A Song of Ash and Moonlight by Claire Legrand

Author:Claire Legrand [Legrand, Claire]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks

Chapter 16

Ryder slowly reached for his crossbow, which he still wore across his back on a leather strap slung around his torso. I shouldn’t have been surprised that he still carried his weapons, though he’d long ago discarded his winter coat and now wore his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows. He took a thick black arrow from the quiver at his hip, nocked it. All the while his eyes remained trained on the firebird. Its flames shimmered and snapped as it crouched there behind the tree, apparently frozen in place—with fascination? With fear?

Or with the focused attention of a predator on the hunt?

I tried to swallow, but my mouth had gone dry. I made myself speak. “Who are you? What do you want?”

“Farrin, don’t,” Ryder muttered under his breath.

The firebird’s form shifted every time I blinked: a woman, tall and alien, bright as snow gleaming under the sun. Then, a bird, or something like a bird—beaked and winged, with long, slender arms ending in talons of crackling fire. Whether it couldn’t maintain a single form or simply chose not to, the effect was mesmerizing. My eyes glazed over, like I’d been staring too long at a hearth fire. I started moving toward the creature without meaning to.

Ryder snapped at me—“Farrin, don’t”—but he didn’t dare lower his crossbow and arrow, so I kept going, even as he roared at me with increasing panic. Only a few steps more and I would reach the firebird’s tree. I put out my hand, palm up. I crouched a little, as if approaching Osmund when he’d gotten spooked by something.

The firebird cocked its head, considering me. A spray of scarlet plumage burst from its head, shedding embers that scattered across the mossy ground. It let out a soft cry—the jangle of gold coins, the trickle of water down smooth black rocks—and reached for me with a long arm of fire. Somehow, even with the memory of that long-ago fire etched into my every bone, I was not afraid of the creature’s flames. Soon those flames became feathers, a thousand shades of gold and orange, scarlet and violet, and each one gleamed as if silkspun. I reached for its brilliant talons, every curved tip glowing like a tiny blazing sun. Heat gathered under my hand; a distant, distracted part of my mind screamed at me in warning, but that was easy to ignore in the face of such beauty.

A crash, a curse, and suddenly Ryder’s arm was around me, pulling me back against him, out of the firebird’s reach. We stumbled back together, as if a cord connecting me with this fiery creature had suddenly snapped. The force of it was so strong that I felt Ryder lose his grip on me, and I fell to my hands and knees in the dirt.

And then, with a sharp, angry cry that stabbed my skull, the firebird lunged, a column of fire so quick and hot that the gale of it blowing past me pulled tears from my eyes.

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