"Hai, listen to me! Imagine a world where a mixed-blood falcon like you isn't automatically branded a dangerous traitor. Imagine being able to study your magic, take your wings, and dance  -  "

I tore away from her, aware that my garnet eyes were flashing with rare temper. "I had that," I said. "And it wasn't something my mother gave to me. My Empress raised me, when the woman you praise was otherwise occupied. When my first sakkri made me scream until I lost my voice for days, Cjarsa bent her own laws and let me grow my wings and dance so I could focus my magic on the present and perhaps not see such horrors again. What did that leniency get us? I lost control, lost my wings and endangered the woman who had raised me, all because my quemak arrogance convinced me that I could be more than my cobra father's mistake."

"You are  -  "

"And now here I sit," I continued, "in a room full of criminals, listening to treason. So tell me, Maya, how was Cjarsa incorrect?"

Bitterly, Maya said, "You speak very highly of your

Empress, yet you are the only one of us who is willingly here in Wyvern's Court. If you love the city so much, why don't you go back to it?"

"Give it a rest," Opal said, placing a hand on Maya's shoulder as I turned to leave.

"Sometimes the Empress is right.

People change.

Snakes don't."

I did not slam the door as I left. There was no need. We had had many arguments about this here  -  and we would have more.

It was true that I would be allowed to return to Ahnmik if I chose. Empress Cjarsa might send someone to carry me, since I did not have wings of my own anymore. Then I would once again be able to walk in a land where the walls glistened with magic and the roads sang a melody no voice could reproduce. I could live out the rest of my days in a land where even the prison of the mad  -  the Halls of shm

'Ecl, where I had spent many years  -  was so beautiful to behold, it could bring tears to a mortal's eyes.

So, too, could a cuckoo be raised by robins. I loved the white city, but in it, I would be that cuckoo, put into the nest by a mother more interested in using me as a political excuse than in nurturing me. If I returned, I would be Darien's pawn to use against my Empress, and that I could not stand.

Chapter 2

I was not the only citizen of Ahnmik who had chosen this exile. Nicias Silvermead was the acknowledged heir of Lady Araceli, who was heir to none other than the Empress herself. Yet the beautiful royal peregrine had chosen to stay in Wyvern's Court to serve the now abdicated wyvern princess, Oliza.

My loyalty to the Empress Cjarsa kept me from the white island, but my connection to Nicias kept me in Wyvern's Court  -  and indeed, in this reality. I had languished in my silent madness for years before Nicias found me hiding from the pain of a shattered body and ruined dreams. His vows to the Cobriana line and royal falcon blood helped him pull me from that void, and for that salvation, I both loved Nicias and hated him. Ahnmik's reluctant prince had given me the world... or as much of it as I could hold. Visions of Ahnmik, shards of Wyvern's Court, fragments of pasts and futures other than my own.

I still felt trapped within Ecl's numbing ice, able to watch others live but not quite able to feel that life  -  except sometimes when I beheld Nicias's love for this land and its people. His passion for Wyvern's Court drove me now from Gren's candle shop to the marketplace, to see what would happen next.

Before I had even descended the northern hills, I could hear shouting. I took another step forward, and suddenly the noise was replaced by absolute silence. I looked over the market that had just been filled with anxious, frightened and angry avians and serpents, and saw nothing but mist and the pale shimmer of falcon magic. I squeezed my eyes closed, trying to clear the vision from my mind before it could overwhelm me. This time I succeeded in chasing away the sakkri, and I was grateful for that. Too often I became lost in other times and places, especially when I walked through the center of Wyvern's Court. Anhamirak's magic swirled so thickly there among the avians and the serpiente, it frequently robbed me of any scraps of control I might have had.

The shouting returned, and I entered the market.

Salem Cobriana and Sive Shardae were at the heart of the chaos. Salem, Oliza's only full-blood serpiente cousin, had stepped down off a nearby dais and was talking intently with the serpents, who had all but mobbed him. Sive, Oliza's young avian aunt, was struggling to keep some space to herself, but it was a losing battle, one that was obviously making her alistair, Prentice, very nervous. Oliza's parents, Zane and Danica, the current Diente and Tuuli Thea, both looked pale and tired, but they were trying to deal with the shocked crowd.

