“Everyone is here in time! What good fortune,” Pendulus cried.
But Cale and Ava barely acknowledged him as they sat down on opposite sides of the fire.
“Are you hungry?” Ava asked eventually.
He didn’t answer, though he was. But he didn’t want to eat. He didn’t want to sleep or fight. He just wanted her.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He looked to her, surprised. “Why are you sorry?”
“I don’t know. Just thought if I said it, maybe it would help.”
“None of this is your fault, Ava.”
“It’s not your fault either.”
That isn’t true. He’d pushed her. He’d wanted her to change so badly, to become more open, more caring. He wanted her to be the Ava that he could pact with, and not the Ava who could become a true phoenix.
The lantern flickered on, and a sweet voice filled the room. “Cale?”
Despite himself, he smiled as he stood. Lena could do that. Her gift—to make people happy—was stronger than ever. “Lena. I didn’t know you were here.”
She tucked dark hair behind her ear. “My grandfather thought the baby might come soon. So he called me. I hoped to help keep the mother calm with my gift. Most find joy when they are around me.”
But Cale saw the creases of worry on his friend’s forehead. “What’s wrong, Lena?”
“Juliette…she is no longer happy, no matter what I do.”
Cale stiffened. “Is she sick?”
Lena nodded. “I’m afraid so. She is already losing her strength, and the baby is not responding well to the labor. But there is nothing more we can do for either of them.”
A cry from the bedroom. A sharp yell from Juliette. Miriam called for Lena and the red dragon girl, still frowning, disappeared into the little room.
“Maybe we can find a phone? Call Karma?” Ava asked. “Or maybe Pendulus can go get her?”
Pendulus stepped closer at the sound of his name. “We cannot travel through the void. Even Shiloh had to fly here with Rane. The others will find us if we do.”
“Shiloh is here? And what do you mean we can’t fly through the void? What happened at the courts?”
“Shiloh has not yet told me. I only know the no-ir will not allow us to live. No matter what, they’ll hunt down, but the void would lead them to us in mere moments.”
Miriam came out, her hair uncombed and bags in layers under her pale blue eyes. “Ava?” She stopped at the sight of her daughter. “You…you look….”
Ava still never knew what to say to the woman. It was as if the part of her that needed a mother was broken. “Um…hello, Miriam. How…are you?”
Miriam just stared until she could speak. “I…I’m doing alright. Worried, of course, about Juliette. And about you, Ava. But now that you’re here, I’m a little better.”
“Good.”
Juliette cried out again, and Miriam winced. “She’s in pain. It seems like the baby isn’t compatible with her. And she’s such a little thing to be carrying so much weight around.”
“I’m sure it’ll be okay.”
Miriam turned to go back to the room, but Ava called out to her. She leaned forward and wrapped the awkward angles of her tense arms around her foster mother. “Miriam…I just wanted to let you know…I’m glad you have Juliette. She really seems to love you, and…you know…I bet she needs a mom right now.”
When Ava let go, Miriam held herself together with arms that had always been frail, but she looked at Ava with love. “You’re still my daughter, Ava.”
Ava wished it meant more to her. But it didn’t. It never had. “I just wanted you to know…it’s okay, Miriam,” she said, “to love Juliette all the way.”
Miriam gave a watery smile and put a hand on Ava’s arm. She looked…relieved. For the first time since Ava had known her, she looked like she could breathe. “Okay.”
“Ava—” Cale interrupted. “Something’s coming.”
“Something’s coming here?”
He nodded, reaching for his dragonblade. “Closing in fast.” His eyes changed to narrow slits, smoke leaving his mouth as he spoke.
“We fight.”
“No.” He almost shivered. “Run. We need to run. We can’t survive something like this.”
Ava took out her dragonblade, too, the metal springing to life. “Whatever it is, we can handle it, Cale.”
But he looked as if he was having trouble holding on to his weapon. “They’re coming.”
The no-ir. Of course they would shake him to his core. He was meant to be afraid of them, of what they could do. And they were going to destroy everyone.
