by Adam Silvera
“Possibly the worst smell in the world,” Wyatt says. “I’d rather be around Nox when he’s having stomach issues and I promise that’s no garden stroll.”
My eyes are watering. “What the hell is Dayrose?”
“It’s a flower that smells quite lovely on its own, but you mix anything with a couple corpse flowers and you get that assault on your senses. The salve was created to heal phoenixes whose regenerative powers are on the slower side, such as the queen slayers. As much as those phoenixes viciously conquered dragons, they often returned from battle wounded.”
As tragic as the extinction of dragons is, I’m pretty relieved I don’t have to go up against any dragon specters.
“I must’ve missed every detail about Dayrose in all my studies.”
“That’s because it’s a trade secret. Halo Knight exclusive.” Wyatt sits on the windowsill, lifting his headband to breathe in some fresh air. “Though if we’re being honest, I believe there’s a future path where you become a Halo Knight. Certainly controversial since you’re a specter, but that won’t always be the case.”
Back when starting up community college was supposed to be the next phase of my life, I was excited to dive deeper into researching phoenixes. I believed working with Kirk at the museum was going to pair well with all my academic lessons. I thought there was a chance I could even take over the exhibit one day.
I never dared to dream about becoming a Halo Knight.
This would be an amazing opportunity for me. It’s not as if I can ever return to my normal life with people knowing me as Fire-Wing and Infinity Son. I could probably even be safe here and learn how to better protect phoenixkind. But there’s no way they would actually welcome me as one of their own.
“It’s a cute thought, but we both know that’s never going down.”
“What’s wrong with that? There are two ways to become a Halo Knight. The first is being born into it, a wonderful life hack I was privileged with. Or you can make significant contributions to phoenixkind. I’m not on the council, but between your gorgeous face and, oh, you know, retrocycling to find a potion that will banish the essences of fallen phoenixes from specters, you’re a shoo-in.”
Thankfully this headband around my face is hiding my blushed cheeks after Wyatt’s gorgeous comment. “The only problem is that my past life causing this is pretty unforgivable, right? Making me a Halo Knight now would be like giving someone a promotion for fixing their own massive screw-up. One that cost lives.”
“Well, our numbers are down, so we can’t be picky,” Wyatt says and I can tell that he’s smiling behind his headband. “Truly, Emil, you have the heart for this. If you can create this potion and get rid of your powers, you are well on the way to joining us. I would mentor the holy blazes out of you.”
He’s staring at me so damn lustfully that I need some air.
I hold up the Dayrose salve. “Should we go outside? I don’t want to stink up the room.”
“Wise man.”
Every step getting to the courtyard hurts. I spot Nox resting in the moonlight, a favorite pastime of his apparently. This idea of me becoming a Halo Knight is the first time I’ve been excited in a minute. I’d get to work more closely with phoenixes, but I wonder if I’ll get to bond with one or if they’ll all sense the dead gray sun’s essence that has been in my blood for three lifetimes.
We pass the front gate of the castle because Wyatt says the phoenixes don’t respond well to the Dayrose salve’s stench either. I’m truly not looking forward to smelling like this for stars know how long. We sit close to the drawbridge, the sounds of the river flowing calming me. I suck in one last deep breath of fresh air before reopening the mason jar. The smell is so intense I cough and cough against the headband.
“Do you have any spray inside that handy satchel of yours?”
“Afraid not. We’re going to have to soldier through this one.” Wyatt steps closer to me. “Will you do me the great privilege of helping you apply it?”
The flashback returns of Ness helping me in the art supplies room—of Ness touching me.
“I got it,” I say.
“Be generous to yourself.”
I scoop out enough salve to cake my fingers. I almost lift my shirt, but Wyatt’s blue eyes are on me and I don’t want him to see my bare body. I turn my back and lift my shirt, applying the salve across all my scars. I spread the most over my stomach since the wound from Luna’s stabbing has been pulsing with pain. In seconds, something icy activates within the salve.
