Chapter Thirty-Five Kian
There is a stretch of nothingness that seems both impossibly long and impossibly short. It is welcome. A bright and peaceful absence of… everything. The heavy weight of expectation. The gnawing hunger of want. The ache of failure and fear and hope.
I am free.
I rest inside that nothing, luxuriating in the quiet until I feel a tug deep inside me, under my breastbone, beside my heart or between my lungs. I did not think I believed in souls.
But something inside me is calling me out of the nothing. I follow that tug across what feels like an endless expanse that grows darker and darker.
I find Adela at the end. Adela, kneeling beside me, crying precious, elegant tears. I reach up and wipe one away. “Why are you crying, Goddess?”
“I killed you.”
“And yet, here I am. Not even a little bit dead.”
She bites her lip, uncertainty furrowing her perfect brow. I run a fingertip along one pale-blond eyebrow.
“I was so scared I was wrong,” she says. “That I would destroy you and you’d be gone forever.”
“But you don’t destroy.” I give her a small kiss on her lips.
“What do you mean?” There is a fragility of hope in her voice. “You create, I destroy. We are the two sides of life and death. The two sides of the phoenix.”
I try to find the words I am looking for.
I do my best. “On the natural path of things, life is not destroyed. Like when a tree falls in the valley, it doesn’t just disappear.
It decays. It falls apart to make room for its next stage, for new life.
” I reach up a shaking hand. My arm feels so heavy. “That’s how your magic is, love.”
I give her time to work through the thoughts.
I can tell she wants to believe them. But it means letting go of ancient wounds that tell her she is impulsive or broken, that everything she touches is ruined.
I can see her getting there. I can see her accepting herself, just as she is.
And I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed anything more holy.
Adela is exactly who she is meant to be. And I love her for that—in all the big feelings, the big ideas, the chaos.
“So I… dismantle?” She beams. She does not wait for me to confirm or deny her statement. She has come to the truth herself, and it does not matter who agrees. Not even me. “I dismantle.”
“You are the first step toward healing, my love.”
She leans forward on her knees, one hand braced near my waist on the hard-packed dirt floor, the other gently cupping my cheek. She kisses me. It starts off soft. She’s worried I’m hurt. But I have never felt better.
I kiss her harder, stretching up to meet her, pressing my chest against her body, wrapping an arm around her, and pulling her close.
She loses her balance and falls against me.
She tries to scramble aside, to move herself off me, but I don’t give her a moment to readjust. I hold her firmly and deepen the kiss.
We have things to do, but I don’t rush. I luxuriate in her. Eventually she pulls away and smiles down at me. Her hair is a curtain around our faces. “I’m so glad you came back,” she says with a gentle smile.
“Oh, my love,” I reply, “I was never gone. Just away for a bit. We are two parts of a pair. I don’t think one can fully leave while the other survives.”
“That is what the phoenix showed me. Her mate died. She watched him. And while it hurt her, she did not mourn or lose herself. She simply settled in. She knew he would come back to her.”
I tuck a strand of hair behind one of her ears and look around the crypt of bones, and wait. She has more to say.
“But I—” she sobs out the words, overwhelmed with relief and sorrow both. “I was terrified that I was wrong. That I misunderstood. And you were gone forever, at my hand.”
“As always, you saw the truth of everything, clear and bright as the morning sun.” I kiss her lightly on the nose. “Now. We have some more business to take care of. Where is Sarai?”
Adela stands and holds a hand out to me, hauling me up. “What do you want with her?”
“I want her to see what the order becomes without her at the helm. I want her to live in this world with everything that she values—her magic, her power, her wealth—stripped of her. I want to take her world from her. Like she took my world from me when I was ten years old and she killed my parents. I don’t just want her to suffer.
Suffering would be a kindness. I want her in agony, a slow but certain ripping apart of everything she has ever wanted or loved. If she is even capable of that.”
I pause, realizing I’m waiting for Adela’s censure. She is so good-hearted; surely she will insist I act with more mercy, show grace. I know I am a disappointment to her in this way. I’m afraid she will hate that, even now, I seek vengeance.
But her censure does not come. When I am brave enough, I look up at Adela.
She stands up tall, the skulls of centuries’ worth of creatures surrounding her. She beams at me. Her smile so wide that her eyes almost disappear behind the apples of her cheeks.
“I think that is exactly what she deserves,” she says, and holds out her hand. I take it, and suddenly we are thrust into a vision.
We are nestled into our cave, surrounded by eggs that despite our best efforts, never hatched. Some are ours. Some are from a much more ancient phoenix pair. The magic in the valley has begun to dwindle, though we don’t know why. But we believe it’s part of why the eggs will not hatch.
We are the last of our kind. And with our death, something will shift dramatically in the creatures. We know that, and yet, we cannot do anything about it. Our time is nearly up. Hopefully in our next life, we will be able to try again.
From somewhere far off, we hear the chanting of the keepers. A goodbye ceremony is occurring, and we should go. We need to help burn the bones, return them to the valley, and usher the wild magic that flows back into the youngest creatures.
But we are so tired. We stay. We lie down together, in our beautiful nest, and after a thousand years on this earth, we finally say goodbye.