Chapter 30 #3
At last, she rises. Her hand, warm and steady, rests on my shoulder. “It’s a heavy burden for anyone to bear, Metra. But you’ll never need to carry it alone. That’s what you’re trying to do now, and you see it isn’t working.”
She leaves as softly as she came; the door whispers shut behind her. I keep my eyes closed, my breathing even, pretending to sleep. But her words throb in my chest long after she’s gone.
Zillah comes next. But she doesn’t bring comfort—she brings fire. Her words crackle, sharp and hot, and for a moment I almost rise to meet them, desperate for somewhere to put this ache. But the fight fizzles before it can catch, leaving me hollow.
She is angry watching her brother suffer. She is angry at seeing Selene’s quiet worry. But mostly, she is furious that someone with fire in their veins would choose to snuff it out, to lie here and give up.
Her jaw works, more words poised on her tongue—when Lowan steps in. His voice is firm, final. “Enough, Zillah. Leave her.”
She bristles, but obeys, the room sparking with what she doesn’t say. Now I feel responsible for that too—for the words she swallowed, for whatever fight waits for them outside this door. Another weight on the list I can’t seem to stop writing in my mind.
It’s Remli who comes last. But she doesn’t talk about me, or the vision, or the crushing weight everyone knows I’m carrying. She talks about Arden. Like two girls at a sleepover, she stretches out beside me on the bed, arms folded under her head, eyes fixed on the ceiling.
“I think I’m falling in love with him,” she says, like a secret she can’t keep. “Which I know is ridiculous, since I barely know him. We aren’t Threadbound, but he—gods, I don’t know. I’ve been with men and women, but he makes me feel things I thought I’d lost forever. Like I’m alive again.”
Her voice thins to a whisper. “I think he’s the first thing I’ve ever chosen just because I wanted it. Not because it was an escape. Not because it was expected. Just because he makes me happy.”
She turns her face to me, tears catching in the light. “And now he’s gone. I found his scent in the trees, but he said he had to leave. Said he would only bring danger to me. Begged me to let him go. I stayed there for hours, watching until I couldn’t see him anymore. Hoping he’d turn back.”
Lowan comes back, but this time he doesn’t kneel. He stands at the foot of the bed, his voice steady but edged with grief.
“Metra, you have every right to fall apart. I don’t know how you haven’t already. You’ve carried too much for too long, and now more has been heaped on you, more than anyone could bear.”
He draws a breath. “We can leave—you and me. We’ll find Nova Donovan and ask her to open a portal back to the mortal realm. I’ll go with you. I don’t care. As long as we are together and you are whole.”
My eyes crack open at the offer. My throat burns. “You could never leave Thrae,” I rasp.
His composure fractures. “Fuck this realm,” he shouts, startling me. “Fuck all the realms if it costs me you. I’ll leave it all. I’ll bind my magic to yours and live as a mortal so no one can ever find us—but I will not stand here and watch you wither away. I will not.”
His words break something in me. A sob rips free, and I turn my face into the pillow. He is instantly there, arms anchoring me.
“Tell me how to help you. Tell me what’s breaking you. Please,” he pleads, stroking my hair.
“Me,” I whisper. “I’m breaking myself. Don’t you see, Lowan? I can’t be the one your father’s vision is about. My power—” My voice shudders. “I only take. Consume. Use. I have nothing to offer. Nothing to give. I’m—” The sobs tear through me, days of dammed grief breaking loose.
He holds me through it, never flinching, never judging, only grounding me against his chest. When at last the tears subside, he lifts me gently and carries me to the water.
He undresses me as if I am fragile glass, eases me onto the stone shelf.
Then he joins me, pulling me close as he washes my hair, washing the shame away with it.
“Metra,” he murmurs, voice thick, “you can’t see yourself the way I do.
Or the way the others do. You didn’t grow up here with magic, and yet you’ve mastered every task thrown at you in such a short time.
You’re not a taker. This realm has taken everything from you—your mother, your birthright, your childhood, your father—and still you fight.
Still, you try to make it better. You are a treasure.
