Sweet Romance11 min read
"Break My Feathers, See If I'll Fly"
ButterPicks15 views
"Kill her!"
"I won't die for you," I said, and the sky answered.
My hair burned like blood. My dress was the last red I owned. The air around the old palace gate shuddered as if it could not hold me and my choice at the same time.
"You'll beg," someone shouted from the ranks.
"I already begged," I told them. "That was enough."
They were a sea of teeth and spears. They wanted the monster crowned by storybooks. They wanted the woman with the red dress and the white fox memory to be nothing but ash.
York Sousa stood there in purple, bone-cold and carved of shadow. He did not look away. He never looked away. He was the reason I had worn out my life.
"You will kill me, York?" I asked.
He did not answer at once. He kept his hands folded, his face a mask I had once known like the back of my own palm. His old name—Callen, or Li—was gone in this world. He was "York" here and "Empire" there.
"Why should I not?" he said at last. "You led your kind to take this palace. You brought death. I answer for my people."
"You can kill me," I said. "But I will not have you lie to yourself. Watch."
I let the last of my strength go. I bled out the years I had held inside. I poured them like oil into the sky.
The world turned into another glass. Images drew up from my chest and smoothed themselves across the clouds like a mirror.
"That's the Heavenly Mirror!" someone cried.
"You dare project this at the gates?" a voice hissed.
"It is her truth," I whispered.
They could not stop watching.
I remembered the creek. I remembered the white fur against early grass. I remembered laughing in water when my fox legs turned to hands.
"Who are you?" the pale young man had asked, blocking the sun.
"You are my fate," I had said, clumsily, because I was a fox learning human sounds.
"You lied to me," I had told myself through ten thousand nights.
"He is the one," a memory-child in the sky said with a voice I had not heard in years. It was my voice, raw and small.
The young man's face—Callen's face—was the face York had once worn. I watched that man wake with fox claws on his chest, watched him spit at me when he first tried to bite back breath into his chest. I watched him take the snake herb, the last of the green bile, and smile at me with a softness that nearly made me believe in a future.
"You are a thief," one of the crowd shouted when the scene moved forward. "You saved him because you wanted power."
"You are all fools," I said, but my voice came out thin.
They cheered to kill monsters. They could not see the small kindnesses that made me brave.
I emptied my soul into the mirror for them all to see. I let them witness how I gaped and drank nightmares so that his chest could fill air again.
"She fed him with her mouth," a man muttered.
"What is wrong with her?" another said. "Disgusting."
I let them feel the wound—the spoon of cold iron when I was shoved into the cauldron, the green light that ate at my skin. I let them watch the white fur melt and the fox bend into a girl again. I let them listen when my heart cracked under the heat.
I cried out, "I did this for him!" and two crystal tears fell like black rubies from my lids. The world did not answer with pity. It only answered with judgment.
"Nobody move!" York snapped.
One rough voice farther back answered him. "Let her die. For the dead."
"I said no more killing of her," York said, and the crowd went mute.
He heard, but he did not understand. He was not the same man from that wild creek. His memory was wrapped in iron. He had become emperor by forgetting. He had become an emperor who wore my face like a ghost in his pockets.
I watched him study the mirror, and for the first time his hands gave a tremor.
"Is that me?" he asked no one and everyone.
"I told you so, Your Grace," Asami Lorenz said from behind him. Her voice smelled like silk and cold knives. She had the smile of someone who waters a seed until it bursts with poison.
"Don't be fooled," she whispered to him. "She shows heart now only because she is about to die."
"If she is what she was, why did she hurt my people?" York asked.
"She brought her kind to our doors," Asami said. "She sits on a throne of lies."
I could have begged. I had begged before. Begging did not heal the cauldron burn. Begging did not bring back the creek or the hands that had held mine.
So I did what I had promised myself in the small hours: I chose to stop being the victim on the sky stage.
"I am leaving this court," I said. "But you—both of you—must watch what comes of truth."
A lightning hollowed above. A golden current wrapped me from head to toe. It felt like sleep and then it felt like waking up in a different cage.
When I opened my eyes, I had strength again. Stronger and harder and colder. The white fur in my chest had become wings. Fire walked beneath my skin.
"You would rise?" Asami sneered. "Cute."
"I will not ask your mercy," I told her. "You made your bed."
"Do your worst, witch," she said, and the court cheered at her cruel grin.
Later, when the Mirror had finished the past and began to fold itself like a closing fan, York's hands shook without his knowing why. I saw the doubt thread his face like a new scar. A small thing, but enough.
I had crossed from memory to armor. I wanted—
"—revenge?" my brother asked me in the dark.
"Not for the first pain," I answered, "for the last."
Sebastien Black, my brother, knelt in my chamber while I drew a line on the palm where I would not forgive what I could not forget. He was the only blood left who did not ask for my crown.
"You can be queen and also live in peace," he said.
"Which do you think I am?" I asked.
"I think you are the woman who will put a sword between two thrones."
"You know me well," I said.
I returned to the battlefield where blood had become a pattern on the ground.
