I pressed my mouth to Tiras’s chest and moved my lips around the shape of the word he’d become, taking it from him.
“Elgae.”
His breast was warm, and his life force lingered, but his spirit wanted to fly, fly, fly. It was the only word left, and it resisted me even as I called it back and took it away, just like I’d done to the poppet clenched in my mother’s fist the day it all began.
“Ylf.”
As I moved my lips against his chest, pulling the word into myself, I felt the smallest crack, a fissure, and wind whistled through my lips. Just like the poppet, Tiras was quiet, a shell of something that no longer stirred.
I’d taken his word, his final word, and drawn it into myself.
And still he lay motionless, wings fluttering in the pre-dawn darkness, eyes closed, not an eagle, not a man.
“Tiras.” I spoke against his lips, desperate to give him a new word, new life. “Tiras,” I said again, straining against the rust in my throat, wanting to speak his name into being, but there was no change in him.
I threw back my head in rage and sorrow, the fissure in my throat widening, even as I tried to reclaim Tiras from the sky, taking away my mother’s words.
Yks eht morf! I mourned, Yks eht morf!
But there was no answer from the sky. I had lost him. It was foretold, and it had come to pass.
I felt a hand on my arm and heard my name being spoken, but I would not lift my head from the king.
“Yer wounded, Lark. Yer bleeding.” Boojohni tried to pull me away.
I can’t heal him, Boojohni. I tried to make him change so he could heal himself. But he’s not a man or a bird . . . He’s both.
“What word did ye give him, Lark?” Boojohni asked urgently.
I moaned, trying to speak out loud and failing, the words like rocks against my teeth, awkward and sharp.
“The day yer mother died, ye kissed his hand. I saw ye! And ye whispered something. What word did ye give him?”
I could only stare in despair, shaking my head. I didn’t give him a word.
“Ye did,” Boojohni argued.
I couldn’t remember. I remembered my mother and Zoltev’s sword. I remembered her telling me to be silent.
“Do ye remember Tiras at all? He was just a boy. A boy on a big, black horse.”
I closed my eyes, making myself go back to that day.
“Ye have to remember,” Boojohni pled, his voice hoarse. “He talked to you.”
He’d talked to me.
And he’d been . . . kind.
He’d smiled.
And he’d told me his horse’s name.
I remembered.
It was the biggest, blackest, horse I’d ever seen—but I wasn’t afraid. I was never afraid of the animals. Their words were so simple and easy to understand. This horse wanted to run. He didn’t want to stand in the courtyard and hold still, but he did. He knew his duty. The prince wanted to run too. He was bored, and he wanted to be free of the guard around him and the fear of the people that bowed and kneeled whenever he was introduced. His father enjoyed seeing people bow. He didn’t. He wanted to run. To fly.
The prince’s eyes caught on something overhead, and his yearning was instantaneous and bright.
He wished he could trade places with the bird.
Then he looked down at me and smiled, releasing the yearning that made me hurt for him. He slid down from his mount and held out his hand to me. I took it without hesitation. He ran his other hand down the horse’s long nose.
“His name is Mikiya.” His voice was already husky and low, like a man’s voice, though he wasn’t yet a man.
I repeated the name on a whisper. Mikiya. It was a funny name, but I liked the way the word felt in my mouth.
“It means eagle,” he added. “Because he wants to fly.”
I still held his hand in mine, and my mother stepped forward to draw me back, away from the prince and his horse.
I kissed his hand, and I gave the prince a word so that he could fly away if he wanted to . . .
Mikiya.
“Mikiya,” I said, the word sloppy and awkward in my mouth. My tongue was unaccustomed to speech. I looked up at Boojohni, desperate to say it correctly.
“Mikiya,” I repeated. “Eagle.”
“Take it away, Bird,” Boojohni urged. I pressed my lips to Tiras’s breast once more and withdrew the word I’d inadvertently cursed him with.
“Ayikim,” I breathed. “Ayikim.”
“Lark . . . look!” Boojohni crowed softly. “Look!”
The roots of Tiras’s hair became inky and rich, the color spilling from his scalp and rippling down the white locks that brushed his shoulders, until his hair was completely black once more. The broken wings that jutted out of his back began to shiver and curl into themselves like parchment engulfed in flame, disintegrating into nothing more substantial than ash. We watched, awestruck, as the ash held the shape of wings for a single heartbeat, then whirled up and away, erased from existence.
Tiras’s right hand lay against his chest, the talons chipped and encrusted with blood. Suddenly the talons were gone, swallowed back into the pads of his fingers, leaving them perfectly rounded and whole once more.
“Tiras,” I croaked, begging him to open his eyes, wanting to see if the restoration was complete. But he didn’t move. He didn’t even stir.
I had taken away the word, but he was not healed.
I smoothed his chest with shaking hands, streaking it with the blood that wept from my side. I breathed a spell of healing—ill-formed words from my unpracticed tongue—calling on my mother who had loved me, on a God of Words who had given me my gift, and on Tiras himself who had flown beyond my reach.