, and closed the bird's eyes, humming a soft hymn for the dead as he did so. Naesala clenched his jaw and looked away.

During that last battle in the Tower of Guidance, months ago now, Naesala had practically thrown himself at Ashera. Thrown himself recklessly; even when Tibarn was pulling back and showing caution (reckless Tibarn! imagine!), Naesala kept coming, ignoring the screaming ache in his left wing and the dozen gashes he'd suffered before this battle had even begun. After all, he'd already torn up that damn blood contract. Kilvas was free. And Tibarn was going to tear his throat out by dawn tomorrow, he was certain, if Ashera didn't get to it first—so may as well fight, go out having stood strong against the goddess.

The goddess's recoil against his slashes were hard and fast, and Ashera's magic stung worse than a hundred elwinds. As Naesala fell back against the ground, he slipped helplessly back into his human form, and his shoulders made a crunching sound as he felt both his wings snap; he couldn't help from shrieking. Just as quickly as he fell, he saw a white silhouette out of the corner of his good eye (the other was swollen with bruises)—but only when that silhouette got right in his face did he realize it was the heron. Rafiel.

If you come to rule them, you'll do well. Hadn't he been the one who said that once?

"Hey, Rafi," Naesala croaked. "How's that for doing well?"

Rafiel laughed hoarsely. He must've looked pretty awful, because behind Rafiel, Nailah was hovering, wolf-shaped, watching him with a wince and a worried frown, her ears pinned against her head and her tail low.

"We must bring you to Laura," Rafiel said. Nailah stepped forward, grabbed him by the side, and flung him onto her back in one smooth motion. Before he could protest, she was already barreling ahead, and the last thing he saw before the darkness swallowed him was edge of Rafiel's wing as the heron rushed to keep up.

"We're being forced to change, aren't we?"

It was the first thing Rafiel had said since they'd left Zarieth behind, dead where he lay; they were nearly to Serenes now. Naesala wouldn't have bothered responding with more than a grunt, but it was the sort of silence that demanded a response—Rafiel had a knack for those, he'd noticed. So after a long pause Naesala asked: "Who?"

"Reyson. Zarieth. Everyone."

"Reyson's always been a spitfire," Naesala said slowly. "And I think that fellow back there was a bit of an exception."

"I've known Reyson longer than you." Rafiel's voice was stiffer than usual. "I was away a long while. I could tell how everyone had changed when I came back."

Silence again. What was Naesala supposed to say to that? Of course things had changed; what was he supposed to do about it? One of the first things he'd learned as king was that the only way to beat change was to become it. Moving targets were harder to hit and all that. Hell, he'd probably known that since he first hatched.

"I'm going back to Hatari," Rafiel announced.

"Really?" Naesala grinned. "Not that I blame you; that wolf queen was quite the—"

"You're the first one I've told."

The way Rafiel cut him off, the way he said that—like it mattered, like it was important that he spoke to him first, like he was expecting something in Naesala's response—that struck Naesala silent; he forgot the joke he'd been about to make about Rafiel bedding the wolf queen.

It struck him, just then, how very much Nailah was like Tibarn. Both of them strong. Strong, aggressive, loud, bearing the weight of their nations as easily as most bore the weight of a robe. And their nations raised them up, too.

Just a couple decades ago Serenes had been a nation like that. A whole nation, and now they were a handful of scattered survivors, leaving for other kingdoms, merging with others, clinging to whatever they could around them. It was the way forward, the only clear way forward. Naesala knew that.

But...

"I'm sorry," Naesala said abruptly.

"For what?"

"That back there. With Zarieth. It was an accident—I hadn't meant..."

He was sorry for that, yes. And for not finding Rafiel, when he'd first gotten taken. For not being able to bring him back. For not having been there when it happened in the first place. And for Phoenicis, for the thousands he left dead there, and for the dozens of other crimes he'd committed and couldn't take back, plenty which he didn't even have the pact as an excuse for, just his own short-sightedness and ambition, because when it came right down to it he just didn't—

"I know."

Rafiel's soft voice jarred him from his thoughts. Naesala shook his wings, cleared his throat, stood straighter. "Right, then." He squinted ahead of him; the last bits of twilight were fading fast. "It's dark. We should get back soon. Let me carry you."

Rafiel nodded. Naesala shifted then—shifted slowly, letting himself feel the stretch as his wings grew, closing his eyes and losing himself in the warm glow of the transformation. In the distant forest, he could hear the low tones of the evensong-galdrar—Reyson, Leanne, and even the husky voice of old Lorazieh. Rafiel heard it too; he began humming along as Naesala finished shifting.

Naesala waited until the tune was finished before he gave a low caw, letting Rafiel know he was ready to leave. It rang hollow and husky in the night air, especially after the lovely heron-song, but Rafiel smiled just the same.