A gift from Fate. No realm deserves you, not truly. ”
His words tug at the Thread inside my chest, steadying it. I wrap my arms around him, holding tight.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur tearfully. “I’m sorry I shut down and shut you out.”
He turns his face into my neck, lips brushing skin. “You didn’t shut me out,” he whispers. “I felt your pain here,” he places his hand on his chest. “I was always right outside the door, waiting. I knew you’d open it when you were ready.”
The water clings warmly to my skin as Lowan rinses the last of the soap from my hair.
I close my eyes and let him hold me, let the steam carry away the heaviness that has pinned me down.
I imagine it peeling away in layers: the shame of the past three days, wasting in bed while everyone else carried on.
The uncertainties I’ve quietly borne since stepping into this world, I still don’t fully understand.
Even the old hurts I brought with me from the mortal realm—the years of feeling like an outsider, of resenting my mother for a truth I never knew.
All of it loosens and drifts away with the water.
“I feel like I’m washing it all off me,” I whisper. “The armor, the anger, the weight.”
Lowan’s arms circle me, steady and sure. “I loved you even with all that armor on,” he murmurs. “So I know I’ll love you even more now that you’ve put it down.”
Later, he insists I eat—broth, bread, fruit pressed into my hands until I obey. Then we walk outside together, the cave’s cool air giving way to sunlight. Remli, Zillah, and Selene have already gathered. Conversation hushes as they turn, their gazes sharp with both caution and hope.
I square my shoulders. “I’m sorry,” I say, my voice carrying across the quiet. “I’m sorry for breaking down and shutting you all out.”
They rush to answer at once—“No, it’s fine,” “We’re just glad you’re here”—but Zillah steps forward, her face uncharacteristically somber.
“Metra, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come at you in anger when you were already—“
I lift a hand, stopping her. “No. You had every right to be angry. Everything you said was true. I was hurting Lowan. I was hurting Selene. And I was angry with myself most of all.”
My gaze sweeps across them. “It’s just… every revelation has been harder than the last. When we heard the vision, I knew it was possibly about me, but I let myself hope it wasn’t.
And then finding out it was? I looked around at all of you—your powers, your abilities, the way we’ve been teaching each other—and I realized I have nothing to teach.
My only gift is taking from others. And it triggered something in me.
This fear that I’m inadequate, that I can’t possibly be the one Fate needs. ”
Zillah stares at me, incredulous. “Metra, you are a fucking phoenix. You don’t have to give us anything—you could burn our enemies to ash.”
A laugh slips out of me, shaky but real. “Zillah, my phoenix fire doesn’t burn.”
She scoffs. “It absolutely burns.”
“No, it doesn’t.” My cheeks flush as I flick my eyes to Lowan. “Every time I’ve broken into flames—from… extreme emotions.” His soft chuckle answers mine. “It never burns.”
Zillah shakes her head. “That’s because you’ve only seen it with him. But when you blasted out of that dungeon? You didn’t see it, but we did. You left fire burning in your wake. You were pure destruction.”
“What?” My heart thuds. I think back—flying over the jungle, shifting in and out of flames, never scorching so much as a leaf. “But when I’ve flown, nothing burns. Nothing.”
Selene’s voice is thoughtful, soft. “What if your phoenix fire isn’t fixed? What if you choose? Burn when you will, spare when you wish?”
We all stare at one another, the weight of the revelation settling in—a power not of accident, but of will.
The air shifts as footsteps crunch behind us.
Arden strolls out of the trees, arms crossed like armor.
Remli’s breath catches, but his voice is a lazy drawl: “There you all are.” His gaze hooks on her for a heartbeat, then flicks to me, glittering and sharp.
“So, apparently, I’m half Donovan. What does that make us—cousins now? ”
I don’t let him retreat behind the bite of his words. I close the space between us and wrap my arms around him, pressing my cheek to his shoulder. “Maybe not cousins,” I murmur, steady and sure. “But family. Definitely family.”
When I turn, I take in every face—Zillah, Selene, Remli, Lowan, Arden at my side. The weight in my chest lightens as I say it aloud.
“All of us.”