Chapter 2
Rane
Nobody speaks.
We’re still at the edge of the lake. Soaking wet, all of us. Burned. Shaking. Locke hasn’t loosened his grip on Nova since he pulled her out — she’s pressed against his chest, head lolled against his shoulder, and his arms are trembling but he won’t let anyone else take her.
I don’t think he could if he tried.
I unbutton my shirt and pull my arms out of the sleeves. Locke doesn’t notice. He doesn’t notice anything right now that isn’t her face.
“Locke.” I hold the shirt out in front of him. He blinks at me like I’m speaking a language he forgot. Then he looks down at Nova and something in his expression cracks, and I take my shirt and drape it over her. He doesn’t say anything.
The water is finally still. Steam drifts off the surface, catching the light. It looks almost peaceful now. Like nothing happened here.
But something happened here. Something impossible.
A prickle at the back of my neck.
That feeling you get when someone’s watching — that knowing. My skin tightens. The hair on my arms stands up.
I turn, just a little. Slowly. Trying not to draw attention.
I see it at the far shore. In the treeline where the brush grows thick and wild.
A shape.
I can’t tell what it is, but it’s too upright to be an animal. It’s there for maybe two seconds, and then it pulls back into the brush. Deliberate. Controlled.
Someone was watching.
My stomach drops.
I don’t know who. Can’t make out features, can’t even tell if it’s a man or a woman. But it doesn’t matter. What matters is that someone was here besides us. Someone saw the fire, the phoenix. Her.
Someone saw Nova become something that isn’t supposed to exist.
I don’t say anything. Not yet. We’re too exposed out here, too vulnerable. If whoever was watching is still—
I swallow the words and keep scanning.
“We need to move.” My voice comes out rough. First thing I’ve said since she screamed.
Locke doesn’t argue. None of them do. We fall into formation without deciding to — close enough to touch her, close enough to catch her, none of us willing to be more than an arm’s length away.
We walk and I should be talking. Try to find the right words when everyone else is choking on theirs. I smooth things over so no one has to sit too long in… whatever this is.
I open my mouth.
The water boiling around her. Her scream.
I close it.
Try again.
I just stood there. She was dying and I just—
My throat locks.
I drag my hands through my hair and try one more time. Something useful. Anything. A joke. A plan. Even just her name.
The phoenix.
Wings made of fire.
Her falling out of the sky.
Nothing comes out.
My chest is so tight I can barely breathe and I don’t know if it’s panic or grief or something else.
The words are there — I can feel them stacked up behind my teeth, sharp and useless — but every time I try to push them out, another image hits me and my throat closes like it’s protecting me from something I’m not ready to say.
Something I’m not ready to make real yet.
So I walk. And I watch. And I stay close enough to touch her if I need to.
At least I can do that.
My eyes keep dropping to her wrist in between the frantic images going through my mind.
It’s there. A mark. Gold and red, the colors still shifting faintly beneath her skin like embers that won’t settle. I’ve never seen anything like it. None of us have.
The shape is wrong. Not wrong — just… nothing I recognize. Not Dream. Not Shadow. Not any of the five Houses I’ve spent my whole life learning to read at a glance.
It’s something else.
The house comes into view through the trees. Same color, same windows, same door we’ve walked through a hundred times.
But nothing is the same anymore.
I look at her wrist again. At the mark that shouldn’t exist on a woman who just became something impossible.
And I realize we can’t stay.