Shadow of the Phoenix

by Rebecca Harwell

  The dilapidated building was unassuming, just one of dozens that leaned over the streets of the second tier. Rotting boards covered the door and the second-floor windows. Bits of foggy glass littered the abandoned storefront. It looked like no one had set foot here since the Blood Sun Solstice.

  Nadya stood before it. She and her father had spent countless mornings here sparring as he taught her to control her strength, maintaining contact with his daughter against the will of the family matriarch.

  Against the will of her mother.

  Her chest ached with a veritable Great Storm of emotions, and Nadya couldn’t parse out any singular thought or feeling. It numbed her, the cacophony of sentiments that welled up inside her, and Nadya clung to that numbness. It was the only thing keeping her on her feet.

  Taking a deep breath of the tier’s piss-scented air, Nadya pulled open the door’s hidden latch and stepped inside.

  She had scarcely crossed the threshold into the safe house when she was enveloped in a strong embrace. She breathed in the familiar scent of sea air and leather that she knew so well.

  “Papa,” she whispered.

  Shadar Gabori released his grip and looked down at her. In the ten months since she had seen her father, age had taken him. More gray dusted his temples, but the lines that now creased his forehead and around his eyes did little to impede his sad smile.

  “Nadya,” he said, running his hand along her cheek. “I have missed you.”

  “I missed you too, Papa.”

  It was strange to see her father out of the crimson uniform of the Duke’s Guard. In his plain brown tunic and black trousers, he could have been mistaken for any of the Nomori laborers who worked the mines, save for the familiar rapier hanging from his belt.

  “There is so much I want to ask you, so much to tell you, but there will be time for that later. I am glad you came.” He looked toward the stairs, and reluctantly, Nadya’s gaze followed. The distance stretched out before her, dizzying.

  “What does she want?”

  She had not realized she said it aloud until Shadar answered, “To see you. Anything else is between your mother, you, and the Protectress.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “This is your choice, Nadya. I sent the message so that you would be able to make it.”

  Her feet didn’t move.

  “What do you want to do?”

  She didn’t know, and it froze her limbs, numbed her thoughts. I want things to be like they once were, before Mama found out about my nivasi blood, before Gedeon and the Blood Sun Solstice.

  But such a fantasy meant going back to a time she did not have Shay by her side, and that thought turned her stomach.

  “Come with me?” she finally said, unable to hide the uncertainty in her voice.

  Shadar squeezed her shoulder. “Of course. I’ll be right behind you.”

  The creaking stars that led to the second story, once the living quarters of its long-missing proprietor, suddenly seemed all too short as Nadya ascended to the top before she had gathered her thoughts.

  It was much like she remembered: a large open space ideal for sparring. She noted dents in the plastered walls she had slammed into after taking a particularly bad hit. If she closed her eyes, she could almost picture the row of practice rapiers hanging on rusted hooks and the bark of her father, “Do it again, Nadya!”

  “Go ahead.” Behind her, Shadar’s voice was now soft.

  Nadya took a deep breath that failed to calm that storm in her chest and did so.

  Mirela Gabori lay on a pallet in the center of the room. Above her, the stars shone down through a rough-edged hole. A single candle burned in the corner, illuminating the left side of Mirela’s face. Her cheeks were sunken, her lips dry and cracked. Nadya’s eyes traced down her bony shoulder to where her chest struggled to rise and fall. Each breath echoed throughout the silent room, a battle for her diseased lungs to take in enough air to put off the inevitable for one more moment.

  Bile rose in Nadya’s throat, and if it hadn’t been for the solid presence of her father at her back, she would have turned tail and run.

  Mirela was not alone. Drina Gabori, former matriarch of the Gabori family, knelt beside her daughter. Strands of hair escaped her silver braid, and her simple plum tunic bore the wrinkles of several sleepless nights. She dabbed a damp cloth against Mirela’s brow, muttering a prayer in ancient Nomori.

  “Nadya?” Mirela’s voice grated as if pulled through metal teeth. “Nadya, is that you?”

  Drina stood. “Yes, your daughter is here.” Even in the dim light, her eyes shone sharply. Nadya had never seen warmth in them before, and she didn’t now. She had also never seen tears, but Drina’s red-rimmed eyes glimmered at the edges with moisture.

