Chapter 2

Two

After his shower, Fieran followed the raucous sounds of laughter to the dining room.

Most of the family was already gathered there. Adry lunged past Elliana, Fieran's youngest sister, to reach for the plate of bacon. Her red hair in a braid similar to Mama's, Ellie lifted her book out of the way and stuck out her tongue at Adry. Louise smothered her pancakes with syrup while Tryndar bounced in his seat as he valiantly tried to keep his syrup from drooling into his eggs.

Mama sat at one end of the table, her green eyes bright as she listened to the cacophony. Tryndar was telling her about his soldiers. Adry chattered about practice that morning.

Fieran plunked into his seat and took the plate of bacon from Adry. "Telling Mama all about my embarrassing sword practice this morning?"

"Nope." Adry gave him a far too innocent expression in return.

"Of course you didn't." Fieran piled bacon and eggs on his plate.

The door opened, and Dacha strode inside, his hair wet down his back. He took his seat at the head of the table, though he didn't add anything to the general hubbub. The elven moss earplugs tucked into his ears kept the noise level from becoming too overwhelming for him.

Fieran claimed one of the daily newspapers that had been tossed into the center of the table and flicked through it. The headlines were filled with speculations about the possibilities of war alongside another scandal from the Escarlish royal family. Fieran didn't know that set of cousins—well, cousins several times removed—but they were forever getting up to some scandal or another, much to his ninety-seven-year-old uncle Averett's chagrin.

After flipping to the second page, Fieran stilled, taking in the column. Both the Tarenhieli and Escarlish Flying Corps were actively recruiting new pilots. For the past year, the Flying Corps had been recruiting trained pilots. But they were now ready to take on new recruits with the intent to begin joint operations between the two Corps in the near future.

Flying.The rush of air. The whoosh of the breeze beneath the wings of his aeroplane. Something inside Fieran soared.

Better yet, Dacha had never fought in a flyer. He was a warrior of swords and hand-to-hand combat. If Fieran fought the coming war in the infantry, he would always be the second-best warrior, after his dacha.

But he could make his own legends in the sky.

Not that he resented his dacha. But always carrying the burden of those legends grew wearisome, especially when he could never measure up.

Fieran shoveled the last of his eggs into his mouth, grabbed both his plate and the newspaper, and hopped to his feet. "Adry, Weezer, I'll meet you at the carriage house to drive into Aldon."

Louise rolled her eyes at the childhood nickname. Adry just flapped a hand at him, still locked in conversation with Elliana, who was sneaking glances at her book.

If Fieran were to guess, all Ellie wanted was for Adry to stop talking so she could disappear back into her book, which appeared to be the latest Star Forest novel, a very fictional, highly inaccurate adventure romance story about an elf warrior falling in love with a human princess in the bygone days when the elven empire ruled the continent. The novels had recently been turned into a moving picture sensation sweeping across both Tarenhiel and Escarland.

Sticking the newspaper under his arm, Fieran hurriedly washed his plate and fork. Then he dashed out the back door, slid down the iron railings to avoid Tryndar's toy warriors, and raced down the path.

Uncle Iyrinder and Aunt Patience's house was tucked into a glade in the forested parkland. While the two-story house was built in the square, box-like Escarlish style, it had live trees at each corner with a roof formed of interlaced branches. Several neat gables peeked through the branches, adding more light for the upstairs. The front porch had pillars formed of living trees.

Skidding to a halt, Fieran knocked on the door, hardly able to stand still on the back step.

The door opened, and Aunt Patience stood there with a crisp white apron over her blue floral print dress, her blonde hair in a neat bun at the back of her head. "Fieran. Is anything wrong?"

"No, nothing's wrong. Everyone's fine. Is Merrik done eating yet?" Fieran rocked back and forth from heels to toes, barely restraining himself from rushing inside and grabbing Merrik by the arm like he used to when they were both boys. He'd dragged Merrik away from many a meal, filled with ideas for a new game or a new fort or some other grand scheme.

Merrik appeared behind his mother, still holding his plate of pancakes. "So eager to start blowing up test engines?"

"Yes, but it isn't that." Fieran clenched and unclenched his fingers so he didn't just haul Merrik outside.

Merrik sighed, shoved the rest of his pancake in his mouth, and handed his plate to Aunt Patience. He eased past her, shutting the door behind him on the way out. "Well, what is it?"

At least, that was what Fieran thought he said past his mouthful of pancakes.

Fieran unfurled the paper and jabbed his finger at the column. "Look. The Flying Corps is actively looking to recruit new pilots. For training."

Merrik swallowed, then took the paper from Fieran, scanning the news story quickly. Finally, he lifted his gaze and eyed Fieran. "You want to enlist."