Oliza herself did not seem to be present.

Nicias, however, was nearby. He was moving from group to group, sometimes speaking to other guards or breaking up fights, but most often trying to hold the crowd back so they wouldn't completely overwhelm the royal family. Though I would have liked to go to him, I knew better than to attempt to distract him while he was working. I could more easily have swallowed the sea.

Instead, I waylaid a serpiente I knew, a flautist named Salokin. "What is going on?" The red mamba quickly confirmed what the falcons had told me: "Oliza has announced her abdication." His voice was breathy and dazed, and his gaze was unfocused. "She stood on that dais and..." For the first time, he looked at me, as he said, "You weren't there. The Diente and the Tuuli Thea and Nacola Shardae and Salem and Sive and Prentice were all there."

"Apparently I don't merit an invitation to royal functions," I said without much shock. As Maya had said, my having cobra blood mattered to the serpiente. It did not, however, matter enough to make me family.

"But she abdicated.

She must have spoken to you about it."

"Why would she have?" I asked. I had meddled too much in this drama already, helping Oliza spin a sakkri of her own after mine had foretold her abandonment of the throne. I had not been able to see that second vision, but I imagined that it was what had led to Oliza's abdication.

Which one was it?

I wondered. I had seen many futures for Wyvern's Court, most of them ending with fire, as Anhamirak's magic burned out of control, or with ice, as the falcons wielded Ahnmik's power and tried to salvage what they could from the wreckage. Salokin's eyes widened. "Why would she... She abdicated."

"So you've said, a few times now."

"The serpiente Arami just stepped down from the throne," he said, as if rewording might make the facts different.

So did the avian heir to the Tuuli Thea,

I was about to say, before I realized what was troubling the mamba. "Salem will rule the serpiente well," I assured him.

"Salem is... very much a dancer." The words, though formed like a compliment, did not sound like one. "He was not raised to be king. He wasn't even in line to inherit. How could the Arami abdicate and not even inform the woman who, if not for falcon treachery, would have been heir in the first place?"

Falcon treachery. Is that how they're explaining my history these days

? My father had never even known I had been conceived. Even if Anjay Cobriana had not been killed within hours of his return to serpiente land, he would not have been informed of my existence. Had Nicias not spied me in the Halls of shm'Ecl, Wyvern's Court would have been ignorant still.

Some, I supposed, would consider that treachery. After all, according to serpent laws, I should have been my father's heir.

"I would have to be more than half cobra to be heir to the serpiente throne," I pointed out. "Certainly I would have to be less than half falcon, since most serpents still hate and fear my mother's kind."

"Oliza was only half cobra herself," Salokin said, "and she was beloved as Arami, despite the fact that we warred with the avians, her mother's people, much more recently than we did with the falcons."

I smiled slightly, somewhat amused. "Fine, perhaps it was... rude," I allowed, "but though Oliza and I are cousins, we aren't close. I imagine she had larger things on her mind than the guest list when she planned her abdication."

"Maybe."

My gaze drifted back toward the crowd, to where Salem had regained the dais. The cobra reached down to pull a lovely auburn-haired dancer up with him. At first, the dancer's face seemed to be streaked with tears. She was dressed in a gown of dark plum, the serpiente color of mourning, and her skin was pale and blotched from weeping.

Then the brief vision faded, and she was vibrant and beautiful once more.

"Rosalind," Salokin said when he saw what my attention had turned to. "I imagine she is the one Salem will name serpiente queen." He shook his head.

"He will be a fine king," I said. The words were mostly empty comfort; what did I know of kings? "It isn't as if he will be without guidance. The Diente and the Naga are both still alive."

"I suppose."

"Hai!" The anxious voice that cut through our conversation belonged to Sive. The hawk had somehow struggled away from the near mob around the dais and now came to my side, perhaps out of courtesy or perhaps to take advantage of the space that most serpents gave me, wary of the "black magic" falcons could wield. Sive would become the next avian queen, and though she was young still, she was too old to be called a child. Her alistair, Prentice, hovered beside her, as protective as a mother hen.

