Jay Kristoff: The Last Stormdancer

But the taste of ashes lingered on my tongue. The taste of death you monkey-children had carved for yourselves with the petals of bloodred flowers. So I took to the wing. My mate and all my pack beside me. Turning away from your prophecies and destinies, your greed and your blindness, turning our eyes instead to the fateless horizon. A place we could make our own. A future, our own to decide.

And we did not look back.

Arashitora live long years, monkey-child. And my years were good ones. Bright ones. Spent in a place where the storm endlessly raged. Where our father Raijin beat upon his drums with all the fury of the heavens. Rahh and I knew joy. Our cubs growing fierce and proud and strong away from your choking sky. Our kind spared the extinction awaiting us if we had lingered beneath that ceiling of bloody red. And when he left me, when he lay down his head and slept forevermore, I was there beside him, my wings around him, my stripes slowly turning gray.

Those twilight years were tinged, yes, I admit, with a hint of regret. That I was not there to save Jun as he died. That his prophecy, his destiny—that a child of his grandmother’s line would one day save the world with an army of thunder tigers behind him—had proven false. It was a grand dream. A bright dream. But not, I thought, a true dream.

Because I did not know, monkey-child, you see? I did not know.

I did not know of the sweet collision between Jun and Ami that night amidst the lotus blooms. I did not know the seed of it grew in the Lady’s womb, nor that it would fruit into a fine and healthy son. I did not know he would be raised a hunter by his great-grandfather, nor that his grandson would inherit not only his craft, but also Jun’s gift.

A gift he would pass on to his only daughter.

But I know her name, monkey-child.

Just as you do.

I know it as I lay here, watching the endless storm rage above a night-black sea. I know it as the wind howls me a lullaby, old as the stars, singing to my weary bones of a time when I flew free and wild and strong, a boy as light as twig and tinder upon my shoulders, the whoop of his joy spilling into me as we plummeted together from the clouds.

I know it as I know my children, their children, swooping and wheeling in the skies above my head.

I know it as I know myself.

I know it as I close my eyes.

I know Jun was not the last Stormdancer.

And how do I know?

Foolish monkey-child.

Death told me.