  Nadya took one small step forward. “Hello, Mama.”

  “Nadya.” Mirela tried to sit up, triggering a coughing fit. Her shoulders heaved as she hacked into a handkerchief that Drina held out. Nadya smelled blood before her mother’s cough subsided.

  “Do not strain yourself,” Drina chastised. “You need your strength.”

  “I have no strength left. The stars are calling to me. It will be soon.”

  “Nonsense,” her grandmother said, but Nadya heard the lie in her quickened heartbeat.

  “Mama,” Mirela said to Drina. She raised her arm with what looked like an enormous effort and brushed her fingers along Drina’s cheek. “I am not afraid.” She coughed again. “But I would like to speak to Nadezhda alone.”

  Nadya’s heart lurched. She hoped her grandmother would object, but Drina only bowed her head in acceptance.

  “Very well. Come, Shadar, help me downstairs.”

  Her father gave Nadya an encouraging smile before offering his arm to Drina and then guiding her down to the first floor.

  Except for the rats that skittered inside the walls, Nadya and her mother were alone.

  “You asked for me?” Nadya said, proud of the steadiness in her voice.

  Her mother nodded weakly. “I did. I wished to see you once more.”

  “Even though…” Nadya’s voice caught. “Even though I’m nivasi?”

  Mirela glanced away. Her gaze lingered upon the gap in the roof where the stars of the witching hour glimmered. “With each breath, I move closer to our Protectress, and she has shown me how foolish I was to let fear rule my heart. She has forgiven me, I know, but I would like to ask for your forgiveness as well, Nadya.”

  Nadya’s mouth opened, but no sound escaped. Her mother lay upon her deathbed, begging her for forgiveness. Instead of peace, however, Nadya felt as though a great weight pressed against her chest. “Mama, why?” The words tumbled out of her in a rush of emotion that she had been avoiding these past ten months. “Why did you do it? Why did you cast me away?”

  Mirela looked up at her, shame etched across her gaunt features. “You will not like the answer, Nadya.”

  “I need it.”

  “Very well.” She sighed. “I feared what you might become.”

  Nadya’s breath caught in her throat. Did you expect anything different? she told herself, even as the first tear slid down her face.

  “The nivasi and the zealot had unleashed chaos upon the city. Rumors of a slaughter during the Duke’s speech, perpetrated by another nivasi with incredible strength, had made its way down to the Nomori tier. I fled the house for my life in the midst of this, and I grabbed ahold of your seal…”

  Nadya touched her upper arm, where the metal band sat underneath her clothes. It wrapped around her arm, and its surface held the imprint of a five-petaled flower. The seal of the Protectress.

  “I felt your power, Nadya. I felt the lives that Gedeon had crushed through you. Not of your own volition. I understood that. Even when you came to the house several months after, at the behest of your father.” Mirela shook her head. “I never did deserve him, but at least you had the father you deserved. He tried to reconcile us, but I resisted. When you came to the house—”

  “You sa
id it was because of Gedeon. Because of what he made me do. Because of how I killed him.”

  “I lied.” Her mother coughed again, and the shallow cough soon turned into a deep hack that wracked her entire body.

  Nadya acted automatically. She fell to her knees and braced her mother’s shoulders as she had done so many times before. Mirela did not flinch away from her touch, despite knowing what her hands were capable of. They rode out the coughing fit together.

  Her mother grasped her hands when she moved to pull away after the coughs had faded to deep, ragged breaths. Nadya hated how cold and thin Mirela’s fingers felt against her own.

  “I lied because it was easier to blame what you had been made to do by Gedeon. What you had been made to do to him.”

  Nadya looked down at their entwined hands. She vividly remembered the sensation of tearing Gedeon’s head from his body after she had fought her way out of his control. It wasn’t that she regretted her choice to kill him; he had needed to be stopped before he could get ahold of her or anyone else again. But it marked the first time she had purposefully killed someone, and that choice took something away from her that she would never be able to get back.

  “In truth, I saw you overcome Gedeon. For all his power, you defeated him. You tore his head from his body.”

