They didn't bother to chase Hadlow and his men. Their warriors needed a rest more than they needed to face some of the best of the Kallian soldiers, even if they could have caught up with and defeated them relatively easily.

Myra herself was bone-weary. From the battle yesterday and the tension today, yes, but also from the great toll Rhea and Reyna's deaths had taken on her. My fault, my fault, my fault, the winds seemed to whisper. Her feeble reply of their choice never seemed to deter the loathing she held for herself.

But Myra Isidore was a general. She had faced such things before. Every step of war was a sacrifice; a careful calculation of how many lives were lost against how many were saved, a methodical trade of hundreds of lives for miles of land. Rhea and Reyna were just another heartrending calculation. Two lives to save five hundred. An easy, yet impossible choice.

She had given the note back to Kestra, no matter how much she itched to open it. Myra kept her promises, especially to her daughter.

Except that one. The one that still haunted her: I am never going to leave you again. It was a lie and she knew it was a lie from the moment it slid off her tongue. She was a general. A War Queen. One day soon, she would leave Kestra again to fight in the war brewing across the Lost Continent. To do otherwise would be to break another oath, an oath to her people to never abandon them, to never stop fighting, to never let personal life get in the way of her duty.

But Myra's duty was a tiresome, wearisome thing, a thing that she had followed for almost a century. It had taken over her life, become her so completely that the lines between the Dragon and Myra blurred and shifted. Hadn't she given enough? Her mother, her best friends, her daughter's childhood?

Myra thought of Rhea and Reyna again and reddened with shame. How had she entertained such selfish thoughts mere hours after the twins had given their lives for the cause they shared?

"Look up," Kestra said softly, her voice reverent. Myra turned up to face the sky and smiled.

Above them, a fleet of wyverns and gryphons graced the skies. Three thousand of them in an endless tapestry of scales and fur of a thousand colours. They swooped down, wings thundering in a way so familiar that Myra almost cried.

And riding them...valkyries. On a third of the mounts, valkyrie warriors gripped on for dear life, letting out whoops of joy.

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Rose

"There are three thousand of them," Myra repeated, dumbstruck.

"Yes," Rose replied. "Two thousand gryphons; one thousand wyverns, Your Majesty."

"And a thousand of the retired warriors," Myra said slowly.

"Yes," she agreed. "They're missing limbs or half-blind or deaf in one ear or just retired but they can fight alright. Additionally, they're all former members of the Aerial Legion. I imagine they'll be just as good as most valkyrie warriors on a gryphon or wyvern."

"Perfect," Myra smiled. "And Rose?"

"Yes, Your Majesty?"

"I find myself in need of an heir. You did well with the gryphons and wyverns. Would you like the position?"

"It has been my dream," Rose said, barely able to speak. War Heir! The very words sounded impossible in her own head.

The next few days were a rush of preparations. Rebels and miners from the Battle of the Warrior's Forest—Rose had been dumbstruck by the details of the battle—had mounted the remaining two thousand steeds and taken to the air-Myra had found Caelia's son and was now inseparable from the dark blue wyvern-towards the rebel base.

Once they arrived, Myra and Kestra had at last been able to be crowned properly. Their coronations were rushed and humble affairs, temporary solutions until they could reclaim Azul and have a proper ceremony. Once the two queens were crowned, Rose soon followed. She still wasn't used to be called Isidore, and doubted she ever would be. It was beyond her wildest dreams as a child. Yet now, after all she'd faced and lost so much the title seemed to feel so much less than she ever thought it would. The crowns, the ambition...they no longer stirred something in her. They were at war and her best friend was dead.

What could a surname matter then? She'd led the valkyries for years now. The job had always felt incomplete without the Isidore on the end but now...nothing felt different. It was a mere ceremony and they were still at war. More enthusing was the discovery of the wyverns and gryphons and the freedom of her queen. That meant hope. That meant a chance at a better world.

With a War Queen, a Keeper Queen and a War Heir crowned, Rose's trainees were finally anointed. From the fourteen-year-olds that had just begun to fight to the twenty-two-year-olds that had waited far too long, every single valkyrie soldiers was initiated, including the trainers and retired

that no longer bore rank.

Lilith, her Second was installed as the General of the Foot Soldiers to Rose's pride. One of the younger trainers—Bronwyn—took on her old position as General of the Calvary. Gemma accepted the position General of the Aerial Legion proudly. Equally proud was her dark-brown-and-black gryphon, who held her head high up in the air and looked down her nose at every other wyvern or gryphon in the now-crowded camp. Gemma she'd discovered possessed not one but two disabilities: the first of course being the loss of her left eye and the second, her lack of an animal form. Both were stolen from her when she was captured during the God-Born War, and Rose shivered to think of what it must have been like to have an elf sever your very form. But despite both of these things, Gemma was the best warriors she'd ever seen.

