Shendelzare staggered through the snow, her talon-liked feet sinking deeply with each step. The screaming wind tore at her blood matted hair, at her torn silk robes, biting into her skin. She felt her tears drying on her cheeks as they fell, the blood trickling down the side of her face freezing in the mountain blizzard.

The jewels that had once graced her neck had been ripped off by the winds as she'd fallen from the Eyrie, as had her rings. Her brow felt unnaturally light without the weight of her tiara upon it, but her heart was heavier than it had been in years.

Her foot fell into a deep pothole and she fell forwards, face first into the snow. She spat out the snow and pulled her face out, the ice stinging her gaunt cheeks, her warm blood coating her back. Her spirit begged her to stop struggling, to give up, to let the ice and snow cover her, to let the white death spirit her away.

She turned where she lay, her bleeding back digging into the snow. The snow covered mountain side shown so brightly that it scorched its image into her retinas. She saw clouds upon clouds, a sea of white around and above her. Was it her imagination or was that the shadow of a winged figure far above, watching her?

The balcony's marble felt cold under her arms as she leant against it, the mellow warmth of the rising Sun upon her skin, a soft wind plucking at her long platinum hair and her white dress, real silk from below the clouds.

How long had she been waiting already? The Sun had nearly risen completely over the clouded horizon, he wasn't usually late. She wrung her thing wrists worriedly, maybe her sister had been meddling again, her sister was always meddling. They hated each other, but would she go as far as to strike Dragonus?

She felt like ripping out her wings. How could she have been so stupid? To think that anyone she knew would be safe? Especially Dragonus? He would be a prime target, she'd send someone to clip his wings in his sleep or maybe-

The sound of talons scraping against marble. She spun around and there he was, standing framed in the glass archway to the balcony. He'd changed since she'd last saw him, his cheeks a bit gaunter, his arms a bit thinner and his eyes bloodshot from candle smoke and reading in the dark, and most unsettling were his wings. The feathers looked sparser around the edges and the white and brown mottled wings seemed to be folded too tightly behind his back. She glanced at her own wings, strong and filled out with full, completely white feathers.

But his tired face still had the same endearing eyes like solid sapphires, his smile was still filled with the same quiet confidence.

She sighed deeply and leaned against the balcony, feigning relaxation. "About time, I could have you executed for having Royalty wait on you."

His smile only widened and he joined her on the balcony's edge. "Patience is a virtue, you know?"

"So is punctuality."

"That's a quality," Dragonus pointed out. "Besides the point, you look different."

She scoffed in amazement. "I look different? Look at you!" She took the chance to put her hand on his cheek and turn his face to examine it. "You've gotten thinner. You know you can take a break from studying."

"Yes, and I can throw myself from this tower as well. Doesn't mean it's good for me."

She smiled softly at his words. He held her hand on his face and pulled it away. His eyes narrowed at her embarrassingly prominent eye bags. "You haven't been sleeping well have you?"

He was right, as usual. She sighed, "It's my sister. I'm barely out of my teens and she's just stepped into them, but she's already got eyes on the Eyrie!"

"But you're the older sister!"

"Exactly, I fear she means to change that, she keeps on talking about succeeding Father and how she would dictate the kingdom and- no, I won't talk about it anymore."

She sighed and turned around, looking out over the balcony. A sea of clouds spread out before her, countless white ivory towers rising from them. The very peak of the mountain their city's roots were built upon was lost in the clouds.

"I called for you today because I just needed… someone here, someone I knew. A real friend."

Her calling him a 'real friend' obviously made him light up with joy. His eyes lost their tired light and he opened his mouth to say something, but she quickly laid one finger over his lips, silencing him. She didn't want him to ruin the moment.

"Shut up, just enjoy the view with me."

No!

She felt a pang of anger, searing hot and forcing out all her other emotions through her skin. Her hands threw themselves out into the snow, almost of their own accord, and pushed her up to her feet. She wouldn't let her little sister have the deranged, gleeful joy of watching precious poor little Shendelzare freeze to death.

Her feet slid themselves through the snow and she forced her body to tumble through forward, where too she wasn't quite sure, but away from the mountain, into the land below the clouds. She should feel scared, but her heart beat fast only out of anger.

