Secrets in Phoenix

by Gabriella Lepore

  “Yes! I saw it.”

  “Ah,” she said, pursing her thin lips. “The Secrets Be Known spell. You wished to see Jaxon.”

  I blushed.

  “Yes,” I mumbled.

  “I see,” she said, knowingly.

  “And now the same thing is happening again.”

  Ness stared at me, steadily. “May I ask, are your feelings for Jaxon platonic?”

  My cheeks reddened further. “Not entirely,” I admitted.

  Ness lowered her eyelashes. “I’m sorry, Sophie,” she said, her tone abruptly sombre, “but I cannot allow that.”

  I almost laughed. “You cannot allow what? For me to have feelings for Jaxon?”

  “Absolutely not,” she said brusquely. “Those feelings must stop this instant.”

  I stared at her in disbelief. “No.”

  Ness began fussing with a stack of paperwork. “I’m sorry, Sophie. I’m going to have to put my foot down.”

  “Hold on a second. You’re the one who pushed us together in the first place!” I exclaimed. “You forced him to be my mentor.”

  “The poor boy was mute! I thought, by the greatest stretch of the imagination, that perhaps one day you could be friends—that you could be some form of company to one another. But this? I never would have assigned him to you if I’d suspected something as unspeakable as this.”

  “Unspeakable?” I crossed my arms. “Okay, now you’re seriously overreacting.”

  “Sophie,” Ness implored, clasping her hands together, “you have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. Please understand, I only want what’s best for you. Jaxon is fine to sit beside in lessons and help you with your school work, but you are not, under any circumstances, allowed to be alone with him.”

  “You’re being unfair,” I protested. “Besides, don’t I get to choose who I spend time with?”

  “You must listen,” she begged. “In the future, you’ll thank me. I care deeply for Jaxon, but he is volatile. More so than the others. When Jaxon turns… he really turns.”

  “You brought him back,” I stated. “You made him a phoenix.”

  My comment must have stung, because Ness winced at the words.

  “Yes,” she admitted quietly. “I truly believed that I was giving him a second chance. One that he rightly deserved. But there is always a price. The laws of nature are not to be toyed with, and I will forever carry the burden of what I turned that poor boy into.”

  A lump formed in my throat. I didn’t want to hear this.

  “I’m sorry, Sophie,” Ness said tightly. “It’s my responsibility to protect you, and I will not debate the issue further.”

  “How can you be so…” I took a shaky breath. “Will you do one thing for me, at least? I’m not leaving this office until I know he’s safe. Just get him back. Please?”

  “Okay,” Ness yielded. “That I will do.” She rose from her seat. “I must confer with Mr. Hardy. He will arrange for reinforcements to be sent to Jaxon’s aid.”

  “Thank you,” I said stoically.

  Ness gently squeezed my shoulder, then strode towards the office door.

  “Aunt Ness?” I called.

  She glanced back at me.

  “Don’t you trust him at all?”

  She sighed. “I trust him to protect us.” As she spoke, her hand enveloped the brass door handle. “I trust him to protect the holt.”

  “But you don’t trust him to protect me?”

  “I trust him to protect you, but whether I trust him around you is a different matter entirely.” She met my eyes in earnest. “There is no doubt in my mind that Jesse Jaxon is a hero,” she said. “But sometimes even heroes have their flaws.”

  #

  Ness Ballester, Rip Hardy, and Allan Garret stood side by side in the Phoenix Holt graveyard. The sky was oppressive and churned black with a brewing storm. No sun broke through the clouds that morning, and no birds sang.

  “Jesse Jaxon,” Mr. Hardy read from the headstone. “Are you sure he’s the one?” The broad man towered above Ness’s petite, aged frame.

  Ness nodded her head once. “He’s the one. Last night I made contact with Wilber. I informed him of our plans to raise an army. He told me that if I was going ahead with the Phoenix spell, I was to give this boy a second chance. After all, he died saving my brother’s life.”

