Silver Eve by Sandra Waugh

love.
    My second question answered. And I thought, briefly, gladly:
She is happy.
    I soared toward the clouds, leaving behind the beautiful castle. But then it seemed I hit some invisible wall, for I stopped hard in one searing jolt, thrown off flight. A jerk, a pause, and then a freefall; I went crashing down toward the couple, screaming and putting my hand out to break the fall. Only my voice was a caw, my hand a wing.
    Wing or not, Lark sensed something. Her head shot up; she lurched forward on her horse to reach up. And whatever she saw—the beaded black eye of a seabird, or my own sea-blue gaze—she knew me. Eye to eye we clung, connected.
    A sadness, sharp as any blade, stabbed through, a longing for the
before
—before Lark discovered the severed hand, before her journey and our terrible birthday, before the wound on her shoulder that would never quite heal and the young man who would take her heart…before the Troth would kill the man who’d offered me his. Lark felt what I felt, for there was longing in her eyes as well. She missed me as I missed her. And however happy, however beautiful this castle, however strong her love for Gharain, something else had been ripped away:
    Innocence.
    And then it was gone and there was something else in her stare—fear. “Evie,” she gasped, “what have you done…?” Her eyes lifted to something beyond, behind my wing. She screamed in warning,
“Evie!”
    I looked up to see some hideous bird, grizzled and sharp and human-eyed. I spun sideways, flight recovered, and was winging fast away over the castle’s wide terrace toward the dizzying cliff. Lark came galloping after, crying my name. I was high up; I could do nothing but watch as she raced across the grass, hair flying. She would go straight over the edge. Gharain was shouting her name, too far behind to catch her. And there were others it seemed, streaming suddenly from everywhere to chase her runaway speed with warning cries: “My lady!”
    Yet her shining horse did not take her over the cliff, but ground to a halt. Lark slid off him, falling straight to her knees then stumbling up again, staring up, reaching arms high to where I circled.
    “No! Evie, don’t! Stop!” Lark begged until she was hoarse. Gharain was shouting too, galloping forward, sword drawn. Alarm rang all the way to the castle—people were spilling into the back courtyard, running to assist….
    “ ’Tis but a shrieking fowl, my lady,” one old woman was calling. “No harm, no harm!”
    But someone else was pointing beyond. “Not a fowl, a harbinger! They come!”
    “Evie, look out!” Lark screamed. And I wheeled on my little wings as that hideous bird-thing swooped straight for me. I passed just under its breast, scorched by the heat. The creature swerved to attack again, but an arrow loosed from somewhere below shot the thing straight through the heart and it exploded above me in a crash of light and sound.
    Gharain had raced in on that gray steed, his chestnut hair blown back. He clattered across the courtyard to the edge of the cliff, was off his horse, throwing his sword and running to scoop Lark in his arms in one sweeping move. And she half clung, half pulled from him, sobbing, “She’s cast a spell, Gharain. Evie cast a spell! Look—the bird! Now they’ve spied her. They’re coming—she’s in danger!”
    “It’s all right, love. He is near. He will reach her.”
    “How? He cannot know where she is!
We
don’t know where she is!” Nothing would calm her, though an army of concerned faces surrounded. They murmured, soothed, and fussed while Lark reached up, imploring, “Stop now, Evie! Stop what you do!” Then she turned, frantic, looking to the others as if someone else would be able to speak to me.
    But now their eyes were not on her, but on the sky beyond where I circled. Fussing turned to urgent warnings; the horses were sent galloping to their stables; Gharain was shouting, “Inside, everyone! Dartegn, find