There was something digging into her side. She reached down and ripped it out along with a good portion of her already ruined robe. She looked at the mess of bloodied silken rags and removed what had been digging into her, a silver pendant.

"Listen to me, Shen!"

She marched out into the balcony, her albino white wings flared in indignation and she kept silent as she grabbed the marble rails and leant over, as if she wanted to fall off and fly away.

Dragonus' talons clicked against the floor as he followed her, desperately trying to explain to her what she knew. She spat to herself, Assassins! She actually sent assassins!

Her little sister hated her with a vengeance, that she knew, but they were family. Flesh and blood. To the Skywrath, that counted for something, you never killed family no matter how heinous their sin. Even judges turned over death-penalty cases to other judges if their family was the convicted so they wouldn't be the one to give the sentence.

Dragonus didn't touch her but she heard his voice. "You can't deny the facts, she wants you dead."

She didn't answer him. Her wings remained spread but now they hung around her like a curtain, hiding her face from him.

"I traced their path myself, their flight leads all the way to your sister's tower. There's no doubt now."

Her voice was strange when it came out. "I know there isn't… it's just that we're family! We hate each other but we don't do this to each other!"

She stayed there for quite awhile, silent, faintly aware that he was still there. She heard his quiet voice, cautiously speaking to her. "Shen, come on, look at me."

His hand against her wing, pushing it out of the way so he could look at her in the face, but she looked away.

"Shen, I didn't come up here to upset you. There's another reason."

She heard him pulling something out from within his study robes. "Things are changing, Shen, I won't be able to leave my studies to visit you anymore, and your parents will want to prepare you for rule. I want you to hold onto to this."

His rough hands, now more like talons as well, gently caressed her face and made her look at him. He had something in his other hand, something silver.

He held up the silver object to the light for her to see. It was a pendant, a flat black circle of stone inlaid with an ornate carving of silver, a wreath of branches held up by a pair of wings. "It's enchanted, so if you are ever in need of help, just hold it to your lips and ask for help. I will hear and you will hear my voice answer you, and I will come to your aid."

Shendelzare scoffed at the idea of him saving her, most of the time it was her helping him out with her royal status.

He said, sensing her thoughts, "I am not young or helpless anymore."

He was right. Lines of brown feathers were beginning to appear around his eyes with age, his face was longer and less boyish than before. He didn't look malnourished anymore, his years in study seemed to actually make him healthier. And his eyes. They didn't glow with joy anymore, instead they gleamed morosely with a great weight, as if his studies had taught him too many secrets he didn't want to know. And she knew the power he hid behind those eyes, the product of years of magical study.

Her hand slid into his and took the pendant, placing it against her skin. She looked back at Dragonus and forced a smile. "Thank you."

Shendelzare felt a feeling like a knife had been shoved into her chest and dug out her heart. She flung the pendant into the wind, the silver twinkling in the air, before it disappeared into the white.

Then a sound, a great noise that rung clear through the wailing wind. Metal striking stone.

She rose to her feet, squinting in the direction of where she'd thrown her pendant. There was something there, she wasn't sure what, but something, something other than snow, and that was reason enough.

Shendelzare trudged through the waist high snow and didn't even realise the ice was there until she'd walked into it. She laid a hand against it, a huge block, half hidden in snow, so clean and clear that it shone like a mirror. The pendant was imbedded halfway into the ice, stuck firmly.

Her reflection glared back at her, startling to her. Her long platinum hair was matted to her skin with blood, her normally pale skin even paler than before and splattered with red, her precious white silken robes looked as if it had never been any colour before besides red. There were deep cuts on her sunken cheeks, crisscross red lines where the net had dug into her, but she didn't see them, she only saw her wings.

Her tears, dried by anger and the wind, began to flow again, carving paths down her blood stained cheeks. She reached back but didn't dare to touch them, what was left of them…

The Sun was setting in the West, but it had long ago disappeared beneath a slurry of clouds. Shendelzare hadn't seen feather nor skin of Dragonus since he'd gifted her with the pendant three years ago, and she knew it wasn't helping her. She'd tried to keep up the confident, beautiful scion look to intimidate her sister but it was getting harder and harder to even face her every day.