  “What about the others?” Mr. Hardy asked. “We’ll need more than one.”

  Ness sighed desolately. “Children of the war? Those lost in combat? We can be sure they’ll have the soldier instinct, at least. They’ll certainly be heroes, too,” she added.

  Mr. Garret joined the conversation. “I know the name of a young boy who had great soldier instincts. He was a friend of my father’s. His name was Daniel Reuben. He died at fifteen too, I believe.”

  “And Victor Thompson,” Mr. Hardy offered. “He died in combat during the Second World War, aged sixteen.”

  “We shall require at least fifty,” said Ness. “And all young. The spell only works on those who were taken young.”

  Mr. Garret stared down at the grass that blanketed the grave. “Well, for now, we start with Jesse Jaxon.”

  “Yes,” Ness said softly. She produced a glass vial from her satchel; the liquid inside it was blood red. “Stand back,” she instructed the two men.

  They did as she asked.

  Ness straightened her shoulders, holding herself with the stance of a noblewoman.

  “My darling boy,” she whispered to the still grave. “You gave your life to save my brother, and now I will repay the favour.” She unscrewed the cork from the vial and sprinkled a few drops of the liquid onto the earth. She began murmuring in a slow, practised voice, “Hero lost in battles roar, return to me yourself and more, become the warrior you were destined to be, and awake as a phoenix, strong, fast, and free.”

  A rumble of thunder sounded overhead. Beneath their feet, the ground began to judder and crack.

  Mr. Hardy stepped forward, extending his rough hand to the splitting ground.

  A new hand burst through the soil and took the older man’s grasp with a clap that rivalled the lightening above.

  Mr. Hardy smiled triumphantly. “Welcome home, Jaxon.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Existence

  I awoke to the sensation of being lifted. I knew at once I was in Jaxon’s arms. I recognised the scent of his skin and the curve of his shoulders as I linked my arms around his neck.

  He was carrying me somewhere.

  In a stolen moment, I buried my face into his chest, listening to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. His clothes were damp from the rainstorm.

  I opened my eyes to see a flash of red, followed by the familiar lamp-lit corridor with its auburn wood walls and slate floor.

  “I fell asleep,” I said blearily, more to myself than to Jaxon.

  “You’re awake,” he realised with a start. “Sorry, I thought you were under a spell.” Carefully he placed me onto the cold, hard floor.

  I found my footing and stood facing him, blinking through my woozy state.

  “Ness’s office,” I mumbled, slowly returning to the present. “I fell asleep in Ness’s office.”

  Jaxon nodded.

  “I was waiting for you,” I told him, a little more lucidly now.

  “I know.”

  That’s right, I thought. I’d refused to leave Ness’s office until Jaxon had returned. Falling asleep hadn’t exactly been part of my big noble plan, though.

  I studied him thoughtfully. Yellowed bruising coloured his jaw.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “There was one,” he confirmed. “Tracked and eliminated.”

  I frowned. “A Divellion? You eliminated a Divellion?” ‘Eliminated’ sounded like a strange word choice, but I rolled with it.

  “Yes.”

  We began walking again, heading towards the staircase at the other end of the corridor.

  “Is it over?” I asked, naïvely
hopeful.

  “Too soon to say.”

  “I hope it’s over,” I whispered.

  Jaxon’s hand brushed against mine and he caught my gaze. His eyes were restored to their usual smoky hue. There was a gentleness to them now. A carefulness.

  “You have no reason to be afraid of them,” he said. “They will never get to you. That will never happen.”

  I couldn’t help but trust the conviction in his tone.

  “I’m sorry you saw me like that,” Jaxon murmured in a pensive state as we began ascending the wide staircase. “I wish you hadn’t.”

  I remembered Ness’s harrowing words, warning me away from Jaxon, saying that he was volatile and I shouldn’t be alone with him.

  Well, I was alone with him now.

  “Do you know?” I broached delicately. “When you change, I mean. Do you know that it’s happening?” I trailed my fingers along the elegant banister, waiting on tenterhooks for his response.