"Yes! I'm sure your dacha has been pushing you as hard in training as my dacha has. War is coming. If we wait to join up, then we'll spend the first months of the war in training and miss everything." Fieran gestured, trying to put into words all the desperate hunger in his chest. "This way, we can choose our own path instead of being drafted into the infantry. We can fly, Merrik. Thanks to the Wall, that's where the real war will be. In the air."

"You want to join the Flying Corps." Merrik huffed it out as a statement, all but rolling his eyes. "What about joining the navy? Everyone knows the war will be fought with airships rather than flyers."

"You know I've wanted to fly from the first time I saw that aeroplane show a few years ago." Fieran jabbed a finger at the paper. "If we enlist in the navy, there's no guarantee we'd even be stationed on an airship. Even if we were, we'd just be two ensigns among many. If we are in the army's Flying Corps, we'll be officers in charge of our own aeroplanes. With the lack of trained pilots, we might find ourselves in command of our own squadrons within a few months."

"I do not think it will be that simple." Merrik shook his head with that long-suffering look he often wore around Fieran.

"Maybe not, but our odds of quick promotion are pretty high." Fieran grinned, already imagining a sharp uniform and a few officer braids adorning his sleeves.

Their odds of a quick death would be pretty high too. Aeroplane pilots had a tendency to crash and die frequently.

But they'd be in less danger of that than most. Everyone knew that the superior elven reflexes made them superior pilots, and elven flyer pilots died less frequently than human ones. Fieran and Merrik were half-elves. They'd be fine.

"You would last longer giving commands than taking them," Merrik muttered, half under his breath.

Fieran just waved that away. "This is our chance to finally do something. Something great. Not just twiddle our thumbs testing engines and following orders in our dachas' factory. We can be warriors, like our dachas were."

Merrik grimaced. "You are not going to let this go, are you? You will just enlist whether I do or not."

"Nope, and yep." Fieran probably should've felt bad that he was dragging Merrik along, as he always did. But this was far too exciting to hesitate.

Merrik heaved a sigh. "Escarlish or Tarenhieli Flying Corps?"

Thanks to having parents from Escarland and Tarenhiel, both Merrik and Fieran were dual citizens and could join either army, if they wished.

"If we join the Tarenhieli Flying Corps, we'll just be seen as less than, never able to measure up to our dachas." Fieran frowned and shook his head. "I don't really want to be up there flying with a bunch of snooty elves who never let me forget that I'm only half the elf my dacha is. Of course, we'll end up in the sky with elves eventually since the Flying Corps intends to operate as one Allied unit, but at least we would answer to Escarlish commanders instead of elven ones, for the most part."

Merrik, too, frowned. "Many elves in the army have never forgotten that my dacha gave up the noble duty of guarding the king to follow your dacha to Escarland."

Not that Merrik's dacha had done anything wrong, but elves could be particular about certain things. There was also the little matter that long ago Fieran's dacha had been born an illegitimate prince. The elves never forgot that either, despite the legends.

"The EFC it is." Fieran would much rather join the Escarlish army, where he would be a famed elf who was physically stronger than those around him, than join the Tarenhieli army where he would be considered weaker.

"Yes." Merrik's jaw tightened, far more somber about this than Fieran was. "Fine. When do you want to sign up?"

"As soon as possible. Today, even. We're going to Aldon anyway. We can sign up during our lunch break."

"Today." Merrik crossed his arms, eyeing him. "Should we not think this through a little longer than that? Maybe talk it over with our dachas?"

The thought of telling his dacha was a weight thumping Fieran back to the ground. His dacha wouldn't be happy about this, even if he knew Fieran was going to have to fight, eventually.

"More time isn't going to change my mind. And…maybe we can hold off on telling our dachas until after we've done it?" If only there was a way Fieran could just avoid telling his dacha entirely. He wasn't looking forward to seeing the look on his face.

Merrik glanced over his shoulder at the closed door, something flicking through his eyes. Perhaps he had similar thoughts when it came to telling his own family because, after a moment, he nodded. "Fine."

Fieran held out his palm. "It's a deal."

"No, do not—"

Fieran spat onto his palm, then held out his hand to Merrik.

"Do we have to? It is rather childish." Merrik grimaced, not reaching for Fieran's hand.

"Come on. One last time. A sign of our enduring brotherhood as we go into battle together." Fieran wiggled his fingers, his hot spit sliding down his palm.

He and Merrik had sealed their deals with spit from the time they had been young and read a fiction series about an elf and a human who had become friends and like brothers during a time when the elves and humans had been at war with each other. The stories caught their imaginations, and they had pretended to be those two friends in many of their games, with Merrik as the elf and Fieran as the human.

"This is highly unsanitary and immature." Merrik spat onto his palm, then shook Fieran's hand, their spit squishing between them.

Merrik grimaced; Fieran grinned.

This was going to be a grand adventure. Fieran was finally going to fly.