“Please tell me I don’t have to keep this on all night,” I say as I turn back around to Wyatt.
He doesn’t answer. He’s staring at me like I’m some work of art, which is ridiculous. “Believe it or not, love, but as forward as I have been with you I have been holding back some. I’m desperate to tell you how beautiful you are under the moon like some sappy poet, but I’m taking the hint that you’re not interested in me. Does my breath smell like that salve? Or is there someone else?”
Not once have Wyatt and I even talked about who we’re into, but I know that Halo Knight culture as a whole has always been really accepting of queer people. I wasn’t counting on him to be so forward about this. Definitely not tonight.
“Are those the only two options for why I’m not falling for your charms?”
“You think I’m charming, then.”
“No. I mean sure, yeah. You’re cool people and your accent has scored you tons of points in my book.”
“But?”
“There is someone. There was someone. We weren’t dating or anything and I’m not sure what he thought about me, but I was attracted to this guy Ness.”
Wyatt picks up a rock and hurls it down to the river. “Damn, that’s a great name. I was hoping for a Chad or Bobby. I can conquer all the Chads and Bobbys.”
I realize I have no idea why Ness picked that name. “His real name is Eduardo. He chose the name Ness after he became a Blood Caster.”
“Way to bury the lede!”
“Believe it or not, that’s not the lede. Ness was Senator Iron’s son. The one who supposedly died in the Blackout.”
Wyatt’s blue eyes widen with shock. “Wow. Well, I see why you’re resisting my charms. I can’t compete against a bad boy who came back from the dead.”
“He wasn’t a bad guy. Ness faked his death because his father was a terrible influence on him.”
“Joining your country’s most lethal gang makes him good?” Wyatt asks, a surprising edge in his voice.
This isn’t news to me, I’ve been a direct target of theirs for weeks. “The Blood Casters saved his life and offered him shifter blood to hide from his father. His choices sucked.”
“I would die before I willingly take in the blood of any creature.”
I don’t want to throw Ness under the bus, but me too. Though it’s not right for me to judge him when I still don’t even know his full story. “Ness was good. He was forced to kill Luna’s enemies, but he isn’t proud of that. It traumatized him so badly that he would wake up in the form of his victims. And when he had the opportunity to run away, he came back to save me. I didn’t see him die, but I’m pretty damn sure it cost him his life.”
I’m shaking and it’s not because of the salve.
Wyatt closes the space between us with open arms. “May I?”
I let him hug me. I’ve already cried into his arms once today; I don’t have more tears in me. Thinking about Ness makes me feel both dead inside and guilty for being alive.
“Maybe he got away,” Wyatt says. “He’s certainly faked his death before. He could be anyone in this world.”
I would love to live in that fantasy. I wouldn’t blame Ness if he managed to escape the enforcers and decided it was too risky to try to find me again. If only I knew he were alive, I could find so much happiness in that thought alone, even if it meant we couldn’t be together. I would spend the rest of my life picturing Ness as different people, questioning if the person w
ho is staring at me for a second too long or smiling as they pass me on the street is Ness in disguise. I just want him alive and I want him with someone where he can be himself, even if it’s only in private. I’d hate for that face to be hidden from the world forever.
But there’s this gut feeling that something has gone terribly wrong with Ness.
The sound of the car pulling up catches my attention and we break our hug. Prudencia parks again at the other side of the drawbridge. They get out of the car and Brighton looks really beat up with his ripped shirt and bandaged forehead. He helps Prudencia, who’s limping toward us. I run toward them, the salve already working its magic and reducing my pain.
“What the hell is that smell?” Brighton asks, taking a step back and coughing.
“I love you, Emil, but you smell like death,” Prudencia says as she presses an ice pack against her black eye and covers her nose.
“And you two look like it. What happened?”
“We were ambushed by some specter,” Prudencia says.
“With reaper powers. Ghost phasing included,” Brighton says. “But we still had him beat.”
