Prologue: The Catacombs
In the hush between heartbeats, in the deep marrow of the Aviary's roots, something stirred.
I felt it before the dragons did. A shiver, a tremor in the invisible web that stitched soul to stone.
From my place in the forgotten catacombs, where the walls wept salt and the dead whispered secrets to one another, I stretched out senses that were not entirely my own. Above me, the stone ceiling cracked with the weight of old magic awakening.
In the eyrie atop the black peaks, the great beasts rumbled, restless. Their scales scraped against the rocks in a music older than men. They felt her too — the bloodline once thought extinguished, now returned to the slaughterhouse of her ancestors.
Child of the light, I whispered, my voice a thread on the endless wind.
Golden eyes, flaming hair — she would not know herself yet. She would not know her tongue was spun from spells, her blood braided with power, her spirit carrying the last hope of a ruined people.
But I knew. And the dragons knew.
From below, from above, the world shivered.
The Aviary was waking.
And this time, the feast would have teeth.
Chapter One: The Arrival
The sun bore down like a vengeful god, greedy fingers sweeping across the water and devouring everything they touched. The lone boat bobbing on the Emerald Bay was no exception. Its blackened hull steamed where it kissed the glittering surface. At the bow, a soldier in soot-smeared plate armour wiped his brow for the hundredth time, eyes carving anxious paths across the horizon.
Fear leaked from him in hot, sour waves. This was no fear of pirates, nor of mutiny. This was a deeper thing. An old thing.
Ahead, the fortress jutted from the sand like a rotten tooth. Its enormous blue stones shimmered with unnatural light, their smooth faces veined by grasping vines. The red sand spiralled at its feet, caught in perpetual motion by forces unseen. Over it all loomed the Aviary's sigil: a blood-red triangle trapping a sorrowful blue bird in filigree gold wire.
A gilded tomb for the broken and the damned.
But it wasn't the stones that made the soldier's hands tremble on the rail. It was what lay above.
The island was surrounded by black mountains ripped up from the ocean's breast, obsidian fangs reaching toward the bruised sky. At their crown, nestled in the tower of the building at the centre of the island, nestled shadows larger than nightmares.
Dragons.
Real dragons — rare, ancient, and tethered to the land by grief and rage. Their vast wings blotted out the sun as they passed overhead. The air smelled of burning salt and forgotten promises.
"Don't stare too long, ya daft bastards," one soldier muttered to the others, his accent thick as the bogs of the south. "They sees ya, they'll think yer askin' fer death."
It was said the Aviary had once been ruled by a sorceress when gods still bled and miracles still crawled the world like living things. The sorceress's name had been lost to time but her protectors remained: ancient, cunning and grieving, in their nest atop the tower.
Today, the Aviary would drink new blood.
At the shore, an old woman stood among the swirling sands. Her back was bent like a bowstring pulled too tight, her fingers curled around a twisted cane, her gnarled fingers tapping a slow, lazy rhythm. She was a blot of shadow in the merciless light, her face hidden beneath a heavy hood. Her wolfish grin peeking out from its depths like a diamond in an Ethiope's ear.
When she spotted the approaching vessel, she raised a withered hand, beckoning.
"Pleasure gardens, boys?" she croaked, voice as cracked as riverbed clay. "Two for the price of one — if ye don't mind a few bruises." She stops tapping her fingers to scratch at her opposing palm.
A soldier at the stern barked out a laugh. "What about a discount for the size o' me cock, eh?"
The madame snorted, scratching the palm of her hand. "Big or small, a prick is still a prick soldier."
Their laughter cracked the tense air like whips. Forced, hollow.
The boat bumped the dock, and the first soldier disappeared below deck. Moments later he reappeared, hauling something by the hair — a battered bundle of blood-matted blonde curls. Without ceremony, he dumped her onto the scorching sand.
The girl's back, where her gown had been torn away, was a lattice of cuts, bruises, and flayed flesh. Someone had stripped her humanity away with cruel precision, carving wounds meant to scar.
The madame scowled, tapping her cane once against the ground. "What's this?"
"Special delivery," the soldier grunted. "Separate room. No gardens. No callers."
She sneered. "I'm no wet nurse fer broken meat."
The soldier's yellowed teeth flashed. "You'll change yer tune when ya see what he's brought ya fer payment."
The madame's eyes narrowed. Calculations flickered behind them.
With a grunt, the soldier turned back to the ship and yanked hard on a thick rope.
The second cargo tumbled out: a tangle of naked women, their wrists lashed together by coarse hemp. They stumbled, wept, bled. Bruises blossomed along their skin in violent shades of purple and black. Some wore the glazed, glassy look of the broken; others trembled on the edge of panic.
Among them, one figure stood out.
A redhead, tall and straight-backed despite the blood crusting her thighs. Her bruises painted her like a tragic mural, but her face — her face was a perfect mask. Unyielding. Distant.
The soldier who had delivered the blonde girl swaggered up to her, grabbing a fistful of her breast and twisting viciously. The girl didn't so much as flinch.
"Ain't she somethin' special, boys?" he crowed. His calloused fingers plunged between her legs, probing crudely, before withdrawing glistening with her moisture. He sucked the taste from them noisily, eyes rolling back in mock ecstasy.
"Sweetest of all the delicacies," he growled. "And mark me words — this one's a Mat'ar slave. A real pureblood. Didn't even need to prime her. Came slick as butter just ridin' in the hold."
The other soldiers whooped and jeered.
"I think I'll keep this one," the soldier sneered, drawing a dagger to saw through her bonds. "No one's touchin' her but me or me boys, we deserve a wee treat fer venturin out here in this heat." The soldiers roared their approval.
The madame's cane cracked against the side of his head before he could even react.
The sound was sickening — like a ripe fruit splitting open. The soldier crumpled into the sand without a sound.
The jeering stopped.
"Touch what's mine again," the madame hissed, "an' I'll feed yer cocks to the dragons."
The other soldiers bent hurriedly to haul their companion back to the boat. They didn't look back.
The madame didn't spare them a second glance. Her attention was fixed now on the blonde girl lying half-buried in the sand.
Alive — barely. Her breath came in shallow, ragged bursts.
The madame knelt stiffly, prodding her with the tip of her cane until she could roll her enough to see her face.
So young. So ruined.
"Baths," she ordered curtly. "Fetch Raven."
The sentries moved at once, lifting the broken girl with the same careless hands they used to haul cargo.
Inside the Aviary, the great iron doors slammed shut. The echoes rolled through the halls like distant thunder.
Above, the dragons roared once, a low sound like the grinding of the earth's own bones.
The madame tapped her shoulder with two fingers, then pointed to the sand.
From above, so below.
Inside, the new girls were divided like cattle.
The madame drifted among them, a queen among broken dolls. She named them as she went, her cane tapping against the stone floor.
"You'll be Bluebird," she said to a weeping girl with swollen blue eyes.
"You'll be Finch," she declared to a mouse-haired waif shivering on her knees.
When she reached the redhead, she paused.
Pride radiated from the girl, even now. Even broken.
The madame jabbed the tip of her cane against the girl's bruised cheek.
"You," she said softly, almost reverently. "You'll be Phoenix."
Her voice dripped with promise.
"Let's see how many times you can burn before you break."
Phoenix did not speak. Did not move. Her golden eyes stared through the madame as if she were already somewhere far beyond the reach of their cruelty.
Good.
The madame liked her new birds broken — but not shattered.
There was always more coin to be made from hope than from despair.
And high above, the dragons circled.
Waiting.