Chosen (Nightmare Misfits #2)

Chapter 1

Locke

She’s gone.

The thought doesn’t feel real. Nothing feels real. The lake is still boiling, steam rising in sheets so thick I can’t see where she was standing, and I’m on my knees in the mud without remembering how I got here.

Vaelor’s arms are around me. Not holding me back anymore—just holding me up. My skin is still burning where I tried to reach her, where the water scalded through my clothes, but I can’t feel it. Can’t feel anything except this hollow place in my chest where something used to be.

Behind us, Trey screams. One word, raw and broken: “No.”

Rane doesn’t say anything. I can feel him somewhere to my left, frozen, silent, like his voice died with her. He hasn’t moved since she went under. Hasn’t breathed, maybe. I don’t know. I can’t make myself look at him.

Beckett is shaking his head. Back and forth, over and over, this small repetitive motion like a glitch in his system. Like if he refuses to accept it hard enough, it won’t be true.

And Kyron—

Kyron makes a sound I’ve never heard from a human being. Low and wounded and animal, ripped out of somewhere deep. His arms are still red from carrying her, blistered and raw, and he’s staring at the steam like he can will her back into existence through sheer fucking desperation.

I know the feeling.

I can’t move. Can’t think. Can’t do anything except stare at the wall of white where she used to be.

Nova.

The name doesn’t even form all the way. Just the shape of it, stuck somewhere between my ribs like a blade I can’t pull out.

We stay like that. Seconds. Minutes. I don’t know. Time stopped working the moment she screamed. There’s just the steam and the silence and the six of us kneeling in the wreckage of everything we were supposed to protect.

The water laps at the shore. Quieter now. Settling.

She’s gone. She’s gone. She’s—

I failed her.

The thought lands like a fist to my sternum. I was supposed to keep her safe. That was the one thing, the only thing—keep her safe. I was supposed to be strong enough, fast enough, fucking enough. And I couldn’t even get to her. I couldn’t even touch her without my skin melting off my bones.

I tried. I tried so fucking hard, and Trey had to drag me back, and now she’s—

Vaelor’s arms tighten around me. He’s shaking too. I can feel it through his whole body, these fine tremors that won’t stop, and I realize he’s crying. Silent. The tears cutting tracks through the mud on his face.

I’ve never seen Vaelor cry. Not once in four years.

“She can’t be gone.” His voice is barely a whisper. Hoarse. Broken. “She can’t—we just found her. We just—”

He doesn’t finish.

None of us have words for this.

The steam starts to thin.

I don’t want to look. I don’t want to see the empty water, the flat surface, the place where she was standing before the fire took her. I don’t want confirmation. I don’t want to know.

But I can’t close my eyes either.

Something moves.

Deep in the lake. Under the surface. A glow, faint at first, barely visible through the haze. Then brighter. Gold and red bleeding through the water like sunrise, like fire that refuses to die.

“What—” Rane’s voice cracks. First sound he’s made. “What is that?”

I’m staring. We’re all staring.

The glow intensifies. Pulses. The water begins to churn again, but different this time—movement. Something rising.

“Is she—” Beckett stops shaking his head. “Is that—”

The light breaks the surface.

And then a column of flame erupts from the center of the lake.

It shoots straight up, so bright I have to shield my eyes, so hot I can feel it sear my face from fifty feet away. The remaining steam evaporates instantly, replaced by pure fire climbing toward the sky like it’s trying to burn a hole through the clouds.

What the fuck?

I don’t know who says it. Might be me. Might be all of us.

The flame doesn’t dissipate. It doesn’t fall. It hangs there, suspended above the lake, a pillar of gold and red that hurts to look at directly. And then it starts to move.

Not falling.

Flying.

Circling.

Taking shape.

“Is that…” Trey’s voice is barely a whisper. He’s on his feet now, we all are, and his face has gone white. “Is that a—”

Wings.

The flame has wings.

I watch as the fire pulls itself together into something impossible. Something that shouldn’t exist, can’t exist, hasn’t existed for—

A bird.