“Already? Shiloh,” Ava called out, rushing to the room and sticking her head inside. “The no-ir are coming. Now. We have to go.”
But Juliette was crying out, scratching at the skin of her belly like fire ants were devouring her. Shiloh was desperate as he tried to hold her hands still.
“Give us time,” he said.
Ava cursed as she left. She turned to Pendulus. “You know these dragons. How long do you think we have?”
“If Cale is sensing them, they are already through the void. They will be here at any moment,” Pendulus said. “We run or we die.”
But Shiloh emerged from the room, whip in hand. “Go,” he said. ‘I’ll hold them off.”
“Shiloh—”
Shiloh snapped grave eyes at Pendulus. “She needs time. The dragonling is tormenting her. She cannot travel through the void like this.”
“We cannot travel through the void at all,” Pendulus said.
Ava stepped forward and took charge. “We’re not going to die for nothing.” She pointed to the room. “Shiloh, get Juliette on Rane’s back. Take Miriam with you. Pendulus, take Lena and her daughter.” And she stood too close to him, so he knew she was serious. “Take them and find Santiago. Then get them the hell out of here. Can you do that?”
Pendulus’ wide set eyes darted to Shiloh. “I should not leave my brother.”
But Ava wouldn’t let him move past her. “Pendulus. This is what it means to be a protector of something that matters. I need you to take Santiago and his family and get them some place safe. Do you understand how important you are?”
He nodded.
“Shiloh, we run to the jungle, away from the coast. It’ll be harder for the black dragons to fly through the trees since they’re so large, so we stay on the ground.” Ava held their attention for a moment longer. “If anything happens, we protect the ones who can’t protect themselves. Because that’s what dragons do. Juliette, Miriam, the baby…they are our first priorities.”
Shiloh and Cale nodded their agreement, and Pendulus rattled Meel’s satchel until he hissed and fell out onto the floor with an unpleasant plop.
“Change,” Ava told Cale, and in moments he was in second form and she was on top of him, pocketing his blade. She let her wings break free, refusing to care about what she looked like. She was incredible—her skin flowing gold and black, atop the back of a beast, her own weapon drawn.
They ran. Through the thick vines and underbrush of the jungle outside of Chimbote. The dragons pushed through the foliage, Cale leading the pack.
They ran because there was no other choice.
Miriam, atop Rane, was tasked with keeping her hand clamped over Juliette’s mouth as she screamed through her labor pains. She didn’t let the girl see the tears that slid down her own cheeks as she did it, praying that God would step in, ease Juliette’s pain.
But it was not God who stopped them.
The ground thundered as Elac and his beast, Pon, landed. The no-ir rider raised his whip and his dragon opened his mouth, letting out a cloud of poison gas.
Cale and Ava froze, holding their breath in expectation, but Shiloh leapt from Rane’s back and threw himself into the midst of it. The poison retracted into Shiloh’s skin, and he raced forward, shooting his whip out and catching Pon’s left leg. He pulled, still in motion, so that th
e dragon tumbled to its side, letting out a bellow of pain.
Pendulus and Meel were behind him, flying towards the dark of the sky. Meel’s talons met with another black dragon before the beast had even made it all the way through the void.
Lena, her daughter safe with Santiago, helped Miriam slide Juliette from Rane’s back and carry the girl into the bushes.
“Go,” Ava shouted to them. She looked at Miriam one last time. “Keep her safe,” she said. “Be brave for her.”
And Miriam left, carrying the weakened Juliette as far into the trees as they could make it.
Rane charged forward, throwing a no-ir into a tree and wrenching the roots from the soil. But Pon was crafty. He rolled, sinking razor talons into Rane’s hide.
Shiloh was there. With a sharp pull, he snapped his whip around the black dragon’s neck and yanked. From the fray, his rider screamed out untold terror. He fell to his knees, crawling toward his companion. And even in the onslaught, Shiloh stooped down and carried the rider on his shoulders. He lay him on the ground beside his dragon. It was their way.