"Why did you come back?" York asked from the sky wall.
"I am taking what you stole," I said. "Not land, not gold. I am taking the truth."
He looked at me like a god looking at a storm he could still fold into his hands. "You will be killed if you try."
"I have already died," I said. "Try me."
We moved like opposite tides. He ordered men. I answered with fire. The sky watched with its mouth open.
At the end of day, when the field smelled of iron and wet leaves, I stood before him. My wings were folded like a cloak. My hair was the same red it had been in the Palace doorway. The only thing different was how my eyes found him.
"You will not kill me today," I said. "You are a man who kills for order. You do not kill for truth."
I saw something like a child's shame pass across his face. For a flash, I felt the old warmth he had had when he was a young man and had let me lean on his back like a child. The old name—Callen—surged like a tide to his lips and then broke against iron.
"Why did you not tell me?" I said. "When you had the chance?"
He shut his mouth like a book. He took a breath.
"My master wrote me a lie," he said. "He fed on fear and made me bite."
"Hector Bird?" I said. "Your teacher?"
He did not answer immediately.
"You believed him," I said. "You believed a man who promised you power more than you believed the one who fed you sugar on a creek."
"I did not want to trust her," he said. "Not then."
"You never did trust me," I said.
He made a sound that hurt, not angry but full of the weight of a man who carried miles of wrong steps.
"I will not ask you to forgive me. I cannot deserve that much," York said. "I will offer you truth. I will stand on the mirror and say who I was and what I did."
"You will have to tell the court," I said. "All of it."
He nodded once, and it felt like the first honest move of a man who had been born from both split hearts.
We walked to the Grand Hall. I let him lead. The court gathered. Asami wore silk that had cost kingdoms. She smiled like a sword.
"Speak," I told York. "Speak the truth you buried."
He looked up. The crowd stacked behind him like a river of eyes. He drew breath.
"My name is York Sousa." He said it into the chamber. "I am the ruler of the Nine Realms. But I was once—" He paused like a man discovering that he could feel again. "Callen. I was a younger man who learned to count the world by the blade in my hand. I was told a story and I believed it. My master told me that this woman—Avianna Bentley—killed men of my order. I believed it and I acted. I made choices. I want those I hurt to know I know who I was."
"You lied to us!" Asami screamed.
"I was lied to," York said. "But I lied back. I let my anger become a chain. I told myself that killing the one who haunted me would be justice. It was not."
"Proof," a voice demanded.
"Show the Mirror," I said.
York turned to the cloud wall like a man turning to a lover. He had been raised to be cold. Now he was human and fragile, hands trembling.
He called Isaac Roux forward—the Starkeeper who had risked a reputation to stand beside me many times—and Isaac stepped into the circle of lights.
"You helped her?" York asked Isaac.
"I showed her the path," Isaac said. "I told her where to find you when you lost yourself. I told her the truth because someone had to."
Asami's face changed. "You traitor," she hissed. "You would bring a witch into our palace?"
"Here," Isaac said. "Listen."
He pulled out a thin scroll and unrolled it. The Mirror answered before the scroll even spoke. The cloud-face above them split again into my memory. The court fell silent in the same way it had when I had first bled into the heavens.
This time the Mirror was different. It held not only my suffering but the letters of the master. York watched the memory of his younger teacher put spells on a paper, watched Hector Bird draw a rune and whisper into the night, watched him seal our fates.
"It was him," Isaac said softly. "Hector wrote the tale to set you on a path. He feared your loyalty was wavering. He needed you to rule so he could stay beside power."
"Why would he do that?" York asked.
"Power keeps men alive," Isaac said. "He kept his name by breaking yours."
The words were small but they landed like stones. People shifted.
"I told you," I said to the hall. "I lied to you because they made me an enemy by paper and spell."
Asami's hands trembled. Her allies moved closer. "You cannot just—" she began, but she had no proof of her own.
"Enough!" York's voice cut like thunder. He had the sound of a man who knew the price of a name. "Hector Bird is guilty of deceit. He used his place to set men against each other. He will answer."
Hector Bird's drawn face stepped from the crowd. He did not deny it. He never denied what kept his skin whole. He only tried to bargain with the kind of pitiful words only cowards use.
"You will be judged," York said.
The crowd had shifted. Some shouted for immediate justice. Others had their hands over their mouths. Asami's allies were the first to scatter.
"Do it," I told York softly.
He did it. He did not go through the motions of mercy. He ordered the old man stripped of the seal, put in a small cell to speak truth for as many seasons as he had lied.
Asami's silk went cold. She looked at York with a face I had seen as a girl in the creek: hunger shifted into fear.
After the sentence, York walked to me. He reached out with two hands and did something the younger man had never done: he took off his crown and set it at my feet.
"Power is a heavy thing," he said. "I will not give it to you out of penance. I will give it to you because you deserve to stand without burning."
"You would give me—" I started.
"I would let you make use of what I have," he said. "But not to be ruled by me. Rule it as you will."
I looked at the crown and then at him. He was smaller than myth. He was more than I had the right to ask for. He had wept in private for a life he had not lived with me. He had given up a lie.