I hug them both at the same time. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
Brighton gags. “Seriously, did a phoenix piss on you? What is that smell?”
“A healing salve,” Wyatt says. “Phoenix urine smells more like—”
“Did you get Ma’s clothes?” I ask, interrupting Wyatt.
Brighton and Prudencia exchange the kind of glance that can’t possibly mean anything good. Was the apartment raided? Everything tossed since we haven’t been around to pay rent?
“Tell him,” Prudencia says.
Brighton lets out a deep sigh. “Today wasn’t exactly a win for Team Infinity.”
Forty-Two
Predecessor
EMIL
My home is gone forever.
Everything that belonged to us, to Ma, to Dad has been destroyed. Every day in this war it feels like we’re getting closer and closer to being erased from history. Like someone will succeed in killing us sooner or later and the world will move on. Then I’ll be reborn, maybe Brighton too, and there will be no remnants of the Reys of Light for us to connect to—no pictures, no art, no personal tokens.
Brighton and Prudencia are drained so they head to bed, but between all my rest today and this news, I’m wired. It’s chilly out, even as the salve’s effect begins wearing off, so Wyatt and I sit close, with our shoulders pressed together; we’ve both gotten used to the stench by now.
I’m about to break down when Wyatt asks me about what my home life has been like over the years. It’s painful sharing memories of simpler times, but this is how I make sure my family’s history isn’t reduced to ashes. I go in on what it was like being the thought-to-be-younger-brother-by-seven-minutes to someone who has always been so naturally brilliant, and how lucky I was to have parents who loved me so much that I never even suspected that I was adopted. But everything started going downhill once Dad got sick. We were all so spent, Brighton was always snapping at us and others at the hospital, and things only got worse when Dad died. Now Ma is lost, and Brighton was awful to her, and we have no way of finding her.
Now that I’ve gotten started, it’s like I can’t shut up. Before I know it, I’m walking Wyatt through everything that’s happened since getting my powers—joining the Spell Walkers, saving the sun swallower from the arena the night we took Ness hostage, Ness’s faux betrayal that led to him cutting me with an infinity-ender, discovering Prudencia is a celestial, and the battle on the last night of the Crowned Dreamer where Gravesend died in my arms.
For how quick Wyatt can be with his responses, he’s an incredible listener. I can tell he’s fading, though, so I lie about how I’m ready to go to bed so he can actually get some sleep. He deserves some rest after all his research on retrocycling plus preparing the Dayrose salve for me. I take a quick shower, then head back to the room, and I’m up for another couple hours, listening to Prudencia snoring and some phoenix song, before I finally fall asleep.
I’m woken up way too early because of Brighton playing news reports on his phone without any headphones in. Different outlets are covering the story of Brighton’s battle with the specter, and I brace myself for what remains of our home. The building is burnt black and there are fire-escape ladders lying curbside, not doing anyone good down there. I find our windows on the fourth floor, the one to the living room shattered from when Ness was disguising himself as Atlas, and the ones to the bedrooms warped like every other tenant’s. Shelters have been taking people in, and even though Brighton and Prudencia helped save the day, this all happened because the Blood Casters were hoping we’d make the mistake of going home. We’ve displaced all our neighbors for no reason.
I bounce from the room, going straight to the library, where Wyatt is already up and out on the balcony. He’s wearing nothing but the same shorts as yesterday, a thick book resting on his abs as his feet are kicked up on a sleeping Nox’s back. The sunlight hits his brown hair in a way that makes it glow like a halo. I can’t tell if he’s squinting because it’s so bright out or because he’s focused on the page, but it’s a good look on an already-great-looking guy.
“Hey,” I say, stepping outside. The sun instantly warms the back of my neck.
“You’re up far earlier than I’d expected,” Wyatt says. He closes the book and sets it on his lap, baring his chest. I manage to maintain eye contact, but I can feel my gaze working hard to drift to his pecs like magnetism. “Had I known you were up I would’ve invited you on our morning flight.”
