Wernick knew to fear when she saw the dark, almost black shell of the egg, speckled with amber.

Her own feathers were a dull, sour yellow of mold, and perhaps years ago she hated himself for this. Years ago when her pinions were clipped, and no one passed her a second glance as she ran her beak over her feathers, cuts haggard and too close to the quick, while they carefully brushed and trimmed silky white-blue-lines fur.

And when she left the stables, twisting through a crack in the wood and walking and then crawling with the weak bones of her wings when her legs gave in, she found the white nytekrie had followed her, his fur mussed with tear tracks, skin scraped raw along his haunches, patches of fur missing from relentlessly anxious plucking. He told her that he was a father now, that he would be a father again and again and again and it hurt, and he wished he was her, anything not what he was, to be ignored rather than to be fussed and primped and then to be forced.

She didn't understand then. She understood a week later, when the search party surged through the trees with scouring lights, when a barbed net tangled his wings and when his screams for help trailed into silence, when it stared at her, disdainfully snorting before turning to leave.

When Wernick followed them back to the stables, she found the hole covered with boards. She couldn't hear a thing.

She found a tree and settled in the cover of branches and leaves. When dawn came, she took quick, frightened flights over the building, calling his name softly, without response.

Two days later, she watched them cart a sylesti away from the stable. It was nearly unrecognizable as a sylesti: nearly bald, with tufts of fur and feather torn out, long streaks of sores running down its haunches and shoulders.

Two days later, a groan of timber pierced the night and something rustled past the foliage to her right. Wernick pressed herself against the bark and stared as twin lines of flame- wings, she extrapolated, black wings with pinions of fire- rose from the stable. Something followed it, a pale green illuminated by flickers of firelight. The phoenix screeched and beat its magnificent wings in frantic jolts and bursts as its pursuer quickly rose above it and wrapped black talons around its neck and- a sudden snap-

Wernick watched as the limp phoenix was pushed back into the stable through the hole it had burst out of. Its wings glittered coldly in the night

The next morning, she woke to a din from the stables and hopped to the ground.

Among the leaf mold, she found the egg, and belatedly, horrifyingly, remembered the rustling. The flame-winged aurleon had dropped it.

A phoenix's egg.

They did not stop looking for the nytekrie for a week.

How long until they started sending out search parties? How long would it take for the hunting party to spot a black egg in her claws against the azure sky? How long to shoot her down with fire and scouring light?

Walk, and the nytekries would catch her. Bury it, and it would be smelled and dug up.

Leave it, and another beautiful hatchling. Another white nytekrie.

Wernick took a deep breath and curled her talons around the egg.

She squeezed.