  Those blunt words stabbed Nadya in the chest, and she wished that she had Shay’s steady presence at her back. She made to withdraw her hand, but Mirela held tightly, her strength surprising given the shallow breaths she took.

  “It frightened me, that the woman I once swaddled as a babe had that kind of power, that kind of cold-bloodedness in her.” Nadya looked away, her face burning, but Mirela continued, “I was so wrong. What my own fear, my cowardice, took for ruthlessness, was actually loyalty. A drive to protect your home. Though this city has never been deserving of such devotion from you.

  “Despite everything our people—everything I—had done to you, you risked your life and your freedom to save us.” Mirela blinked as slow tears escaped her. “My shame knows no bounds, Nadya. For not believing in your goodness. In this.” She raised shaking fingers to brush over Nadya’s chest. “And now we need you once more. Whether the Cressian weapon is nivasi or not, we need you to protect our city. And you came back.”

  Nadya could barely speak through the emotion that choked her throat, but she needed to hear one more answer. “How can you trust me?”

  Mirela’s eyes gleamed with tears as she ran her thumb across Nadya’s knuckles. “Because I choose to. Because you are my daughter. Because your father and I raised you, and I lost sight of that. Your blood may be nivasi, but it is also Gabori.”

  “I—” Nadya’s voice caught in her throat. Carefully, she covered her mother’s hands in her own. “I forgive you, Mama. I always did.”

  Silence stretched between, but it was a comforting, warm stillness that draped over them like a woven blanket. Only Mirela’s harsh coughs and the reality of the life that struggled for breath within her mother’s body broke the moment.

  “She needs me, damn it! Let me pass.”

  Nadya did not dare believe her ears as she and her mother looked toward the stairwell. After a bit more familiar cursing, a tall figure sprinted up the dark steps. Nadya’s heart leapt in her chest, lifting a weight she hadn’t realized was there.

  Shay slowed to a stop before Mirela’s pallet, shyly saying, “Nadya, Mistress Gabori. I—I am here.”

  Nadya rose. She walked over to where Shay lingered awkwardly and wrapped her in a tight embrace. “Thank you, Natsia,” she whispered.

  “Who is this?” Mirela asked, eyes suddenly mischievous as she looked Shay over.

  Shay edged backward, but Nadya reached out and took her hand. Shay’s strong pulse underneath her fingertips grounded her. “This is Shay.”

  “Shay…” If Mirela remembered the young girl from the Rissalo family who was supposedly killed for her nivasi gift of fire, she did not let on.

  “Yes, Mistress Gabori.”

  Nadya could not help her smile. She had never heard such formality from Shay before, but the woman beside her trembled with nerves.

  Mirela’s small laugh led to a deep, hacking cough. She wiped her chin. “I carry no title, Shay. You are a good friend to Nadya to come for this.”

  A friend. That word bit deep, and before she had thought better of it, Nadya shook her head.

  “She’s more than a friend, Mama. She is—” Nadya hesitated. Her heart drummed against her rib cage. She recalled an afternoon over a year ago, curling up against her mother on the pallet, confessing her affection for Kesali. Mirela’s acceptance had been a surprise then, but now Nadya grabbed ahold of the memory and plunged forward. “She is my partner, my…” There was no good word in Nomori or Erevo to describe their union. So Nadya simply settled on, “I love her.”

  Shay’s hand went rigid in her grip.

  A slow smile grew across Mirela’s face. “I am happy for you,” she said hoarsely. “Both of you.” She reached out a trembling hand to Shay.

  Shay glanced at Nadya, eyes wide, before cautiously taking the outstretched hand.

  “I am grateful I had a chance to meet you, Shay. Take care of my Nadya.”

  “Of—of course.”

  * * *

  Overhead, the clouds drifted between stars, casting faint shadows upon the near-dark room. Hours passed, and Mirela’s breath grew more and more labored. Nadya knelt next to her. She heard the faint rattle of her mother’s chest, and if Shay had not been kneeling beside her, a firm hand on her shoulder, Nadya was sure she would have collapsed. Her family had joined them in the vigil soon after Shay’s arrival. Shadar knelt on Mirela’s other side, clutching her hand, and Drina sat at her feet. Ancient Nomori prayers poured from her mouth. They created a strange melody that masked the harshness of Mirela’s breath.