It was a wise move, Rose reflected afterwards. Three Unit Generals to represent each faction of their army; Lilith for the former trainees, Bronwyn for the older teachers and Gemma for the guardians of the wyverns and gryphons.

After the hurried ceremonies were completed, the matter of the Aerial Legion was addressed:

The only people in their army who could fly decently were five of the teachers—although fifty remained, only ten had been in the Aerial legion and only half those could still fight—the retired valkyries and Myra Isidore herself. That only covered roughly a thousand of their three thousand mounts so the matter of training the rest was a priority.

The valkyrie trainees from before the war-eight hundred to begin with, but only seven hundred left-had a bit of training with the gryphons and wyverns, the eldest possessing the most and those who were nine when the Empress invaded knowing only how to brush them, were still mostly clueless about bringing them into battle, so it didn't really matter who rode them as

long as they were put to use.

Myra held try-outs for the entire army-including Tarua Teris and the elves. When some of the valkyries protested at the inclusion of elves and humans in the Aerial Legion Myra simply gave them a long, lethal look and said: 'If they can fly better than you, I'm putting them in. And by the looks of things, your heads will carry too much weight for the poor animals to get off the ground.'

Rose had felt tempted to clap.

"Don't expect to be shooting arrows off wyverns and doing flips on the backs of gryphons anytime soon." Myra had warned the would-be-riders.
"Chances are that you're all useless at this. If you're riding, then all you're doing is holding on for dear life and steering the gryphons and wyverns into the ranks of our enemies. You're not doing anything particularly interesting. Leave them to the trained warriors. In fact if you're one of our best warriors, if you're a high-ranking captain or whatever, get out. We need you on the ground, not in the air. That includes you, Rose." Rose left the line, feeling slightly hurt until Myra ordered out half the line—and all the elves, who's abilities were all extraordinary given their positions in the Silver Court\Guard and the Second Army—with the help of Nala, Kestra and Zara's expertise. The ranks of try-outs were soon bolstered by the 'useless' ones.

"Whoever's left isn't particularly talented," Myra declared to the waiting rebels. "That's because you picked up the sword later than the rest or just

have a different set of skills, not because you're worth any less than the people who aren't in this line. Some of you are here because your little

training with a blade or a bow can be thrown away. Others are here because you have the right skill set for this job-balance, experience with animals. None of you are here because you're worthless. You're here to learn a new ability and serve the rebellion in the best way you can. In a few months the Aerial Legion is going to become a force of nature and every single person down below who's gloating about being sent out of here is going to wish they were in your shoes. So everyone pick a mount and I'll take you throw the basics."

In Rose's eyes, Training went terribly. It took an hour for the two thousand remaining mounts to allow riders. By the time they finished late that day most of the trainees could barely glide. But Myra, apparently, was happy.

"They're going faster than most people do," she said appreciatively. "Besides, we have time."

"No, we don't." Rose said, shaking her head. "There's a war going on."

"We're perfectly hidden here, Rose." Myra countered. "This place is perfect. We have time to train, to reorganise, to prepare ourselves for what's ahead."

"Time to train Layla?" Rose asked hopefully. Myra's eyes lit up.

"I've barely seen her since the battle," the valkyrie smiled. "I'll talk to her about it."

————————————————

Layla

Maia. Maia was there, standing there, right in front of her. The other half of her soul. The reflection of herself. Her sister. Her twin.

It had been five years. She had known she wasn't dead, she would have felt it. Would have felt it if the other piece of her soul was gone.

Joy was a bright and burning yellow-pink and she was running, running and running across the field, and all the world consisted of was her sister, her twin, her mirror—

They collided and held each other tight, two halves of a soul made one again after five long, long years.

Neither said a word; their souls said enough, in the strange and secret language of twins. And as she held on tight to her sister, Layla knew that at last she was whole and complete and that she would never, ever be alone again.

————————————————

Myra

"No," Layla replied distantly.

"What do you mean?" She asked, genuinely confused. "You should at least train."

"I can't—I can't train. I never have. My magic-it's too powerful and I can't control it. They sent in everyone—the most famed magic teachers in all the
archipelago. My ability is just too strong. What my parents did-combining powerhouses-was dangerous. Everyone warned them against it. My power is not natural. It cannot be trained. It cannot be controlled."

Just like that, Myra's face fell. All her hopes of Layla's devastating magic ripping through Medea's armies collapsed.

"But before—when you brought all the islands crashing to the ground—"

"I didn't control that," Layla laughed. "I just Sang and let the Song do what it wanted."

"Oh," Myra said, disappointed. A silence fell over them. There was a bond between the two queens—she could feel it in the air. The bond of two people ripped from their families and betrayed by those they most trusted and chained together, forced to endure the darkest places of the earth together. They had spent five years with only each other to keep them from drowning in their pain. That was no small thing.

