Prince of Flight (2 page)

At the very thought of romance, he felt a tugging in his chest, his gaze moving to the doorway Lark had gone through. He would be lying to himself if he didn’t admit that one of the main reasons he selected this particular hole in the wall was its staff. Lark, in particular.

Do not take your thoughts there
, he scolded himself.
She, like all women, will only bring you pain and misery.

He touched the side of his face that bore the aftermath of his foolishness. He had a forever reminder to never go back to being that man. To never soften to anyone, especially not a woman who would only betray him in the end.

Keonae had very few regrets over leaving the bird realm. Missing the bouts of conditioning with his brothers and the guards of Accipitridae was one of them. They’d spend hours working out on the castle grounds, sparring and training. It wasn’t easy to find anyone in the human realm willing or able to take up a sword and train with him. Most would just think he was a madman if he even inquired on it.

He looked down at his hand. It too held myriad scars, telling something of his tale. Flexing his fingers, he thought about what it was like to hold his sword, the feel of it in his hand, the weight of it.

“Hand hurt?” asked Rossi, his youngest brother. Rossi took a seat near Keonae. “Is it acting up again?”

Keonae grabbed his beer and chugged it before belching and setting it on the table, extending the fingers on his hand and giving a pointed look that said all was fine, stop asking.

Rossi snorted. “My apologies, my lord. I forgot. Everything is perfect in your world. Got it,
dickhead
.”

“For someone living back in Accipitridae, you sound very human,” said Keonae with wink. “You almost sound local.”

“Ah, well, you’re calling this place home, so take a bite out of me,” returned Rossi as he grabbed one of the unopened beers and helped himself to it.

“I believe the correct phrase is ‘bite me’,” said Keonae with a half-laugh. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t you used to spend an awful lot of time in this realm?”
 

Rossi used to troll the clubs for women. He’d been quite the ladies’ man until he’d met his mate, and she’d changed him on the spot. The man now only had eyes for her. As it should be with a true mated pair. At least, that was what had been beaten into his head from birth. His father had been a firm believer in prophecy, big into chosen ones and mates. While a few of his brothers and friends had found their special someone, it didn’t mean anything to Keonae.

He was the leper of his family. The brother who was scarred and no longer pleasing to the eye, as they all had once been. In a society where physical beauty was so prized, their father had always put such stock in how handsome his boys were. How the females adored them and men feared them. As if fate wasn’t cruel enough to leave most of his body so hideously scarred in some fashion from the attack, he had been born to the first set of multiples his mother had. He was a triplet. Two identical reminders of what he would no longer ever be, of what he once was, walked the bird realm.

And one was king.

No.

While Kabril and Aeson had been blessed with mates, the fates would not give him one. The gods could not be so cruel as to hand him a woman meant for him, only to have her shriek in horror and run from him, the monster.

He exhaled deeply, wanting the meeting to be over. He had no interest in the politics of home, yet his brothers continued to drag him into it, as if including him would make him want to return home and assume his place in the royal family.

It would not.

“What matters are we to discuss today?” he asked, bored already and the meeting had yet to start.

Rossi glanced around the back room of the bar. “I vote we talk about your choice for a meeting place. As much as I enjoy coming to the human realm, this place is a dump, even for me. You should just come home. I really don’t understand what the big deal is. It has been how many decades since everything happened? Surely, you’re over it.”

I’ll never go back and I’ll never get over it.

The very thought of returning to the bird realm made him look in the direction of the doorway. In the direction he knew
her
to be in.

Odd.

He hoped he wasn’t growing attached to her in a way that would make him unwilling to uproot and find a new place to call home within the human realm. He long ago ceased to age, which made it necessary, after a period, to find a new location to live within the human world. They aged. They died. They’d notice if he didn’t.

“You know why he does not return, Rossi,” Sachin said from his seat next to Keonae. “Your brother does his best to avoid setting foot upon home soil. It holds too many memories.”

Thoughts of his dead betrothed hit him hard. She used to beg to be brought to the human realm, to be near her mother’s people, but Keonae had always refused her. He’d thought her whims foolish and her desires to escape the bird realm nothing more than something that would pass. It had not. And he’d had no idea the lengths she’d end up going to in order to achieve her desires.

“Of a dead traitor? Of a woman who was a mix of our kind, a blend of human and shifter yet worthy of neither race? A half-breed who sought fame and wealth and who, in the end, nearly cost us you?” Rossi questioned.
 

Keonae knew the words were spoken, not out of truth, but rather fear. Rossi’s mate, a human herself, was now expecting their first children. She was late in the term and had been sick for the majority of it. From what Keonae had been told by his other brothers, Rossi had taken to visiting the seers nearly daily for assurance his wife and their babes would be fine come delivery day. The weight of worry was heavy upon the man. Keonae knew what that felt like, so he made no motion to correct his brother’s offense. Rossi was right, after all. Ultimately, his betrothed had been a traitor and a blend from a human and shifter mating. The first chance she had to align with the falcons, who had promised her riches and a one-way ticket to the human realm, she took, and betrayed Keonae when he was fighting for his own life, unable to assist. He had watched her die and he had laid there, assuming he too would perish.

Lazar, a relative newcomer to the advisory council meetings, sat up, his blond hair hanging over one eye. He appeared offended on Keonae’s behalf. “Your oversimplification does insult to your brother’s pain. It is memories of a woman who betrayed him to spy for my people, giving herself to them freely, and in the end betrayed by them and given over to vultures, who killed her slowly.”