"Hai, how are you?" she asked me. She reached out and took my hand in greeting, betraying her frequent contact with the serpents.

For a moment I could not answer, because at Sive's touch I saw her, several years older, glowing with joy as she held her infant in her arms. The beloved queen presented her child to her people and said her name: Aleya. She handed the babe to her alistair, and as their hands touched, I could feel the love that stretched between them. In contrast to the earlier visions I had had, of Wyvern's Court after its destruction and of Rosalind's tears, this one was comforting.

"I... You will be a beautiful queen," I said, still half within the vision. "Aleya... the name means 'given to us.' "

Sive recoiled from me, breaking the trance.

"Th-thank you," she said, but I could see the fear in her eyes. I was glad she stopped me, because I knew what I would have said next: You are very much in love, but there is sorrow in your heart, too. You remember the man who was your alistair when you were a child. He often frustrated you, but you loved him despite his awkwardness.

Prentice... gone, to where?

Right then he came forward, guarding his pair bond from whatever threat he felt I projected.

I started to reach out for the rest of the vision and barely managed to resist. Sive could rule peacefully with or without this man. I did not need to know when or how they would separate.

I shook my head, backing away. "Excuse me," I said.

"Are you all right?" Salokin put a hand on my arm, and that was enough to trigger another vision of "Wyvern's Court, this time in flames.

I shuddered, pulling back mentally and physically, trying to fight the sakkri. There was too much going on in the market. In the language of Ahnmik, Oliza's abdication would be referred to as a sheni'le, a decision that drastically altered the path of Fate. I had foolishly come here to see the present for myself but was on the verge of being swamped by futures.

I turned abruptly, not bothering to beg leave of the heir to the Tuuli Thea or explain myself to the flautist. I needed to be somewhere quiet.

If only I had not lost my falcon form long before, I could have grown my wings. Within minutes, I could have been beyond the bounds of Wyvern's Court, beyond the influence of Anhamirak's magic, and beyond the pulse of these visions.

Instead, I walked  -  agonizingly slowly, step by weary step  -  back to the small house I kept at the edge of Wyvern's Court, and there I collapsed into sleep.

Chapter 3

Ahnmik, I have always been yours, your voice, your tool. Help me now, I beg you. Give me the strength to do what must be done today."

The falcon Cjarsa whispered the prayer as she pushed open the doors of the temple. Araceli was deep in meditation and did not notice the intrusion, even as a shaft of sunlight fell across the altar-a simple black silk melos scarf draped across cold gray stone, with a single alabaster statue, symbol of the god Ahnmik, on it. The rest of the room was equally stark, except for one comer, where a three-year-old child with fair hair slept upon a soft violet cushion. Araceli had found the girl abandoned in the jungle, far from the desert lands of their home, and had named her Alasdair.

Protector.

"Araceli, it is time."

Kiesha, the cobra high priestess of Anhamirak, stood in the doorway to her temple, holding her head high despite her obvious exhaustion. Cjarsa remembered this woman as having mahogany hair, sun-touched skin and brown eyes, but Anhamirak's fire had dyed Kiesha's body as surely as Ahnmik's ice had dyed Cjarsa's. Kiesha's warm earthen eyes had become lakes of blood, and they were no longer kind but eerily piercing as she beheld Cjarsa, whose power had once been the opposite--the balance-of hers. Many things had changed since Maeve had abandoned their coven. Once, they had been the protectors and leaders of their people, priests and priestesses of the eight great powers, led by Maeve and kept in balance by her guidance. Now the powers were unbalanced.

The stain left on Kiesha's hair and eyes was nothing compared to the terror of the uncontrollable magics that had ripped through each of the Dasi in Maeve's absence. The serpents had blamed the falcons for the first assaults, saying that their worship of death and darkness had led to this destruction; Cjarsa's followers had retaliated, spitting their own accusations against the chaos-worshippers.