Ava let her wings aid her balance. A searing pain, like nothing she’d ever felt, as they spread in the wind. She rode Cale’s back until they were high enough for her to jump. Mid-air, she caught her blade on the tail of a no-ir dragon. The beast hissed, shooting its smoke at her, but she pushed her will and the poison vanished.
Cale roared, sinking his teeth into the shoulder of the rider and clamping his jaws shut until the arm was no longer attached. The blood of the maimed rider burned his face, and he reeled backwards, nearly losing Ava.
From somewhere in the clashing, Pendulus cried out, his dragon echoing and the two of them landing on the ground and fighting for a moment to breathe—just one moment to rest.
There were too many. Too many no-ir to fight at once.
Until, without warning, a charge of sirens. The werefolk scrambled over the fallen black dragons, clawing their way past the huddled Meel and Pendulus as they attacked. The nightfolk, with their haunted eyes, their crooning songs, filled the forest.
Without hesitation, Onna sprinted to the action, her dragonblade poised. She jumped in and dodged the lash of a black whip while she hacked blindly with her blade.
Victor and Manuel gave their war cry as they came, flooding in alongside the nightfolk.
“Move!” Onna shoved Ava out of the way in time to block a blow from a black rider. The force sent her back a few feet, but Ava used her to will to evaporate the cloud of poison she would have landed in.
“Stay with him,” Onna yelled over the chaos. She charged again, helping a brood of nightfolk take down a mighty no-ir.
On her way back to her dragon, Ava felt the electric sting of a whip on her back. She fell to the ground, crawling away from the next blow, forcing herself not to scream as the pain tore through her skin.
Cale took the head off the rider and crushed his skull in one snarling bite. He hurried to Ava, but there was no time to see if she was alright. A black dragon swiped him aside with his massive paw, so his body shook the tree that stood in his way.
Do something, Ava thought. We’ll all kill each other if you don’t do something. Now.
But it was all too much. She couldn’t focus, couldn’t figure out how to save the people who needed to live. So she shut her eyes and curled herself up into the tightest ball she could manage.
I’m not here, she told herself. I am in ownworld, and I can do whatever I want. Her muscles spasmed in reaction to the screaming of a red dragon who—from the sound that pierced the forest—was being burnt alive by the poison blood of a black dragon. Ava wanted to open her eyes to see who it was, to see if she could save them. But she closed herself off to the cries.
I’m a phoenix and I don’t care about these people, she told herself. I control them. And I want them to have weapons. She didn’t look to see if their dragonblades appeared in their hands. There was no time. I want water for them to drink. She almost lost it. The agony she felt was real, but she was stronger. The darkness that welled up in her and poured over her skin was thick, but she was braver. She had to be. And I want…fire.
The wall of heat pressed into her, but she refused to look at what she knew she’d done. The sirens that had come to help them at Slate’s command. They shriveled in the burning flames. Many fled for their dismal lives, but others met their end as smoke and ash.
The black dragon riders who had come to kill their brothers lifted their dragons’ reins. They wouldn’t risk the lives of their closest companions. Ava knew that if she hurt them badly enough, they would retreat into the void.
And the red dragons who remained. They fell to their knees and embraced the flames, drinking in the healing light before it was too late for them.
Ava had no idea when Cale changed back to first form, or when he lifted her from the ground before the tongues of fire could devour her.
For the first time in months, she rested in his arms. Deep inside, she knew it would be the last time Cale would let her be that close. It would be the last time he’d need her to be safe.
It would be the last time she was his.
Twenty
Life
Juliette grabbed onto Shiloh’s hand—the hand that no one was ever supposed to touch, that no one was ever supposed to want—and pushed.
“I can’t,” she said, tears cutting paths through the dirt on her cheeks. She looked up at the face she’d fallen in love with. “I can’t.”
He brushed her brown waves aside. “You can, Juliette.”
She shook her head, her eyes brimming with so much fear she could no longer see. “I don’t want to…Shiloh, I don’t want to.”