Her friends disappeared mysteriously and without evidence, the friends of her friends disappeared without any trace. Within a year of her sister's first attempt on Shendelzare's life she'd lost almost every one of her confidants and associates, within two those that remained had distanced themselves to save their skin.

Informants told her that the Mages Circles were conflicted. Few of them still supported the sick and dying King, Father, and the rest were conflicted between Shendelzare and her sister. Dragonus, proved to be an extremely powerful and potent wielder of magic, had remained neutral, disheartening her. She'd expected him to support her.

She leant against the balcony, imagining Dragonus striding up behind her, his talons clicking against the ground, the feathers around his eyes beautifully accenting those strong eyes, his chest puffed out as he paraded the hard earned Mage armour upon his shoulders and wings. He would look so handsome in them.

Her hand strayed to the pendant, hanging on her neck, for the millionth time that day. She'd resisted calling him for help and had no reason to do so ever since she'd gotten it, but that didn't mean she didn't want to. Her heart ached without someone to confide in or a friend to unwind with.

Shendelzare looked to the East, away from the setting Sun that cast beautiful orange and crimson lines across the clouds. There was a tiny shadow of a bird gliding far away and fancied that he would fly towards her, that she would see his white and brown mottled feathers, sapphire eyes and puffed out chest with that mage staf-

A click on the marble behind her. She felt her heart fly with elation and spun around, her hands pressed to her mouth to keep herself from crying out with joy. The words of a hundred unsaid conversations over three years were on her tongue, ready to roll of and bombard Dragonus.

But it wasn't Dragonus standing there, she wasn't sure what it was. A hunched figure, crouching low to the ground, a troll or goblin creature with yellow skin and a crimson sash around its mouth, a blade in each hand and a shuriken on its back.

It took her a moment to comprehend what she was seeing, then her mind registered the blades, the shuriken, the deadly gleam in its eyes. She spread her wings and prepared to dive backwards over the balcony but the assassin was faster, pulling something out from the pack on its back and flinging it towards her, expanding as it flew.

Shendelzare had rose half a metre before the bladed net wrapped around her, pinning her wings and arms to her sides painfully as the razor lines bit. She screamed as she fell back painfully to the balcony, the net digging into her flesh and wings and robes, drawing blood and tearing feathers and silk .

She thrashed around but this only forced the net's lines deeper, forcing her to lie still there, bleeding. Her eyes fixed on the Assassin, advancing cautiously, and hissed, "You cannot comprehend what you've done, Assassin! I will make sure my guards gut you and string your entrails out for the vultures of Scree'auk!"

It hissed back, "I prefer, Bounty Hunter."

She bared her sharp teeth and hissed again. "You would be executed for spilling a drop of Scion Blood, for this I will make sure you die slowly and painfully."

"That's a surprise," the Bounty Hunter crouched down and looked her in the eyes with his cold hard orbs. "Your sister told me to do the same thing to you."

Her eyes narrowed. The first time her sister's assassins had actually gotten past her guards. She glanced between the Bounty Hunter's legs and saw the two guards' bodies lying past the archway in pools of blood.

"But I said I'm not an Assassin, I'm a Bounty Hunter." It grabbed the net and the blades on the lines seemed to retract, thankfully, for him to touch. And thus he began to drag her away.

She saw the pendant around her neck dragging along the marble with her, caught on the net lines. Good.

She slid one of her hands out, wincing at the pain, and grabbed the pendant and pressed it to her lips, literally kissing the cool silver and hot stone, and pleading, "Dragonus, please, help."

The Bounty Hunter heard her words and turned in alarm. He tried to kick the pendant out of her hands but she hid it back under her dress, torn as it was. The Bounty Hunter realised what had happened and snarled, "Well, your sister did say 'Dead or Alive'."

He raised one of the blades in his hands and brought it down in the same motion upon her. In her struggling she managed to roll her body to one side. The blade sheared through the net against her back and only left a shallow gash on her skin.

She shrugged off the net and scrambled away, grimacing as her wounded skin touched the icy marble. She took Dragonus' pendant and pressed it to her ear, listening intently for any response, any at all, but there was nothing. Silence. Cold, dead Silence.

