Tonight, I would choose my own crow. I would become a rider. And one day, I would earn the tattoo and become the royal Corvé after Estrel.

“The Sky Dance starts in an hour,” Estrel said. “Then it’s back here for the hatching. Are you and Kiva going into the city tonight?”

“To Rua’s.”

She smirked. “Take a breath. Enjoy the night. You’ll have your crow soon enough.”

Soon enough felt a lifetime away as I bolted down the winding rookery steps, dodging a rookhand balancing plates of meat, and out into a perfect Rhodairen winter evening. The air was cool but not cold and filled with the possibility of rain. Storm crows would keep it at bay, though I wished they’d let it fall. I’d always wanted to see a Sky Dance in the rain.

The wind buffeted my escaped curls into my face as I shot along the gardens, through the castle gates, and into streets filled with thick green trees and climbing vines trickling down buildings like rivulets of rainwater.

I veered onto the main road between the Caravel Wing and Thereal Wing, then cut right into the Thereal section of the city, slowing as a wave of music and laughter washed over me. I made for Rua’s, a bright-blue building on the corner where a crow had been painted in sunset colors across one side, done by a street artist in the night.

Native brown-skinned Rhodairens walked alongside colorfully dressed, dark-skinned travelers from Trendell, a kingdom far east of Rhodaire. Both were dwarfed by the pale, long-limbed Korovi of the northern kingdom. People came to Rhodaire from all over the world for Negnoch. I even spotted a few revelers from Illucia, the border kingdom to our north, though they were probably only here for festival discounts on Rhodairen weapons. Or maybe they were guards for the visiting Illucian dignitaries.

That was probably what had my mother on edge: their presence, and their queen who threatened war. She’d already taken two kingdoms.

Someone seized my arm, spinning me around. Kiva grinned down at me, her moonlight-colored hair freed from its characteristic braid and down to her shoulders in waves. She still wore her castle guard uniform, making her look older—sometimes I doubted she owned anything else. She even had her sword at her hip.

“I was starting to think you weren’t coming!” she shouted above the clamor.

“And let you eat all the orange cakes?”

“Typical. Here for the food.”

I nodded at her uniform. “Hoping to impress someone?” She’d been flirting with a girl at Rua’s for weeks now.

Kiva’s cheeks burned, and she nudged me with her shoulder.

I grinned. “Race you.”