“Another time,” I say. I’d love to take him up on that. It’s something to get used to in case I ever get to become a Halo Knight.
“You’ve caught me at an interesting time, love. I’m reading up on your predecessor’s history. Your first attempt at retrocycling was astounding, though I believe it will go more swimmingly if you focus on returning to the day of his death. Maribelle sensed she was close to Sera’s, and since the two died on the same day, perhaps that will be your way in too.”
“That works for me.”
“Shall we have a little Bautista Book Club?”
There’s only a few pages about Bautista in The Halo Blacklist, but Wyatt thinks it’s all worth studying up on. There isn’t a ton that I don’t already know about Bautista from Brighton obsessing about him over the years and his profile at the museum, but refreshing my memory won’t hurt.
Bautista de León was twenty years old when he was making headlines for challenging Blood Casters in New York. The gang had been robbing banks, intimidating judges and politicians, and killing alchemists who were attempting to create potions to neutralize their powers. Their streak had gone unchecked until Bautista started tracking their patterns, a skill that I definitely don’t have. He was holding his own in fights, but as the Blood Casters began grooming other young people—later called acolytes—to do their dirty work, Bautista knew he needed a team. He formed the Spell Walkers to combat all oppositions to peace. It took a while before they won over the public, but they became a valuable force with their track record of saving lives and incapacitating Blood Casters long enough for the authorities to lock them up in the Bounds. Four years later, Bautista was killed inside a weapons factory, and while many mourned him, the writer of this text claimed that if Bautista ever surfaced again with a phoenix’s illegal powers, the Haloes would make sure his next death was as permanent as Keon Máximo’s.
“Not the happiest of endings,” I say.
“Haloes have some fiery hearts,” Wyatt says.
“Hopefully none of them find out their history books are wrong about Keon.”
Since the Dayrose salve didn’t restore me to full health, I decide to keep busy digging up more information about Bautista until I have the strength to try retrocycling again. I borrow Brighton’s laptop, and he gets me started with a dozen tabs to review while he spends time in the training room with Prudencia. I feel some k
ind of way about him getting more and more comfortable with powers I’m dead set on binding, but we got to make sure we’re strong enough to get close to the Blood Casters if we want to have any chance of disempowering them.
The first tab is a YouTube video of Bautista being interviewed remotely by an anchorwoman on CNN explaining his intentions with the Spell Walkers. I’ve seen broadcasts of him throughout the years, and even though this video is a repeat, it’s the first time I’m seeing life in him since discovering our link. His head is buzzed and he’s not rocking any facial hair. He’s comfortable in front of the camera, and his charisma really sells him as the hero millions once celebrated.
Last fall it was announced that a movie about Bautista’s life was in the works, and fans—Brighton included—were very vocal about which actors they believed could actually match his charm. But the studio canceled the project after the Blackout to distance themselves from the Spell Walkers. Brighton was pissed that the movie wasn’t happening, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s been sliding into the DMs of producers trying to sell the rights to our story.
There’s an article with links to Bautista’s public killstreaks. I hold my breath while clicking into a grainy video of Bautista battling a hydra specter with two heads and four arms. The specter charges Bautista with an infinity-ender dagger, but Bautista is faster, shoulder rolling toward an ax that’s laid out on the street. He scoops it up, sets it ablaze with golden flames, and swings it so quickly that I see one head decapitated before I close the video; I trust the second head came clean off too.
I groan into my hands.
“What’s the matter?” Wyatt asks.
“I come from killers, and I’m an idiot if I think I’m going to get out of this war without following in their footsteps.”
“It’s inevitable in our line of work, no?”
I tell him all about how the Spell Walkers have argued this point too, and even though they’re also interested in avoiding fatalities, I have no clue if they’ve killed before and what the circumstances were. Maribelle burnt Anklin Prince alive, and she’s gunning for June’s blood. And then there’s Brighton, who, ever since we first got pulled into the orbit of the Spell Walkers, has told me that killing to save the world is different.