The Bounty Hunter snarled and reached up to the Shuriken on his back. Shendelzare ran for the edge of the balcony. She could hear his growls of exertion, the whoosh of blades slicing through air. She reached the edge and threw herself off of it, spreading her wings and arms as one and feeling the wind under them. A triumphant smile crossed her lips, she was invincible now, the sky belonged to the Skywrath!

Then a sickly sound, like splintering wood and cracking stone over ripping flesh. A horrible roaring pain in her back, so great she didn't feel anything besides the searing pain. She didn't feel the wind under her feathers, the strength in her shoulders, the power in her wings. She didn't feel them at all as she fell.

Shendelzare looked at her reflection, growling at it as if it was the one who'd taken her wings. Her reflection had no wings, just tiny little nubs of cracked, exposed bone there with red, raw flesh around it. That wasn't right. She had wings, albino white ones that were the most beautiful in the Kingdom, that wasn't her, that wasn't her.

She took her hand away from her back and smudged the blood across the ice, but still she could see her ruined body. Her eyes narrowed in fury and she wiped off the blood from her skin, smearing it onto the ice. She wiped more and more blood onto it until her reflection was completely hidden behind a wall of bloody handprints and lines, seeming to suck in the light of the bright snow around it.

Shendelzare knew she should be scared, she was alone on a mountain, the savages of Under the Clouds below, the now unreachable towers of her kingdom above. She could never climb the sheer slopes of the mountain, they rose without any inclines at all, she'd never return without wings.

But instead of feeling scared and alone she felt angry. She felt betrayed. Dragonus said he'd reply her calls for help, that he'd appear to save her. Her face contorted in a horrible scowl she was glad she couldn't see. Her closest friend had betrayed her, the one person who could've saved her had not, and because of him her wings were gone.

I was going to be a Queen. She knelt, half buried in snow, and looked at her wounded wrists. Why wouldn't he help me? The only people who would gain from her death were people who… who supported her sister. Dragonus supported her sister. Her slender fingers clenched in anger and she glared at the wall of blood.

Her fists tore at her hair and tears flowed down her cheeks. She'd been stupid enough to trust him! To think he'd save her! This was treachery, he as well as killed her with his own hands by giving her the silent stone. He was probably with her sister right now, watching her through an enchanted looking glass, laughing at her dying figure.

No. She wasn't going to die here.

I will not give them the satisfaction.

Shendelzare grabbed the pendant embedded in the bloodslick ice and pried it out, she bloodied her fingertips and scraped them bloody but she managed to rip out the pendant. Her eyes fixated on the wall of bloodied ice, and then she dug the pendant in the ice and began to scrape.

Even she, a princess, knew the power of symbols, especially when invoked in blood, especially symbols of malevolent deities. She had seen the symbol a thousand times before in curses in tomes and scrolls, scrawled across letters to her by supporters of her sister.

She carved out a circle in the blood covered ice with the pendant, then a shape within it, a vulture's head help up by outstretched claws. The sigil of the Goddess Scree'auk, Goddess of the Vulture, the Hateful, the Spiteful, the Vengeful.

Her eyes bore into the symbol carved in bloodied ice as she knelt before it, the pendant clasped between her palms. She bent over in prayer and when she spoke her voice alarmed her, hoarse and broken. "Scree'auk, Vulture of the Gods and God of Vultures, she who ate the corpse of the child of Avilliva, she who plants thorns within nests, hear the prayer of this child forsaken by flesh and blood."

Shendelzare looked up and looked into the eyes of the vulture carving. "I beg one thing of you, Mother of the Hateful, that you allow me to carry your hatred into the hearts of those that once walked with me, those that once flew with me." Her hands tightened around the warm pendant. "Those that once loved with me."

"Grant me the power to be an Incarnation of Will, a Visage of Spite, a Spirit of Vengeance." She spoke without apprehension, the words flowing though she'd never heard them. "Take this body, broken and bloodied, and give me a new one to strike fear into those that wronged me."

The wind seemed to disappear, though her hair still blew and her dress still billowed. The snow seemed to stop falling and the ice seemed to grow colder, so cold that it scalded her. A voice, grating and alien, layered over by a sound like a wild beasts hiss.

And what, child, will you do when you dig your claws into their hearts?

She smiled.

"I will kill them."