  If Drina or Shadar noticed the way Shay held Nadya’s shoulders, absentmindedly running her fingers through Nadya’s braid, neither gave any indication.

  An hour before dawn, Mirela took her final breath. It was soft and easy, and with a comforting smile, she slipped away from the world.

  Nadya felt her heart tear itself in two as the tears that she had held back flowed silently from her eyes. A hand clasped hers, and she looked up to see her father, his eyes shining in grief. “In you, she will carry on,” he whispered.

  A proper send off for a Nomori matriarch would have included a somber ceremony with steady drums and the chanting of the Elders. Mirela was no matriarch, not after passing over the title, and the invasion of Wintercress had sent the Elders into hiding. Perhaps one day, she might get the death rites she deserved.

  Nadya stood. Suddenly, she couldn’t be in the room any longer with the ghost of her mother so close at hand. She stalked out without a word to anyone, even Shay. Behind her, she heard her grandmother whisper, “Let her go, Shadar.”

  Down the stairs, out the door, and running into the night. Nadya sprinted past the rundown buildings of the once-vibrant tier. She did not care if a Cressian patrol saw her as she scrambled up the face of a boarded-up bakery and ascended its rooftop. With a running leap, she flew through the air and landed on the next rooftop over. Again and again, Nadya soared across the rooftops of the second tier like the Phoenix whose name she had taken. The wind dried her tears and carried her mind back to a simpler time when she had run like this every night.

  Finally, her legs buckled beneath her and she crashed into a pile of rubble that littered a roof. Nadya ignored the ripe smells that came from the refuse. She drew her knees up to her chest and rocked back and forth, unable to cry any more tears.

  Time passed. She wasn’t sure how much; she only knew that after a while, she was no longer alone.

  Shay stood behind her. Her breath came heavily, but instead of berating Nadya for taking off and leaving her behind, Shay said nothing and knelt beside her, wrapping her arms around Nadya’s shivering shoulders.

  An hour passed without a word between
them. Nadya’s frantic heart was lulled into peace by the steady presence of her partner. Finally, when the first rays of morning sun had fully crested the remains of the great wall, Nadya spoke. “You stayed,” she said simply.

  Shay pressed her face against Nadya’s neck, winding her arms around Nadya’s chest. “Of course I did.”

  Nadya felt the steady rhythm of Shay’s heart against her back. It drove off the darkness that threatened to consume her, as it always had. “We should go.”

  “Sure you can stand to leave the view?”

  She cuffed Shay’s arm lightly, and she returned it with a peck on Nadya’s cheek. Together, they found their way down off the roof. Before they could leave the alleyway, however, they were met with a familiar sharp gaze.

  Drina stood at the mouth of the alley. Her eyes shone with tears, but her voice was strong and steady. “Nadezhda, I need to speak with you.”

  “Can’t it wait?”

  It was Shay who spoke with unconcealed anger. Nadya felt the air grow slightly warmer as her partner spoke, but she was too surprised by Shay’s vehemence to say anything.

  “You’re always appearing out of nowhere, giving awful advice, and expecting Nadya to bend to your whims.” Shay crossed her arms. “Have a damned heart and give her a bit of peace. She just lost her mother.”

  Nadya grabbed Shay’s hand, the heat behind her skin near scorching; to Nadya, it was a welcome anchor. Shay’s pulse relaxed under her fingertips as Nadya ran a thumb over Shay’s knuckles.

  “And I just lost my daughter.”

  The quaver in Drina’s voice as she uttered the final word broke through the walls that Nadya had managed to erect, and tears burned at the corner of her eyes. Every child expected to send their parents off to the stars; such knowledge rarely made the passing of a mother or father any easier. A parent, however, should never have to send their child to the Protectress, and Nadya’s already broken heart cracked a little further at the thought of the pain her grandmother now bore.

  Drina said, “I wish I could have given her all the rites due a Nomori woman, but we find ourselves in a chaotic time, and so we must have faith that the Protectress cares for those who leave this world.” Her bony fingers stroked the seal at her throat. “We will mourn properly when the time comes, but there is much to attend to now.”