Shiloh pretended no one else was there. And he held her face in between his palms. He spoke in black tongue, so only Juliette could hear.
She squeezed her eyes shut as the contraction gripped her whole body. When she could breathe again, “I love you, Shiloh. I love you.”
Silence.
No-ir, born into silence. They lay there, in Miriam’s waiting arms, and did not move. There were two of them, the tiniest rider and dragon. They held each other close, but neither made a sound.
Miriam couldn’t hold back the softest of sobs. “I am so sorry,” she said. “So sorry.”
But Juliette only stared at the little ones.
“Let me have them,” Shiloh said to her.
Juliette, oblivious of how much of her own blood she was losing, unaware of how her vision began to blur, whispered, “They’re beautiful.”
Shiloh had to take them. “Leave us,” he said to Miriam, softly at first, and then shouting it. “Leave us!”
He knelt there, beside Juliette, and they both looked at the lifeless faces—the curve of the dragonling’s nose, the sweet closed eyes of the infant rider.
“We were wrong…to think we could do this,” Juliette said at last. Tears mixed with her sweat. She leaned her head back against the trunk of the tree to keep from falling asleep. “They’re beautiful, and we ruined them.”
But Shiloh lowered his hands so Rane could come close, so he could see them. The dragon sniffed the pair, licked the little rider’s curled fist.
Ava watched from behind a tree, distant enough to keep herself from being noticed.
“My heart is breaking for them,” he said, his voice low and cracking as he whispered from behind her.
“Shiloh is letting Rane see them,” Ava replied. She sounded far away, as if she was thinking, as if she was disconnecting. “Shiloh must be trying to think of what to say to them.”
“How do you know what he’s thinking?” Cale asked. He wondered if Ava’s heart was breaking too. And then along with a pang of guilt for even entertaining the thought, he wondered if her heart had survived the hatching.
“Because he told me.” Ava swallowed past the dryness in her throat, past the pain that coursed through every inch of her. “He told me to give him time…so he could think of what to say.”
; “Time?” Cale could feel Ava’s heart beat faster as she turned to face him, her back against the tree that hid them from the mourning couple. She reached up and put her hands over his neck, pressed her mouth against Cale’s. It was the first kiss they’d shared since she’d become a true phoenix. And it was just as dark and harrowing as the night that pressed in around them.
“I’m sorry, Cale,” she said. It sounded like she would cry. But she didn’t.
“Sorry for what?”
“Sorry this is so hard. Sorry for the lies. Sorry I hurt you.”
Before he could figure out how to tell her she was wrong, that it was hard but it could be good, that there were lies, but they could find light, that there was pain but hope would always grow, she pulled away.
Ava stepped out from the trees, and walked up behind Shiloh. At the last moment, she saw Rane turn his noble head to look at her. His eyes met hers, and she swore she felt the earth turn. But Rane didn’t stop her. He didn’t move.
She pulled out her dragonblade, and closed her eyes. Be stronger. Be braver. Her arm moved. And the blade was through Shiloh’s back.
It jarred her, like coming to a swift stop, like falling without knowing why. She pulled the dragonblade from the rider’s body and watched as he swayed, as he crumbled to his knees.
Black blood on the blade. It soaked Shiloh’s cloak, pooled in the green grass below. Ava thought all sound had withered away. Because there was no noise to hide from what she’d done. It was as if God had covered her ears. To make sure she watched it all. To make sure she suffered.
Shiloh’s mouth opened as he lay on his side, as if maybe he gasped. Or maybe, he was trying to say something.
But it was not to her he spoke. It was to Rane. Rane, who could no longer hold his size, stretched out his enormous limbs beneath the tree. Ava’s hands shook as she dragged Shiloh across the ground. She leaned him up on top of his dragon. So he could feel Rane’s heartbeat. Because that’s what she would have wanted.
She went to Juliette, who wasn’t moving in the pool of her own blood, her green eyes rimmed with red, staring. Just staring. And Ava took the babies from her hands. Juliette didn’t fight to keep them. She couldn’t. Just stared.
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