Chapter 1 #2
Her voice was as cold as the locket. “You want to die? Because if you don’t dig deep, girl, that’s what’s going to happen. And then where does that leave them?”
I scrunched my eyes tighter, even as images flooded my mind.
Opie standing over a grave, sobbing, pale yellow flowers – her favorite – dropping from her hand to a fresh mound of dirt.
Beyond her, eight more mounds, a scattering of flowers and petals, and low-burning candles marking them.
I didn’t need to see the gravestones to know the names. I could sense them there, as if they’d truly been buried alive.
Fable, my best friend and biggest supporter. Ellie, the heart of the group. Caterina, the spitfire fighter. Marina, loyal and fierce. Ross, the charmer. Zeed, the brains. Gary, our goofy but lovable defender. Phyllis, our stern but fearless elder.
“They won’t survive if you’re not with them.
” Calypso’s voice curled through my brain, sinking into my bones as if her canines had sliced me open.
“It’s not just the little girl you fight for, but your friends, too.
Will you let them die, or will you use the fire in your belly to burn that bond free? It’s your decision.”
Ross’s voice rumbled, “You got this, Harlow.”
They each added their voices to his. Believing in me to survive something that none of us really understood. The same way I’d begged my mother to fight to survive. And I’d lost her.
A sob turned into a growl and caught in my throat. I would not fail them, I couldn’t. Not when we had so much left to face together.
We were House Phoenix.
I was House Phoenix.
Fire was one of our emblems, untamed, wild, unpredictable. Powerful.
My magic was the same, and I reached for it, digging deep through the layers that had kept me bound – not only those that Neverthorn had placed on us, but those I’d placed on myself.
The words I’d used whenever I thought of my abilities. Useless. Stupid. Weak.
Broken.
I reached deeper . . . until I found my first cheerleader.
She’d been with me all along, I knew she’d never really left me, no matter that she was no longer on this side of the grave.
I sank deep into that place, knowing that I’d passed out, that my body was slumped and my heart was stuttering. But none of that mattered.
I was here with her, and she would help me.
“Mom?”
I couldn’t see her, but I felt her presence in the darkness.
“I am always here, Harlow. You have never seen yourself the way you truly are. One day you will face a mirror that will show you the truth.”
“How do I . . .” I didn’t even know what to ask, but I had my suspicions about why my mind had brought me here, to her, as my heart began to fail.
A breath of wind around me, as if she’d let out a heavy sigh.
“Yes, your father bound me to him in a similar fashion. To keep me from turning on him.”
Her hands cupped my face, gently, holding me steady, and my heart followed that steadier rhythm. “You are stronger than you know, Harlow. This is the first step to finding your feet on this new path. Burn the bridge behind you, burn it down with the fire within you, it is the only way, my heart.”
Her words sent shivers through me, and I blinked, the space around me coming into view. A river, one that looked a great deal like the St. Lawrence Seaway that kept Neverthorn hidden from the rest of the world.
Not as wide, but the shoreline was the same. Even as I watched, Neverthorn shimmered into view across from me, the seven floors of dark stone towering over the grounds.
The big difference was the bridge that stood between me and Neverthorn that didn’t exist in the waking world.
Wooden, it was rough cut, with chunks missing here and there as if it had not been well-maintained or maybe . . . as if someone had tried breaking it before and had been unsuccessful.
“Harlow. Don’t do this.”
Typhon appeared on the other side, sudden enough to steal the breath from my lungs. His dark hair and green eyes pierced me even at a distance. His face was tight, which made the scar across his eye tug on his lip, turning it into a curled sneer.
I walked toward him until I stood at the edge of the bridge and put a hand on it. A splinter stabbed into me as if it had leaped out on its own, drawing blood.
Hissing, I pulled away.
“Harlow.” Just that, just my name, and I wanted . . . something that could not be. Even knowing the truth of what he was, his voice drew me, burrowing deep under my skin. I gritted my teeth and reminded myself and him why I was going to cut myself loose.
