The birds kept falling for three days. Then they stopped. By the end of the week, the streets had been swept clean and life in Heliopolis returned to normal. The markets reopened. Children played in the squares. Nobles gossiped in the palace corridors about everything except the thing everyone was thinking about.
Orion's lessons continued, but Master Varen was distracted now. He kept a book open on his desk at all times, a thick volume bound in cracked leather that he consulted whenever Orion was doing written exercises. The History of Unnatural Events, the spine read. Orion had glimpsed the pages—handwritten, illustrated with crude drawings of plagues and fires and things that looked like monsters.
"What's the worst one?" Orion asked one afternoon, when Master Varen seemed particularly absorbed in the book.
The old man looked up. "The worst what?"
"Unnatural event. Which one was the worst?"
Master Varen was quiet for a long moment. Then he closed the book and set it aside. "The year 873. The Silent Summer. It lasted from planting to harvest. No birds sang. No insects buzzed. No animals gave birth. The crops grew, but they were hollow inside, full of dust. By winter, half the kingdom had starved." He paused. "The royal family at the time—King Theron and his three children—all died of a fever that same year. The line passed to a cousin so distant no one had even known he existed."
"Was there a Fall of Wings before it?"
"Yes. Six months before. Just like now." Master Varen's eyes were distant, seeing something that wasn't in the room. "They ignored it too."
Orion thought about that. About the birds silent, the crops hollow, the royal family dead. About a cousin nobody knew suddenly becoming king. About the possibility that the same thing could happen now.
"What did the cousin do? The one who became king?"
Master Varen blinked, coming back to the present. "He rebuilt. Slowly, carefully. It took three generations before the kingdom recovered fully. But he did it. He kept the line alive." He looked at Orion with something like approval. "That's what matters in the end. Not avoiding the disaster. Surviving it."
The days passed. Nothing happened. No plague, no invasion, no mysterious fevers. People started to relax. The markets got busier. The nobles stopped whispering. Even Kaelen seemed less tense, though he still had Orion eat only food that had been tasted first and sleep in a different room each night, a rotating schedule that only he and Orion knew.
Elara thought it was an adventure. She loved the secret moves, the whispered instructions, the game of staying one step ahead of enemies who might or might not exist. She started sleeping with a small knife under her pillow, a gift from their father that she'd named "Little Friend."
"You should get one," she told Orion. "Father would give you one if you asked."
"I'm eight."
"So? I was ten when I got mine. Two years younger than you are now, if you think about it." She grinned. "Besides, it's not about fighting. It's about having options. That's what Father says."
Orion didn't ask for a knife. But he started paying more attention during his riding lessons, watching how Jorek moved, how he stayed balanced in the saddle, how he could control a thousand-pound animal with a shift of weight. He started asking questions.
"If someone tried to pull me off Storm, what would I do?"
Jorek raised an eyebrow. "Someone trying to pull you off Storm would have bigger problems than you. That horse bites."
"But if they did?"
The stable master considered. "Kick. Not at them—at the horse. Get Storm moving. A moving target's harder to hit, and Storm's faster than anyone on foot." He demonstrated with his own horse, a quick heel tap that sent the animal into a trot. "See? Simple. But it takes practice. You have to do it without thinking."
They practiced. By the end of the month, Orion could go from standing to full gallop in three seconds flat. Jorek seemed impressed, though with Jorek it was hard to tell.
The nights were the hardest. Lying in whatever room he'd been assigned, listening to sounds that might be nothing and might be everything. A servant walking past. A guard changing shift. The wind rattling a shutter. Every noise could be a threat. Every shadow could hide an assassin.
Orion started keeping a journal. Not the kind Master Varen assigned for lessons, but a private one he hid in a loose stone behind the tapestry in his mother's sitting room. He wrote down everything he noticed. Who seemed nervous. Who asked too many questions. Who avoided eye contact when the king walked past.
It wasn't much. But it was something. It was a way of fighting back without fighting at all.
One night, about two months after the birds fell, he woke to find his father sitting in a chair by the window. The moon was full, lighting the room in silver, and Kaelen's face was half in shadow.
"Couldn't sleep?" Orion asked, his voice thick with drowsiness.
"No. I was thinking." Kaelen didn't turn. "When I was your age, I used to lie awake at night and imagine what I'd do if someone came for my father. I had whole scenarios planned out. Where I'd hide. How I'd get help. Who I'd trust." He paused. "None of it mattered. I was asleep when they came for him. I didn't hear a thing until the screaming started."
Orion sat up, fully awake now. "That wasn't your fault."
"No. It wasn't. But I've spent thirty years wishing I'd been awake. Wishing I'd heard something. Wishing I could have done something, anything, to change what happened." He finally turned to look at Orion. "That's why I move you at night. That's why I make you learn to ride fast and watch carefully. Not because I think you can stop what's coming. But because if something happens, I want you to know you did everything you could. I want you to be able to sleep afterward."
He stood, crossed to the bed, and sat on the edge. For a moment he just looked at Orion, his face soft in a way it never was in public.
"You're a good son," he said quietly. "Better than I deserve. Smarter than I was at your age. More careful. More aware." He put a hand on Orion's shoulder. "Whatever happens, remember that. Remember that I saw it. That I knew it. That I was proud of you."
He left before Orion could respond. The door closed softly, and Orion was alone with the moonlight and the weight of his father's words.
He didn't sleep again that night.