I opened my mouth, then closed it, brow furrowing. How did the eggs hatch? They weren’t like normal bird eggs. Something else happened to them, because every year on the winter solstice, they all hatched at once. For some reason, this one hadn’t, despite surviving Ronoch when no other eggs had.

Maybe it couldn’t. Maybe Kiva was right, and the egg was nothing but an empty shell. I shook the thought away. However small the chance was the egg could hatch, I had to try.

Problem was, I’d never seen it done.

* * *

We climbed out of the rookery together and returned to the castle. Kiva gave me her cloak to wrap the egg in, and I hugged it against my chest, still not fully believing what I’d found. The egg’s humming settled deep into my bones, resonating like the echo of a thunderclap. It felt so familiar, so alive. Like a piece of me had returned.

Something fluttered in my stomach, a feeling I’d almost forgotten. Something I hesitated to name, lest it disappoint me. Still, I clung to the rising hope, feeling as if I balanced on a glass precipice, waiting for it to shatter and send me careening into the nothingness like so many times before.

After Ronoch, we’d searched the rookery for surviving eggs and found nothing. When the third floor collapsed, nearly killing two riders, the search was put off until we could stabilize the rookery. But in the face of starvation and mass destruction, it had been forgotten.

We’d decided to ask Caliza about the egg. She’d shunned the crows most of her life and probably wouldn’t know a thing, but we had no one else. Most of the Corvé were gone; they’d been targeted on Ronoch, just like the crows. Those that remained had never helped my mother with the hatching.

I looked at my feather bracelet. Only Estrel had.

We stopped by my room, where I hid the egg in a drawer of rarely worn sweaters in my closet armoire and changed into a clean dress. My elbow had stopped bleeding, so I wiped away the dirt and left it be. Then we sought out Caliza.

What would she say to me? Would she apologize again? I snorted at the thought, then crushed the tiny voice that hoped maybe she’d changed her mind. That never happened.

We found her in her office talking with a tall, broad-shouldered woman with pale hair. Larisa Mirkova, Kiva’s mother and captain of the royal guard. They paused as we entered, but I still caught the tail end of their conversation. They were talking about the failing crops again.

Kiva saluted her mother, only relaxing when the captain nodded. Caliza met my gaze. Her expression remained impassive, but I knew what she was thinking: had I accepted my fate?

I held her gaze without blinking: not even close.