She continued speaking as if she hadn’t dropped the biggest bomb on me and I wasn’t openly struggling with it. “Obviously, my suicide attempt didn’t work. Fate and possibly the magic in this land literally grabbed me from the sky. One of these beasts caught me and ever since I’ve been trying to figure out how to ride them without feeling like I would die. I went down to the stables looking for a saddle for a horse when I found these.” She patted the strange saddle on the backs of the birds. The dark leather was worn and dull from years of neglect since the lastMage Queen’s death. “I knew immediately that they were for these creatures. The last Mage Queen must have worked with them. I don’t know if these are the same ones they worked with, but I find it super odd that they helped me saddle them and they let me ride without a saddle first.” Reva ran her hands down the red bird’s feathers and nuzzled the beast’s neck. “I found freedom within the clouds and I think you could too.”
All I could do was blink at her in disbelief. I didn’t know what to process first. The suicide attempt. The flying birds. The ancient beasts that could have been around when the last Mage Queen was. All of it was too much and I found myself sinking down to the snow-coated mountain top. I’d been so lost in my own problems I hadn’t seen those around me drowning just as much as I was. How had it gotten this bad? How had I let it? I thought they were fine, obviously, as I continued to rebuild a dead city.
Reva got down to my level in a deep crouch and cupped my face in her hands. “It’s okay now. I found my freedom, now I want to show you yours.”
Before I knew it, I was on the back of the bird and looking down at the impending doom of what would happen if I were to fall. “Ya know,” I began with a small shaking laugh. “I don’t think this is such a good idea anymore.” After all, my magic was only present when I touched the soil. It wasn’t going to help me if I was already dead and there was a layer of snow between my body and access to magic.
Reva only grinned at me like a maniac as she swung her hand back. “No, no, no, no, NOOOOO!” Her hand made purchase with the back of the bird with a loud smack and we were diving, head first off of the side of the mountain. My screams echoed around me while Reva jumped onto her beast and followed suit. Wind whipped around my face and hair as my stomach dropped with our descent. The fear of falling eventually evened out toexhilaration as the bird swooped up. I was able to breathe again and relaxed my grip on the reigns. My knuckles were still white, but I could feel them again. A few silver strands of my hair escaped my braid and flicked against my cheeks with the wind. Moisture filled my eyes with the speed we were traveling and a hysterical laugh burst from my lips. I blinked a few times to be able to see better and when I looked over the side of the red bird’s wings, I could see everything. I straightened up in the saddle and my mouth dropped open in awe.
Everything.
Absolutely everything was spread out beneath us and I’d been too busy wallowing in self-pity to realize all the beauty I was missing out on. I’d been so lost in what I needed to do for the future, that I stopped looking at what I needed for the present. Ever so hesitantly, with shaking fingers, I relaxed my grip completely on the reigns and lifted myself in the saddle. From somewhere beside me, I heard Reva screaming praises and laughing. She wasn’t lying when she said she found her freedom here, I could feel it all around me.
I’d been too worried about my life and falling from the bird to realize we’d passed right over the top of the castle. Now when I looked beneath us, I could see we were very far away from where we’d started and instead of it making me nervous or scared, it made me excited. Thrilled even that I could experience this. Proud that Reva had discovered such a thing in her time of darkness. I straightened even further and lifted my arms on either side of me, while I clenched my thighs tighter on the saddle.
“Woo-hoo!!!” I yelled and the bird dipped beneath me causing me to almost throw up on his back. His feathers fluffed and his head bobbed back and forth as if he were laughing. I patted the back of his neck and shook my head. I was too elatedto care that he was playing a joke on me. I was too free to care about much else.
I tipped my head back and closed my eyes. This was exactly what I needed. I was no longer going to lock myself up in the castle. I was no longer going to wallow and die inside. There was entirely too much to live for and I was going to find it, either up here in the clouds or down on the ground below.
There wasbeauty like no other all around me. You could see the magical fog hiding the ocean below and the territories that spanned past it, but this island? This island was like nothing I’d ever experienced. I thought there were wonders on the other mainland, I thought I’d experienced joy and beauty. But nothing could have prepared me for this. Mountains spanned all the way down the island and just in the distance, too far for me to make out from where we were flying, were what looked to be, floating islands. The beasts flew us to the very bottom of the island where we could see more detail on the floating masses, but that wasn’t what stole my breath once again.
