Chapter 9
Nova
The backyard is bigger than the house deserves.
Ameena’s place is small and tucked in and practical, but the land behind it stretches back into old forest like someone drew a line and said everything past here belongs to the trees.
There’s a well near the back fence that the guys have been hauling water from all afternoon because Ameena mentioned she wanted to make soup tonight and Vaelor took that as a personal mission.
It’s warm. Actually warm, the kind of late afternoon sun that soaks into your skin and makes you stupid. I’m sitting in the grass with my back against a tree and watching them work and trying not to notice things I shouldn’t be noticing, which is going about as well as it usually does.
Locke carries the bucket one-handed like it weighs nothing. His shirt is damp and clinging to his back and I look at the trees instead.
Rane is doing more talking than hauling. He’s walking beside Vaelor gesturing about something and Vaelor is nodding along but I can guarantee he stopped listening two minutes ago. He’s just too polite to admit it.
Kyron finished his share first and is now sitting against the fence with his eyes closed and his face tipped toward the sun. The burns on his arms are still visible, still raw, and I keep looking at them and feeling something hot press against the back of my throat.
Beckett’s on the ground near me reading something on his laptop. Trey’s pulling up grass one blade at a time and flicking it at Rane every time he walks past. Rane hasn’t noticed yet, which is making Trey’s day.
“You could help, you know,” Rane calls to me.
“I’m supervising.”
“From the ground.”
“Best vantage point.”
Rane grins and shakes his head and water sloshes out of the bucket he’s finally carrying and Trey flicks another blade of grass at him and this time it sticks to his neck and Rane slaps at it like a bug and Trey’s face is completely innocent when Rane turns around.
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.
They finish eventually and one by one they drift back to where I’m sitting and drop onto the grass like it’s the only thing they’ve ever wanted to do.
Vaelor stretches out on his back with his arm over his eyes.
Rane collapses dramatically beside him. Kyron hasn’t moved from the fence but he’s opened his eyes and he’s watching us, because of course he is.
Beckett closes his laptop.
I wait until everyone’s stopped moving. Until the only sound is the wind in the trees and someone’s breathing and the distant sound of Ameena doing something in the kitchen.
“So,” I say. “What did I shift into?”
The silence is immediate.
Locke goes still beside me. Vaelor lifts his arm off his eyes and looks at me.
“How do you know about shifting?” Kyron asks from the fence. His voice is careful.
“Ameena told me. This morning. Over coffee.” I keep my voice light because if I don’t I’m going to vibrate out of my skin.
“She told me that every mark has a form. An animal. That it’s tied to your House and when it comes in you shift into whatever it is.
” I look around at all of them. “She said Zoe’s a swan. ”
They’re all exchanging looks. The kind I’m getting very familiar with — the silent conversation that happens over my head that I’m not part of.
“Zoe’s aunt told her before we could,” Rane mutters.
“In fairness, you had all morning,” I say.
That gets a sharp exhale from Beckett that might be a laugh.
“You’re right,” Vaelor says. He sits up. “We should have told you sooner. We were trying to figure out the best way to—”
“Vaelor. What did I shift into?”
He looks at Locke. Locke looks at me.
“A phoenix,” Locke says.
And between the look he’s giving me and the way he says it I have to force whatever this feeling is down.
“A phoenix,” I repeat.
“You went up in flames,” Locke says. “The lake was boiling. The water around you was turning to steam and the light was—” He stops. Swallows. “You were screaming and then you weren’t, and then there was fire, and then there was something in the fire. And it was you.”
I can feel my heartbeat in my wrist, in the mark, pulsing.
“Ameena said each House has types,” I say slowly. “Swans for Dream, panthers for Shadow. Where does a phoenix fit?”
Nobody answers right away.
“It doesn’t,” Beckett says. “I’ve been pulling at threads in the system’s records for months.
Even before you came to the academy. There are references to old shifter lines — types that don’t belong to any current House.
The system classified them as extinct. Dead bloodlines, failed evolution.
” He pauses. “But the records aren’t clean.
Things have been redacted. Moved. Buried. ”
“So what does that make me?”
“Something they weren’t expecting,” Beckett says quietly.
I press my thumb against the mark without thinking about it. It pulses back and the warmth spreads up my arm and I’m starting to recognize the pattern now, the way it responds when my emotions shift, like it’s listening.
“You said we had to leave because it wasn’t safe,” I say. “What happened?”
Another round of looks. I’m going to start charging admission.
“Someone was at the lake,” Rane says. “Watching. They saw everything.”
“Saw me shift.”
“Saw all of it. The fire, the phoenix, the—” He gestures vaguely. “Everything.”
“And the Nightmare Order was already at the Academy,” Kyron adds. “More vehicles than before. They weren’t just watching classes anymore, they were at the gates. Scanning people.”
“Zoe told us people had been asking about you,” Locke says. “Specific questions. Where you go, who you’re with. The Academy liaison pulled her aside and asked her to report if you were behaving unusually.”
I let that sink in. They were already watching me. Before the lake, before the shift, before any of this. The phoenix just gave them a reason to stop pretending they weren’t.
“So someone saw me turn into a mythological creature that isn’t supposed to exist, and now the people who were already suspicious have proof.”
“That’s a pretty accurate summary,” Beckett says.
“Great.”
The sun is still warm. The grass is still soft. The forest behind us is still quiet and green and the well water is still dripping from the bucket Rane left by the fence. Everything looks exactly the same as it did five minutes ago when I didn’t know I was a phoenix.
I don’t feel different. I don’t feel powerful or mythical or whatever a phoenix is supposed to feel like. I feel like me, sitting in the grass, with a mark on my wrist that hums and a body that apparently did something impossible while I wasn’t conscious to witness it.
“I don’t remember any of it,” I say. “The shift. The phoenix. I remember the lake and the pain and then nothing.”
“That’s normal,” Vaelor says. “From what I’ve read, the first shift is—”
“You’ve read about shifting?”
“Memory House,” he says, like that explains it. “There are archives. Records of early shifts, first formations. The first one is supposed to be disorienting. The body does something the mind isn’t ready for.”
“My body turned into a giant bird made of fire.”
“Yeah.” Vaelor almost smiles. “I’d say your mind gets a pass on that one.”
I look down at the mark. It’s still pulsing, still warm. Gold and red, shifting. It’s beautiful, actually, now that I’m not terrified of it. Like something between a flame and a heartbeat.
“What now?” I ask.
They look at each other again, but this time it’s different. Less guarded.
“Now we figure out what this means,” Locke says. “And we keep you safe while we do it.”
“Keep us safe,” I correct him. “They’re not just looking for me. You all left too.”
Something shifts in Locke’s expression. And I don’t miss the way his lips tip up even though I know he’s trying to hide it.
“Yeah,” he says. “Keep us safe.”
The wind moves through the trees and the light shifts and I sit there in the grass with six men who gave up everything they had because I caught fire at a lake and they didn’t let go.
I don’t know what a phoenix is supposed to feel like.
But I think it might feel like this.