"You are asking me to trust the hand that let me be burned," I said.
"I am asking you to trust my hands now," he said.
"I will not be your shadow," I said. "I will not be your wolf at heel."
"Then stand with me," York said. "Stand as empress beside me. Tell the world what you are. Let the truth be what it is."
"I will not be anyone's second," I said. "I will be what I always was: myself. If that means you standing beside me as you would for any sovereign, then do it. If it means you bow to me, I will not take it. If it means we walk as equals, we start."
York took a breath like someone who had not believed in air for a long time. He nodded once, with the sort of surety that could cut iron. "Equals," he said.
They wanted a show. I gave it to them.
"By my name," York declared to the hall, "I, York Sousa, admit the lies told under my hand. I will correct the wrongs I have done. I will serve the Nine Realms and the weak equally."
People whispered. Some clapped. Asami sat like a broken statue.
"I will sign no blood pact that seals free feet," I said to the crowd. "We will make no blood oaths. We will make agreements written by our hands. No more binding by fear."
A murmur moved like water. Some called it naivety. Others called it mercy. I called it the only thing left that could let the next generation bleed less.
Later, in private, York came to stand where I had slept as a girl, where I had kept the foxbones that I once thought would remind me of home.
"You could have left me to rot," he said.
"You did leave me," I answered. "But you came back."
"I remember now. All of it," he said. "The creek. The small warm of your mouth and the bitterness of the medicine. I remember when I pushed you into a pot because I was afraid. I remember saying I was right because it hurt less than being wrong."
"You will have to live with that," I said.
"I know." He knelt and took my hand. "I do not ask to be forgiven. I only ask to be counted as someone who will try."
There are many ways to end a story. The way I chose never had the dramatic flourish of some epics. It had the hard work of everyday choices.
I did not make him king again. I let him keep his title, but he gave up the palace that had been his like a shell. He gave the Palace of Mist to the council where I sat as head of elders for my people and his people. We signed agreements that let the foxfolk keep borders and attend markets without fear. We set open courts where people could come and speak instead of being burned by rumor.
Asami was stripped of her rank. She went to exile, as she had long prepared for, ranting about betrayal and loss of taste. When she left, many of those who had cheered her did not follow. The court replaced her with law.
Jean Bullock—the one who had once called herself a sweet friend—died by her own game. I had seen her knife turn at the altar of her plans. I do not take delight in killing. I will not say I felt no tear. I felt many.
Sebastien—my brother—sat beside me at the signing. He shook, and the ink smudged on the paper. He laughed once and cried three times during the week the accords were made.
York and I worked together. We walked through the markets when the bells rang. People looked at him like a strange animal who had learned grief and kept it. He used words like apology and action and then did the hard thing: he trusted strangers. He let himself be part of the small fixes that heal nations. He married not to make a show but because we both wanted to anchor what we had learned.
One night, when the moon was a cold coin in black velvet, he brought me a small white feather on a thin chain. It was a phoenix feather, small and warm.
"For luck," he said.
"For both of us," I said.
He kissed my hand then, quick and dry, the way a man who had nothing to give but respect might. "I will be the man you deserve," he said.
"You will be the man you want to be," I told him.
We walked out of the hall and into a sky that had seen too many truths and decided to be kinder. Behind us, the Mirror rested in the clouds. It held our past like a sculpture of glass. We had stepped through it and not been broken.
Three years passed with less blood. There were problems and old men who refused to die in their stubbornness, but I learned the small business of ruling a wound: keep it clean, stitch it when it tears, and do not go back to pick at the scab.
Once, in the green that remains after winter, I sat by the creek where a fox used to sleep. I took off my chain and let the feather hang in the wind.
"You said you would not beg," York said softly.
"I said I begged once," I answered. "That is enough."
He laughed. It sounded like rain.
"Will you ever forget?" I asked him.
"No," he said. "But I will remember what to do next."
"A good answer." I smiled.
"Do you forgive me?" he asked, blunt and afraid.
"I learned early that forgiving is not forgetting," I said. "I forgive what is forgivable. I keep what is needed. Do not ask me to be empty."
He bowed his head like a man giving thanks at a small altar. "Then let us be careful," he said. "Let us be wiser."
So we were. We did not become perfect. We became possible.
Years later, people would cross the courts and tell the story of the red-dressed woman who burned and rose and chose to rule with teeth and mercy both. They would tell how the emperor made truth his law and how a mirror in the clouds had shown them the cost.
But when the crowds had gone and the palace had quieted into its old bones, I would walk alone to the creek and lay the phoenix feather into its cold current. It sank like a white coin and then rose again like a promise.
The feather stayed at my side for a long time. When I died, they would say my name and then tell a child by the embers: beware what you make into a god, and keep what you find into a friend.
I am Avianna Bentley. I remember when I was small and a fox. I remember the creek. I remember the pain. I remember how I chose to stand.
If anyone ever asks whether it was worth it, I will show them the feather and say only this:
"Watch if I fall. See if I will fly."
The End
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