There was a tree but I knew immediately by the golden hue surrounding it that it wasn’t just any tree.
Your magic begins and ends there. That magical voice whispered all around me and I wondered if it allowed Reva to hear too. I pushed the back of the bird’s neck and whispered, “Take me there!” But the beast didn’t listen to me, instead, it turned around in the sky and began our trip back to the castle. I let out a frustrated huff as I turned in the saddle to watch it fade in the distance.
“I’ve been wondering what that place was for weeks now! Isn’t it beautiful? Maybe one day soon we can come back and explore or maybe even have a picnic,” Reva shouted above the wind noise and I laughed. A picnic? These creatures definitelychanged her. Her crimson hair came unbound sometime during the journey and it whipped around her face in wild abandon. She would regret not binding it again when we got back to the castle, but for now, I could see that she didn’t care about anything else. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were bright. She didn’t even bother with holding onto the reigns. She’d obviously done this enough that she trusted these creatures irrevocably.
When we returned to the cliff by the castle, Reva unsaddled the beasts and placed the leather contraptions in the bushes nearby.
“You weren’t afraid of dragons?” I hadn’t thought of them once while we were in the sky but now that we were on the ground, I found myself terrified of what could have happened.
She threw her head forward, wrapped her wild hair around her fist, and bound the mess of curls and tangles on the top of her head. “I didn’t see a single one though the fear did cross my mind when we were in the sky for the first time. But I have to admit, I’d been ready for death so why did it matter if a dragon gobbled me up? It would have probably been more instant than me throwing myself off of the cliff. She leaned forward to gaze over the side of the mountain and shivered. “Plus, we aren’t that high up, there was still a chance I could have landed and broken every bone in my body. We don’t have healers here, that would’ve been a very painful recovery. I thought about that often after the first ride, that maybe I’d been saved from a horrible fate of pain and brokenness. Could you imagine me having to stay in bed all the time with no way to take care of myself?”
It was my turn to shiver. I absolutely could imagine it and it looked like torture, for everyone. “I’m sure Alric would take care of you, if you needed him, of course.”
She rolled her brown eyes and ran her hands down the sides of the blue and green bird she favored. The red beast I’d been on eyed me carefully, as if to tell me she didn’t like affection andshe didn’t want any from me. I held my hands up and took a few steps back. I wanted to be in the sky again, I wouldn’t screw up my chances now.
“I’m sure he would too, that’s the problem though, I don’t want to be taken care of. I wouldn’t have given you my oath had I wanted the babies and the lifestyle that all these men seem to want.” She let out an exasperated huff and turned toward my kingdom with a wistful expression. “I want so much more.”
It was time to give my friend a taste of her own medicine. “If you honestly think that’s what he wants from you or any other female then you are just as blind as you are stupid.”
Her jaw came unhinged at my words and she stared at me for a moment before finally speaking. “What?”
I flicked my braid over my shoulder. “Alric can’t even have children. He gave up that right to be one of the Fraud Queen’s male whores first.” I blinked unsure of if I should’ve divulged that information or not. But here we were and I couldn’t take it back. “He’s the spymaster for goodness sake, do you truly believe that he wants you to brood him children if he could have them? Do you truly believe that he wants your typical life?”
Her shoulders slumped and she wouldn’t meet my gaze. That was fine. She’d pulled me out of my la-la land, it was time I did the same for her. There were feelings there that she was ignoring. At least one of us deserved to be happy and she needed a good kick to her butt.
“I have this fear that I won’t be good enough,” she finally admitted. “That he will see that I’m not a good warrior, woman, or partner.”
“That’s a valid fear but nothing you should be worried about. You are one of the strongest, most capable women I’ve ever met.”
“I’ll never amount to you.”
My head snapped around as if I’d been struck. “Me?”
“I see the way he looks at you and the way he was around you before he even noticed me.”
“I’m his queen, I think he sees more within me than I do myself. He’s always looked for my potential, Reva. I think he’s always liked the idea of me, but nothing more. I knew that the moment I met him. Yes, there was definitely lust but,” I shrugged. “It was never there. There was no spark. There was no interest in finding out more. I wanted to like him. It would have been so easy to do so, but it wasn’t all encasing. It wasn’t something that made me forget how to breathe.”
