by Zoe Chant
“Blaise,” he said, very quietly. “I think you have to work very hard to only ‘heat stuff up sometimes.’ You contain a force of nature within your soul, yet you do not allow it to break free. And I think perhaps not even your friends truly understand how much strength that takes.”
Her mouth had gone dry. She took a hasty swig of her drink, the too-hot liquid burning down her throat. That was why tears prickled at the corners of her eyes. Yep. Definitely.
Zephyr waited for her to say something. When she didn’t, he sighed.
“I know you don’t want to talk to me,” he said. “About, well, anything. And I respect that. But I promised my uncle… will you listen, if I talk?”
She hooked a chair over, straddling it across the table from him. “Sure. Go ahead.”
Zephyr didn’t, for a moment. He stared into his hot chocolate as though searching for inspiration.
“Blaise,” he said at last. “In order to reach the Thunderbirds, I had to learn how to make myself… open. Like an animal, or a tree. To feel everything around me, and my place within it. It isn’t easy. We live in our heads too much, us humans. It’s harder than you might think to just be.”
Blaise blinked, thrown. She opened her mouth to ask him where he was going with this, but he forestalled her with a quick shake of his head.
“Bear with me. This isn’t easy to explain. When you’re in that state of mind, little things take on profound meaning. The flight of a hawk.” His hand described a short arc. “The fall of a leaf. You see them, and you see how they affect you, and how you affect them. You take a step, and a squirrel flees, and so the leaf falls. A breeze pulls at your hair, and that wind was born half a world away, and your body alters its course, and the hawk rises higher. And you see all this, and you know it, like the leaf knows, and the hawk. You see the connections. You are the connections.”
“Uh, okay,” she said, not getting it at all. “And you’re telling me this… why?”
He looked up, meeting her eyes at last. Her skin prickled, tingling with electric potential.
“Because,” he said, and her bones shivered in echo, “I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I have managed to attain that level of awareness in the waking world. Yet you turn your head, and I feel it through my whole body, like the hawk feels the shift of the wind. Your slightest breath seizes my attention. When you’re with me, you fill my senses, and when you’re not, I still feel the path you take through the world. I am connected to you, in a way I cannot fully describe. In a way that I never imagined was possible.”
Her pulse thundered in her ears. For a second, she feared it was the sound of beating wings—but for once, her animal’s frustrated rage had gone out, stilled by Zephyr’s words. It crouched motionless in her soul; a dark, watchful shadow.
Zephyr grimaced. He rubbed at his forehead with the back of one thumb. “Sorry. I know that must sound crazy.”
“No,” she whispered. “It doesn’t.”
Something shifted in Zephyr’s face. He pushed his untouched drink to one side, leaning forward. “Blaise, I know you must have good reason to avoid me. And I would not ask this unless I was desperate. But I am, and I must. Are you aware of me too? Do you feel this connection?”
She could brush him off. Tell him that he’d misunderstood, claim that she didn’t know what he was talking about. Bury the part of herself that she always denied.
But she could see how his whole body had tensed, waiting for her answer. She owed him the truth.
“Yes,” she said. “And I know what it is.”
This is the answer. She is the answer.
As Blaise explained—haltingly, reluctantly—Zephyr’s sense of certainty grew. What she said might have sounded unbelievable to most people, but his own heart confirmed her words.
This was real. This was right.
He had never been so sure of anything, not even when he’d leaped from the peak of Thunder Mountain. He had that same sense of giddy anticipation; that thrill of hurling himself into the unknown, surrendering willingly to fate.
“So every shifter has a mate?” he asked, when Blaise finally stuttered to an incoherent halt.
She fidgeted with her now stone-cold mug of hot chocolate. “Yeah. I mean, not everyone finds their mate. But if you do, you know right away. It’s kind of like an instinct. Like they’re a piece of you that was missing, that you’ve finally found.”
“Yes,” he breathed, feeling the shape of the hollowness in his own soul. He’d thought it was the absence of the Thunderbird, but now… “Yes, I think I can understand that.”
She slanted a look at him. “I’m not sure you can. You said yourself that you aren’t a shifter.”
“Maybe thunderkin are closer cousins to shifters than we thought.” He grinned at her, unable to contain his delight. “Or maybe it’s just you. The effect you have on me.”
She didn’t return his smile. Or meet his eyes. She hunched over her mug, curled in on herself like an armadillo.
She didn’t look like someone who’d met their soulmate. She looked more like he’d signed her death warrant.
“You don’t want a mate.” Realization hit him like cold water, dousing the glow in his chest. “Or… you don’t want me.”
“No! I mean, it’s not that.” Blaise grimaced. “Believe me, it’s taking all my willpower not to drag you onto this table right now.”
Now that was an arresting mental image. He was abruptly grateful that they were sitting at the table, and that the top wasn’t made of glass.
He shifted position, clearing his throat. “If you’ve been avoiding me because you were worried you might scare me off if you moved too fast, let me assure you that your fears are entirely unfounded. I appreciate that you must have been in a difficult situation, not knowing how I’d react if you told me the truth. But now that I do know, you have my full, informed, and exceedingly enthusiastic consent.”