“Why not? You would hunt me down, hunt us down for the Senate, for Tarquinius. You’d drain us all –”
“I can’t drain you.”
Hell, he didn’t even deny what he was. “Why? Some warped sense of loyalty?”
He lifted a hand. “Those of House Phoenix are the only Dwimmers immune to my Quirk. I never took from you – not from any of you.”
I was no fool, no young girl to think that made it better. “But you took from the other students?”
The way his jaw ticked, and his eyes darkened, I knew what I was seeing. The truth. He was a monster – maybe even worse than Nocta. The fact that he didn’t deny it said more than any single word.
“Opie too? Did you take from her?” I didn’t even know why I was asking when so much of what he’d told me had been nothing but lies.
“No. She has no magic, you know that.”
Rage like molten lava ripped through me . . .
Not, “I would never do that.”
Meaning he would have drawn from Opie if she’d had magic and done it without caring that he took the one thing from her she’d always wanted.
There was no moment of thought, no moment of decision. I lifted my hands and called on the fury of a phoenix unleashed, in a way I hadn’t even known was possible.
To protect those who’d become my family.
My hair lifted on unseen winds as the magic rippled over and through me, my skin dancing with little bolts of power as I locked eyes with him. I put my hand to the bridge between us, splinters driving themselves into my palm.
But I didn’t move. I didn’t step back. I locked my jaw tight and embraced the pain.
I moved my index and middle fingers together in the simplest of fire runes.
It should not have worked – it should’ve required an ignition rune as well – but my rage had become the ignition.
Flames raced down my arm and to my hand, leaping onto the bridge, enveloping the structure as if it had been doused in gasoline, just waiting for me to light it.
“Harlow, don’t do this. You don’t understand . . .”
“You don’t understand, Moreno!”
He flinched but I pressed on.
I yelled to be heard over the roar of the flames. “You’ve underestimated me as long as you’ve known me. I will not yield to this bond; I will not give into this false . . . whatever this is between us. I’m going to protect those I was born to protect. So kindly . . . fuck off.”
I didn’t remove my hand from the bridge, despite the pain of the splinters driving deeper.
The flames stood between us, leaping higher and higher, as if in response to my emotions.
The flames’ colors were brilliant, ranging from the darkest blue, purple, red, orange, yellow, green, and even a piercing white.
But it was the black flames that thundered along the base of the bridge that had my attention.
They seemed to hold all the other colors at once, sparkling like a night sky, or like unnamed gemstones from another realm.
The black flame was the most destructive, eating away at the bridge faster than the rest of the fire, like an animal that had gone into a feeding frenzy, tearing its prey apart.
The bridge crumbled piece by piece until it was fully gone, and nothing stood between Typhon and me.
I held my hand over the water, blood dripping.
But Typhon was still there, despite the bond being burned to a crisp.
I could still see him – the wound to my chest throbbed, distant, not as sharp as it was, more like an old wound that you always knew was there and would ache on rainy days and cold nights. A wound that you’d die with one day, still feeling.
“I will never be free of you, because of what you did to me all those years ago, will I? Because of that first blow?”
He held up his hand, the one with his Draconell crest etched onto the back, and drew a rune in the air. It shimmered for a moment, the spell he was casting suddenly as clear as day to me.
“You will never be free,” he admitted with a grim nod, his eyes full of sorrow mixed with steely determination. “I will own you for all your days. And I will never let you go.”
A finding spell with a hook on it hovered between us. One that would allow him to pinpoint me, even without the bond.
Fury warred with a helpless sort of resignation as I glared at him through teary eyes. “Fuck you, Typhon.”
His lips twisted into a pained smile. “If only it were that simple.”
Heat flared between us, and my hands began to tremble. I could have stood there and tried to fight him, but it would be pointless. Even with my anger fueling me, I had no chance against his power. Not yet, at any rate.
Which left me one choice. The same that we had at Neverthorn.
Run.