A massive fucking bird made of living flame, wingspan wider than I am tall. The feathers ripple and shift between gold and crimson and white-hot blue at the edges, each one distinct, each one burning. The tail streams behind it like a comet. The head turns, and I swear—I swear—it’s looking at us.

“No.” Vaelor sounds like he’s choking on the word. “Those don’t exist. They’re extinct. They’ve been extinct for—”

“You sure about that?” Trey hasn’t taken his eyes off it. His voice is strange. Awed. Terrified. “Because that looks pretty fucking real to me.”

The phoenix circles once. Twice. The heat rolls off it in waves I can feel against my burned skin, and it should hurt, it should be agony, but I can’t process pain right now. I can’t focus on anything besides the phoenix and I have no idea why.

“Where the hell did it come from?” Rane’s voice is thin. Cracked. “Why was it — it was in the lake. It came out of the lake.”

Nobody answers. There’s no answer that makes sense. We just watched Nova burn. We just watched her die. And now there’s a phoenix circling overhead like it owns the sky, and I don’t understand, I can’t make the pieces fit—

“What do we do?” Beckett. Barely audible. “Do we — is it dangerous?”

I don’t know. I don’t know anything. My brain stopped working when she screamed.

The phoenix banks, tilts, starts descending toward the water. It gets close enough that I can see the shape clearly — the long tail feathers trailing sparks, the curved beak like molten gold, the eyes that burn like twin suns. Beautiful and terrible and completely, impossibly alive.

It dips lower. Skims across the surface, close enough that the water hisses and steams beneath it. I track its path, still numb, still broken, watching because I don’t know what else to do—

And then it’s not a bird anymore.

The flames fold inward. The wings contract, pulling tight against a body that’s shrinking, reshaping, becoming something else. The fire doesn’t extinguish — it absorbs. Pulls into itself. The shape twists, compresses, and where there was a phoenix there’s now—

A woman.

Pale skin.

Silver-blonde hair streaming behind her like a banner.

Nova.

The name rips through me like lightning. That’s her. That’s her. She was the phoenix. She is the phoenix. And she’s falling — arms outstretched, legs trailing, twenty feet up with nothing beneath her but water that was boiling a minute ago.

I’m moving before my brain catches up.

“NOVA!”

I hit the water at a dead sprint. It’s hot — not scalding anymore, but hot enough to hurt, hot enough that I feel it through every burn I already have — and I don’t care. I don’t fucking care. She’s falling and I’m going to catch her or I’m going to drown trying.

She hits the surface ten feet ahead of me.

The splash is enormous. I dive toward it, arms cutting through water that fights me, and then my hands find skin — warm, so warm, but not burning — and I’m pulling her up, pulling her against my chest, kicking toward the surface with everything I have left.

We break through together.

She’s limp in my arms. Eyes closed. Not breathing.

No. No no no—

“HELP!” The word tears out of me. “Someone fucking HELP!”

And then she coughs.

Water sprays across my face. She convulses, chokes, coughs again — and then she’s breathing. Gasping. Her eyes flutter open, pale blue finding mine, and she looks at me like she’s never seen me before.

“Locke?” Her voice is a rasp. Barely there. “What… what happened?”

I’m shaking so hard I can barely hold onto her. The others are splashing toward us — I can hear them, feel them — but I can’t look away from her face.

“You—” The words come out cracked. Unfinished. “You burst into flames. And then there was a phoenix. And then you—you fell, and I—”

I can’t finish.

She blinks at me. Confused. Lost.

“I don’t… I don’t remember.”

Vaelor reaches us first. His hands find her shoulders, her face, checking her like he needs to confirm she’s real. Kyron is right behind him, and Rane, and Beckett, and Trey — all of them pressing close, all of them reaching for her, and she’s looking around at us like we’ve all lost our minds.

Maybe we have.

“You were a phoenix.” Trey’s voice is unsteady. “Nova. You were a fucking phoenix.”

She stares at him.

Then she looks down at her hands.

They’re glowing. Faint. Gold light flickering just beneath the skin, pulsing with her heartbeat.

“Oh,” she says quietly.

And passes out in my arms.