Blaise’s mouth twitched upward, just a little. “I think that’s the politest way anyone’s ever said ‘For fuck’s sake, take me now.’ Assuming that is what you were trying to say.”
Need gripped him like a physical force. He thrust it back, all too aware of Blaise’s tense body language. Fate might have put them on this path together, but she had to decide how fast to take each step—or whether to proceed at all. In any other circumstances, he would have reassured her that there was no rush.
But time was the one thing he didn’t have.
“Blaise,” he said, picking his words with care. The last thing he wanted was to put any pressure on her. “I want you desperately. Even if there were no other considerations, I wouldn’t want to wait. This feels right to me. But it has to feel right for you too. It doesn’t matter what your animal is telling you, or what I need, or want. What do you want?”
“It’s not a question of what I want.” Blaise stared down into her cold drink. “Zeph, you remember what happened when you first woke up?”
As if he could forget. “Of course. You set fire to my bed.”
Blaise jerked her chin in the shallowest of nods. She didn’t say anything else. She just sat there, as though she’d handed him all the pieces of a jigsaw, and it was up to him to put them together.
“You set fire to the sheet,” he said slowly. “You didn’t intend to do that, but you couldn’t help it. And the same thing happened when we shook hands. That’s why you had to run out.”
Another slight, stiff nod. She was gripping her mug so tightly it was a miracle the ceramic hadn’t shattered. Steam rose from her drink. It had been cold a minute ago.
Zephyr realized he’d been leaning forward, encroaching on her half of the table. He withdrew, opening up the space between them, and Blaise’s fingers relaxed a fraction.
“And that’s why you’ve been avoiding me,” he said. “Because when I’m around, you can’t control your animal. It starts to break free.”
She let out a shallow, shaky breath. “Yeah.”
; They’d faced each other in combat, once. When he’d been lost to the Thunderbird’s blind instincts, unable to stop the lightning gathering in his claws; when she’d stepped forward, placing herself between him and everything they both loved. He remembered the dark wings unfolding from her back, the sudden blaze of fire. Just for a moment, he’d seen her true power unleashed.
“Oh.” A moment ago, he’d burned, but now his whole body felt cold. “I… understand why that would be a problem.”
“No. You don’t.” Blaise closed her eyes for a second, as though it hurt too much to look at him. “Zephyr, did anyone tell you what I am? My animal, I mean.”
He’d wondered, but you couldn’t demand that someone reveal their secret soul just to satisfy your idle curiosity. “No.”
Blaise moistened her lips. “Phoenix. Well, kind of.”
“Kind of?”
“It’s… complicated.” She hesitated, then said, all in a rush, “They call me the Black Phoenix.”
There was no need to ask why. That was written in the curves of her features, the mid-brown of her skin. “That seems needlessly precise. And somewhat racist.”
She made a huff of amusement. “It’s not what you think, although yes, the irony is not lost on me. No. They call me that because my phoenix is literally black. Not like a real phoenix. The real Phoenix.”
“I’m sorry, I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
“I’m not like other shifters. The Phoenix is… well, it’s the Phoenix. Singular. It’s immortal, as far as anyone can tell. You aren’t born the Phoenix. It comes to you.”
“Like the Thunderbird came to me?”
“Kind of. Except you called your Thunderbird, with that ritual. Nobody calls the Phoenix. It chooses its host, though no one knows how, or why. You don’t get to offer. And you don’t get to refuse.”
“Wait.” Zephyr held up a hand, stopping her there. “One moment.”
“What?” Blaise said as he got up. Her baffled stare followed him to the freezer. “Zeph, what are you doing?”
“Your hot chocolate was steaming again.” He returned with a bag of ice cubes, holding it out to her. “Will this help at all?”
Her face softened. She took the bag, resting her hands on it. “Yeah. Thanks.”
It was cold comfort—literally—but it was all he could offer. He sat down opposite her again, keeping his distance, though every instinct screamed that he should be at her side.
“When did the Phoenix choose you?” he asked gently.
“It didn’t.” She shook her head, cutting him off. “Like I said, I’m different. But the Phoenix did choose my dad. He was really young at the time. It… well, let’s just say it made his life complicated. A lot happened, and a lot of it was bad. But it came out all right in the end. He found my mom, and she found him, and they saved each other. As far as anyone knows, it was the first time the Phoenix had ever had a mate.”
He was beginning to see the shape of the story, though the end was still a mystery. “And they had you.”
“Yeah. It was a hell of a surprise for everyone. People assumed that I would be human, or maybe a swan shifter like my mom. But then I was born, and it was obvious that I… wasn’t.”
“Your parents could tell that you were special, right from the start?”
“Pretty much. Most shifters can kind of size each other up. Get a sense of the pecking order, as it were. It lets us work out who’s on top without having to fight about it.” Blaise grinned, a sudden flash of genuine pride. “My dad can make a full-grown dragon roll over and show its throat by giving it a look of mild disapproval. Literally. I’ve seen him do it.”