  He sighed. “In a way, yes. But it’s so consuming that I don’t even care. In fact, I don’t want it to stop.”

  I bit my lip. “But if you did want to stop, could you?”

  He sighed again. “No. Probably not.”

  “I think you could,” I argued.

  Jaxon laughed bleakly.

  “I’m not afraid of you,” I told him. “I trust you.”

  We reached the top of the staircase and came to a standstill in the upper hallway. Oil lamps hung from the dark walls, casting crooked shadows all around us.

  “Ms. Ballester doesn’t want me to be the mentor thing anymore,” said Jaxon, running a hand through his damp hair.

  I smiled to myself. We were way past the mentor thing.

  “And I think she has a point,” he added.

  I frowned at him in the low lamp light. “You think who has a point?” Surely he couldn’t be talking about Ness.

  “Ms. Ballester,” he replied. “I think she’s right. I don’t think we should be spending so much time together.”

  His words struck so hard they almost knocked me over.

  “Why not?” I blurted out.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to get too close,” Jaxon went on. “I think today has proven that on more than one occasion.”

  “When?” I stammered.

  “What happened in the graveyard, when I turned on you. And earlier, with Reuben—”

  “The Reuben thing? That was his fault. He was provoking you.”

  “And look at how I reacted. I have no control, and it’s only getting worse. It’s worse when I’m around you.”

  “When you’re around me?” I blinked at him in disbelief. “So you’re saying that you don’t want to be around me anymore?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  It would have been kinder if he’d torn out my heart and stomped on it.

  “I just…” He hung his head. “I just can’t be around you anymore. I don’t want this.”

  This time I couldn’t respond. It was the final blow that left me empty.

  “Let me walk you to your bedroom,” Jaxon offered, as though that meagre act might somehow alleviate the devastation that gripped me.

  “I think that counts as being around me,” I murmured. And with that, I turned on my heel and walked away. I knew Jaxon wouldn’t follow me, and I fought every urge not to look back at him.

  How could he? There was nothing in the world that could have stopped me from wanting to be around him. Even after all the hurtful things he’d said, I still found myself pining for him.

  Why didn’t he want to be around me? What had I done wrong?

  A solitary tear escaped from my eye and rolled down my cheek, leaving its track like my very own battle scar. How could this have happened? He was no longer just a crush—I felt connected to him now. And I’d thought he felt connected to me, too.

  I reached my room and noiselessly slipped inside. Sam and Todd slept soundly in their beds. Fully clothed, I crawled into my camp bed and pulled the sleeping bag over my head.

  More tears poured from my eyes. I couldn’t hold them back anymore, and they seeped into my pillow like the blood-spill of my broken heart.

  I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t want to.

  How could I have read this so wrong? Would he simply stroll off to his bedroom and sleep restfully, knowing that he’d ‘done the right thing’?

  The right thing for who? I demanded silently. For him? For Ness and all the other elders? Certainly not for me.

  There was a knock on the bedroom door.

  I stayed buried inside my sleeping bag.

  The door creaked open and I heard Jaxon’s voice, low and almost inaudible.

  “Sophie?” he said.

  “Go away, Jaxon,” I hissed back.

  “I was hoping we could talk.”

  “I thought you didn’t want to talk to me,” I replied frostily.

  I heard no footsteps, but when Jaxon spoke again, his voice was nearer. “I’ve been silent for a long time,” he whispered. “I’m out of practice. I think I might have said the wrong thing.”

  I sat up and found his eyes in the darkness of the bedchamber.

  “That’s no excuse,” I snapped. “You may have been silent, but you still had a brain.”

  “Were you crying?” Jaxon murmured, evidently noticing my tear-stained face.

  I fumbled to wipe my puffy eyes. “What does it matter to you?”

  He let out a tragic sigh.

  “Well?” I prompted. “What is it that you came here to tell me?”