"They want me to lead them," Layla said softly. "I cannot."

"You're the Elfin Queen," Myra said, frowning. "This is what you were born to do."

"I was not born to any of this," Layla said, half-hysterical. "Maia was meant to be Lady of Veron and Celeste. I wasn't meant to be Queen!"

"Then how do you explain the mark that burned in the air five years ago?" Myra asked. "I know duty, Layla. I have known it for ninety-nine years, from the moment I was taken to the Hawk Mountains to train. It has been my companion and my burden ever since. Kestra has carried it with her her whole life. There is no escaping its hold, no matter much we might want to."

"I don't want to be Queen," Layla said, tears sliding her cheeks. "I don't want any of it." The heavy blanket of silence descended once more until at last Layla whispered:

"They won't let me die. I've come all this way, escaped Dorgon and the almost-prison of the battle and they still won't let me see my family again."

"Layla—"

"I want to see them. I want my mother to hold my hand and tell me everything is okay. I want my father to sing to me again. I want it to be over."

"I saw you." The new voice was soft and sweet and smooth and mournful. Kestra. "I saw you. I used to imagine a life when I didn't wear a crown. In that perfect reality we-my mother, Viktoria, Vera and I-we had a little home in the Artist's Quarter and every once in a while, when I imagined that place, a little girl with white hair and purple eyes would slip in." Layla turned around to see Kestra.

"I was so afraid of the crown. I didn't want it. I rebelled against it with every part of me. In the end, I took the crown because my mentor had given me a crushing mission with four simple words-you must save us."

Kestra sat down next to Layla and slid her hand into the elf's. "It isn't fair. It isn't right. My mother was forced to choose between her daughter and her people because of it. But we must either face it and carry it with us or be haunted by it for the rest of our lives. Because we must. For our people."

"I don't owe the world anything." Layla said stubbornly.

"No, you certainly don't. The world has stolen your mother and your father and your home. The world has betrayed you, time and time again. But you owe your people something, simply by being born with the ability to save them."

"That isn't fair."

"No, it's not. Our duties, our burdens they are not fair or right. But they are our reality." Kestra smiled sadly. "You are like me. Neither of us wanted this, not like Myra or Rose did. Neither of us chose this and if we could we'd throw our crowns and give them to the closest person we could find. So go find your family, Layla—you have every right to. Turn your back on your duty—all the world has ever done is turn its back on you. But it will follow you and it will crush you every day of your life and whatever comes after."

"Why me?" Layla asked quietly.

"Because you are strong enough and brave enough. Because of a random lottery. Because of gods-cursed bad luck. For no reason at all. It doesn't matter now. All the matters is a single question: will you accept your burden?"

"I can't help them," Layla said, shrugging helplessly. "I'm no warrior, no mage. No brilliant military mind or diplomat. Maia is—Maia, with her lightning, Maia with her silver tongue." And that, Myra knew, was why she turned to Kestra instead. Because her sister was perfect for her role and had never doubted it. But Kestra and Layla weren't like that. They had struggled with their crowns, hated them. They still did.:

"I'm not like that, either," Kestra replied. "But I, like you, can still help them. We are symbols, figureheads. We make speeches.We led by example. We inspire. You are the Elfin Queen. There are elves all over the archipelago who would follow you to their deaths. The way you people talk about the fated heir reminds me of a cult. You could spark a rebellion."

"I'm just a girl," Layla said, shrugging helplessly.

"So am I," Kestra replied. "You have a year on me, in fact. I'll be there when you're ready to embrace this. And until you are—I'll be there to help you with whatever you need."

Myra slid out of the room, bursting with pride for her daughter and knowing that no matter what bond she shared with Layla that this was a private moment.

Kestra didn't emerge from the cave for hours and whenever Myra passed it she heard muffled laughter and smiled. This was what Layla and Kestra needed. Someone who understood them. Someone who knew what it was like to be a girl queen with the weight of the world on their shoulders. And Layla needed her sister, too, which was why she had smiled when Maia came to see her. Tears glistened in those familiar purple eyes—tears of joy, not despair.

Once, mere weeks ago, Myra and Layla had been hopeless and doomed. They had thought everything they loved was lost. In the laughter of the two young-yet-old girls, Myra heard hope at last. There were still brightness left in the world. It was in the laughter of the queens she'd just remembered were young, in the thundering of wyvern and gryphon wings, in the eyes of the nine-year-old valkyries trainees. It was in the hope glistening in the rebels' eyes, in the smiles shared across campfires, in the determination of the trainees learning to ride. It was in the Elfin Queen who greeted the dawn with hope finally blooming in her heart after five long years, in the Keeper Queen who stood strong with the sun at her back.

And it was in the War Queen who took flight once more as the dawn lit up the sky.