Keonae tried to remain hard and detached from the words spoken. It was difficult. The wounds long since healed as much as they ever would, burned anew, the remembered pain there, just below the surface. Worse yet were the emotions—the rage, the hate, the humiliation. Feelings he never wanted to have again.

“They were not your people,” Sachin said matter-of-factly. The man always kept a level head about him. Well, unless his mate was involved and then it was anyone’s guess how his temperament would be. “You have proven you are nothing like your brethren, Lazar. You are nothing like Latravis or those who support him in his reign of terror. Keonae realizes as much, or he would not permit you to attend these meetings.”

“You are not your brother,” said Keonae evenly. “And while I do not condone violence against women, she made her choices. She knew the people she was getting into bed with. She knew they were not to be trusted.”

“Half-brother,” corrected Lazar, the distinction clearly of importance to him. Keonae couldn’t blame him. Latravis was touched in the head and said to be unraveling at rapid pace, though word at the last few meetings was that he had changed his wicked ways and was trying to start anew.

The idea made Keonae laugh.

The
Falco Peregrinus
, whom Lazar belonged to, and Keonae’s family, the
Buteos Regalis,
or royal hawks, had been at war for centuries. Though the battles had become few and far between in the latter decades, a new war was brewing. Talk of troops moving on borders had consumed their meetings for the past year. Random raids and failed attempts at peace appeared to be the new normal.

Why would he want to go back to that?

Drinking in the human realm was much better.
 

“I know not how you can break bread with me,” said Lazar to Keonae. “I must represent everything and everyone you hate.”

“You remind me of the past in some ways, but you give me a spark of hope that the old ways will not always be so,” said Keonae, drawing a look of surprise from Sachin.

It was true. He knew the truth of Lazar. He was rightful king of the Falconi. Soon, they’d make a move and help him regain the throne from his twisted half-brother. In the meantime, they were busy fighting off recent attacks on the edges of their kingdom from the vultures.

Keonae glanced around the table. “Dare I ask what the vultures have been up to? It’s bad enough they seem to rise from obscurity, but now it is as if they have a hand in nearly all that is going wrong back home.”

Chapter Two

The men present shared concerned looks, probably fearing he might break upon hearing anything in the way of news on the vultures. Keonae lifted a hand. “Worry not. I have put the past behind me and will not shatter to pieces with talk of them. I asked because I wish to know and because I sense you’ve been leaving a lot out of our last meetings in regards to them.”

Sachin cleared his throat. “We believe we can account for their large numbers.”

Keonae waited, saying nothing more.

Sachin glanced to Lazar and then to Keonae, hesitant to speak further.

“Tell me.”
 

“It is merely a theory for now,” said Sachin.

Rossi spat to the side, cursing the bird gods before returning to ranting about the vultures. “Carcass feeders!”

Lazar lifted his beer to toast the statement. “Agree. They are bottom dwellers.”

Most had assumed the vultures had permanently tucked themselves away to lick their wounds from the wars of two centuries ago. Some were even rumored to have fled to the human realm to escape being tried for war crimes. Keonae himself could attest to the vultures being comfortable with passing between realms—he’d been ambushed by them upon human soil and that was why he had not healed as he should have. On Accipitridae, he would have been left whole, perfect as he had once been, not marred. Not still with pain at random times. He should have had full mobility. He didn’t.

It had been hoped the vultures’ numbers had dwindled as had those in most of the bird kingdoms. Those hopes had been dashed in recent months as verification of the increase in vulture numbers came to a head. They were attacking all kingdoms within the bird realm and in numbers that took everyone by surprise. It was clear they had successfully overcome the low birth rates that had beleaguered the realm for so long.

They were poised to be a serious threat to Accipitridae once more. Keonae touched his scars gently and then let his hand fall away to avoid bringing attention to them. Vultures had left their mark on him, a permanent reminder of their cruelty.

“What theory do you have on their numbers being so high when all the rest of the realm struggles so with new births?” asked Keonae.

The men were quiet for far too long and Keonae knew the information they had was not good. It was Lazar who finally spoke. “They have found a way to artificially breed. They have perfected this over the last century through aid of human technologies in the fields of reproduction, DNA cloning, and something they refer to as genetic engineering. Kabril is meeting with a team of scientists from here, learning all he can of this.”

“They played gods?” inquired Keonae, his breath nearly stolen at the idea of something as sick and vile as vultures managing to create an army from scratch. “They did this within the realm?”

Rossi shook his head. “Not all of it. No. From what we are learning most took place here in remote locations. We know very little beyond this.”

Keonae found himself lost in worry and thoughts, his mind a mess and his body tense and tight. After a while, he noticed no one else dared to speak, giving him time to absorb the news.

“Are you well?” asked Sachin.

Keonae nodded. “Reflecting on matters best left in the past.”

“Hard to keep it behind you when we come and set it before your table, yes?” asked his friend.

Keonae slid him a knowing look. “I need to be kept abreast of the situation back home, regardless of what that situation may be. How many more attacks have been reported?”

“A half-dozen. Rossi confirmed it was vultures because he had to engage with them. He managed to capture one who gave confirmation of what we had only recently learned. They bred an army.”

He looked to his younger brother. “And?”

“I walked away alive, unlike some who were with me,” Rossi said softly. “They died honorable deaths. They fought for their kingdom.”

Lazar stiffened in his seat. “The eagles have sent reinforcements to help us with our borders.”