Chapter 15 #2
I bite the inside of my cheek until it burns, because I’m holding back everything I’ve been trained to believe.
It makes me feel like I’ve held my breath too long and the world is blurring at the edges.
But some part of me hears him. The Order wants to control magic.
It’s evident in the way they control me.
“If that’s true,” I say at last, “what does any of that have to do with firebirds? With you, your dreams, the rogues hunting us? Why can’t I remember any of it if it happened so recently? Do you think...do you think the Order has anything to do with it?”
My voice spikes. I can’t believe I’m saying any of this. It’s treason to question the Order this way. It’s treason to even think it. If anyone but Taliesin Wynn could hear me, I’d be hanged the moment I stepped foot in Caer Draen again.
I just...can’t believe it.
The Order would never hide something this important from me. But what’s more, they’d never prevent the return of the stars.
May the stars never be forgotten.
But even as I think it, the words ring hollow. I try to think of something—anything—to stand against what he’s said. Examples of what the Order has done to heal our sky, to mend what was lost.
There is nothing.
All I can remember are the missions they’ve sent me on to track down fugitives.
Or those who fled conscription in the army.
Or those they believe to be working with the rebels in secret.
Anything to serve the kingdom’s endless fight.
Nothing they’ve done, at least that I can remember, has anything to do with the world we’ve lost, or the hole the stars and gods have left behind.
And that thought shouldn’t hit me the way it does. It should feel like blasphemy just to think it, something my training would choke out of me before it ever formed. But it doesn’t. It just stays there, weighing down everything I was taught to believe.
Because if that’s true, if there is nothing I can remember that proves the Order is restoring anything at all, then what exactly have I been doing all these years? What exactly have I been losing myself for? And why does it feel like I’ve spent my entire life chasing shadows?
Or what if, like so much else, I’ve simply forgotten the things they’ve done to help?
Distant thunder cuts through the noise in my head.
I look up, meeting Taliesin’s steady gaze, which offers more comfort than I want to admit. I shouldn’t trust anything he’s said. Of course he would blame the Order. They’re the ones who ruined his life by exiling him to this dreadful place, cutting him off from the rest of the world.
He’s lying to stop me from doing what I came here to do.
Except if he really wanted to stop me, he already would have—by doing far worse than dampening my power with iron.
As if reading my mind, he hurls the chain off the cliff. It rattles as it tumbles, far, far into the sea below. I widen my eyes in question. Out of everything he could do right now, this is by far the last thing I expected.
“Why?” I ask.
“Because I know how much you hate the chain,” he murmurs. “Don’t make me regret tossing it.”
Heart pounding, I reach up and brush his throat. He doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t pull away. Instead, he holds my gaze, like he expected my touch, and he wants to show me he’s not afraid I might turn it against him.
His skin is softer than I expect, and warm.
I have the sudden urge to wrap my hand fully around his throat, just to see how he would react.
I wet my lips, my eyes darting to the strong curve of his neck, the powerful line of his shoulders.
My blood hums in my veins, burning me up from the inside out.
I could do it. Not to speak the killing spell, but just to feel the pulse of his heartbeat beneath my fingers, to feel him swallow against my palm.
But then the sky bellows with thunder again, breaking through the moment.
Cheeks hot as a furnace, I release his throat, and my hand drops heavily to my side.
“We should get moving,” we say in unison.
I laugh. He does, too. Then his eyes widen.
He grabs my arms and yanks me behind him, his other hand flying to the pommel of his sword.
Just beyond him, the firebird rises from the nest, her wings spreading wide.
Flames curl from the corners of her beak.
An ear-splitting shriek tears through the air.
And then she’s gone, plunging down the side of the ridge in a whirl of feathers and fire.
I dart past Taliesin. My feet find the edge of the nest as I lean over the drop, my hands gripping sharp twigs as I track her descent.
She falls only for a breathless moment before catching herself against the rock face, her claws biting into stone.
Then she vanishes into a crevice.
My heart pounds, my fingers tightening on the brittle nest. “Do you think she’s angry at me for pushing death back?” I ask, thinking of Osian.
“No.” Taliesin appears beside me, one knee braced on the nest, the other bent as he surveys the world below. “I think she wants us to follow her.”