  “I don’t think telling you is going to work,” he muttered under his breath. “Like I said, I’m out of practise. I think I’d rather show you. Do you feel like taking a walk?”

  #

  I stepped out into the cold night air. The rain had stopped, and the breeze wrapped around me like a cloak of silk.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, knotting my hands together for warmth.

  “I want to show you who I am.” Jaxon led me around the building, heading for the glade.

  I trotted, trying to keep in stride with him.

  “I know who you are,” I said.

  “Humour me.”

  We paced across the empty clearing. Trees lined the enclosure. We passed them, heading for the huge circling wall.

  In the dark of the night, the stone barrier loomed high above me like a tidal wave.

  I ran my fingers along the uneven stone. “Is this what you wanted to—”

  The words caught in my throat. Without warning, Jaxon’s hands were around my waist as he lifted me into the air.

  “Hold onto the top,” he instructed.

  I did as he said, clinging to the top of the cold stone wall, then scrambling to sit upright on its ledge.

  Jaxon cleared the wall and pounced down onto the grass on the other side.

  “Jump!” he called up to me. “I’ll catch you.”

  I swung my legs over the wall and let myself slip from the edge.

  In the split second that I was free falling, I thought of all the injuries a person could sustain by dropping from such a height. Broken bones being the most obvious. Yeesh.

  But I landed unbroken in his awaiting arms.

  As for Jaxon, his body didn’t even jolt with the impact. He simply dipped me and stood me on the spongy ground.

  “Good catch,” I said, dusting myself off.

  “Good fall,” he replied.

  I glanced at my surroundings. I’d never been on that side of the wall before. It was dark, but I noticed a few trees marking the beginning of the woodland, and in the distance the peaked hilltops crept towards the stars.

  Jaxon took my hand. “This way,” he said, leading me into the trees.

  We walked in silence for a while, our hands fused together. I wondered where he could possibly be taking me. What was it that I would learn about him in the woods that I couldn’t learn at the Academy?

  And then, I saw it.

  Jaxon’s world.
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  Trees—dozens of them, all striped of their leaves and carved into shapes. Some were spiralled like helter-skelters, while others were sculpted into animals and flowers. It was like stepping into an exhibition.

  “You did this?” I asked, breathlessly.

  Jaxon dropped my hand and strolled over to a tree that had been crafted into a waterfall. He ran his knuckles along the serrated bark.

  “When I came back here,” he said tenderly, “I found it hard to speak. Hard to… be. The only way I could feel anything was,” he gestured around, “by doing this. Creating the things I loved, to make me feel alive again.”

  I wove in and out of the carved trees in awe. Each and every one of them told a story. They were him.

  “The phoenix in the holt,” I remembered. “Did you carve it?”

  Jaxon nodded. “Doing this was the only thing that kept me sane,” he admitted with a little laugh. “In the early days, I couldn’t understand why I was what I was—why they’d brought me back and made me into a monster.” He grimaced. “I was so angry at what I’d become. One day, I came out here, trying to escape, and I found myself drawing on the bark. I focused everything I had into this. . .” He began walking away from me.

  I followed, unquestioningly.

  “Is that why you draw?” I asked, thinking back to his sketch of Port Dalton.

  “Yes. I suppose it’s something I did in my previous life, and for a long time at the Academy, I needed it. But I did it to the point where I took no enjoyment from it anymore. I was trapped, afraid that if I stopped drawing and carving, I would lose myself.”

  “What changed?”

  Jaxon gave an enigmatic smile. “This was the last thing I did,” he said, resting his hand against a tree. The trunk was sculpted into two parts: one broad section with a second strip of bark running through it, winding like ivy. The sections were apart and yet always intertwined. “I started it a while back,” Jaxon told me, “some time before I met you. Although, when I look at it now, I feel as though it was done for you. It was as though somehow I knew you were coming for me. That you already existed, and that you’d appear one day out of nowhere and bring me back to life.” He paused. “Then, the day I met you, I knew I was done. I could stop.”