“He sounds like a remarkable person.” Zephyr smiled too. “I wish I could meet him. I think you must take after him in more ways than one.”
“I wanted to be him so bad, when I was a kid.” Blaise’s smile faded. She looked down at the melting ice. “That’s why I became a firefighter. But no matter how hard I tried, how angry or frustrated I got, there was one way I wasn’t like him. I didn’t have his power. I didn’t even have fire.”
“That’s why your phoenix is black?”
Blaise nodded, her jaw tense. “My animal knew we weren’t right. I could always feel it searching, trying to find that spark that would let us rise at last. That would let us burn. My dad told me to be patient. He was sure I’d find my power eventually.”
“And one day,” Zephyr said, very softly, “you did.”
“Yeah.” Blaise’s hands fisted in the melting ice. “And we discovered there really is only one Phoenix. Just one.”
Now he understood, and the unfairness of it made him want to fight fate on her behalf. “You found that you could only be your true self if you took his animal.”
“I took his life, Zeph!” Blaise’s voice cracked. Unshed tears brimmed in her fierce, agonized eyes. “I ripped away everything he was, everything that he is, and the shock of it stopped his heart. If his crew hadn’t been there—if they hadn’t seen what was going on, and forced me to stop—he would have died. I nearly killed him! My own dad!”
“Blaise.” Without thinking, he took her hand, gripping it tight. Her skin was ice cold. “Blaise. You didn’t know. It wasn’t your fault.”
Blaise’s fingers locked around his. “I should have known. We were always so close. All the signs were there. I should have realized we were connected. He knew when I was hurting, or angry, or upset, even when no one else could tell. ”
“That’s what good parents do, Blaise. My mother was exactly the same with me. No psychic link required. You can’t blame yourself for what happened.”
“It was all my fault,” she said stubbornly. “I took everything from him. I broke his heart, literally. His health never fully recovered. He had to quit firefighting and retire from his crew. Because of me. Because I was stupid, and selfish, and thought that I was special. Because I wanted to be the Phoenix. And that’s why I have to stay away from you, Zeph. No matter what. Even if that means you can’t become the Thunderbird again.”
“What?” he said, startled. “Why would you say that?”
“Buck told me that you thought you felt the Thunderbird stir when we touched.” Blaise’s gaze dropped to their joined hands, as though only just noticing what they were doing. She pulled away. “And I have to be honest with you, you may not be wrong. My dad’s friend Hugh… well, without going into all the details, there’s some precedent to think your Thunderbird might return if we mated.”
“That’s not—Blaise, no. That’s not the case, I assure you.”
Blaise spoke over him, her voice rising, drowning out his half-formed attempt to explain. “I can’t, Zephyr. I just can’t. No matter how badly we need the Thunderbird, I can’t risk losing control over my animal. I can’t risk my dad. I just can’t.”
He’d been intending to reassure her that they didn’t need to mate to awaken his Thunderbird—but then the full impact of her words hit him like a gut punch. He recoiled so hard that his chair lurched back on two legs.
“Zeph?” Blaise twitched, as though she’d reflexively started forward to catch him. “What’s wrong?”
“When you stopped me.” He could barely get words out, his chest cold with horror. “When the horned serpents attacked Thunder Mountain, and you stopped me. Your wings. Your wings were made of fire.”
Her eyes widened in sudden understanding. “It’s okay, Zeph. I only let my animal rise for an instant. My dad was fine.”
Zephyr stood up, nearly knocking over his chair in his haste. He caught it before it could topple, putting it between himself and Blaise. “But it might not have been. I put you in a position where you had to choose between your friends’ lives—between your life—and your father’s.”
“It’s not your fault. You didn’t know, and even if you had, there was nothing you could have done to prevent it. You didn’t have control over the Thunderbird.” Blaise rose to her feet, and Zephyr scuttled back, all the way to the door. “Seriously
, Zeph, it’s fine! Stop looking at me like I’m about to explode. It’s not like it can happen again.”
“No.” The knowledge of what he’d done—what he’d almost asked her to do—was a tight knot in his throat. “No. It won’t. I won’t let it.”
Except, he realized with an even greater lurch, he might not have the choice. Without people to anchor him—without Blaise to anchor him—how would he ride the storm? He would be lost again, as helpless to control the Thunderbird as he had been before.
No. No. He shut his eyes, concentrating on the ache in his chest, that Blaise-shaped absence. He would hold on to her, even if she could not hold him. He wouldn’t hurt her again. Not ever.
“Zephyr?”
He scrubbed a hand across his face, and opened his eyes to discover Blaise watching him, her face troubled.
“It won’t happen again,” he said, and this time his voice was firm, uncompromising. “I’m sorry, Blaise. I’m so, so sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize. The Thunderbird had the wheel, not you.” She bit her lip. “But now you understand why I have to keep away from you. Why we can’t mate. Ever.”
“Yes, of course. You don’t have to worry.” He stepped back, through the open doorway, into the shadows beyond. “I’ll keep my distance, Blaise. That much, at least, I can promise.”
Buck was still asleep when Zephyr crept back into the room. For a moment, he stared down at his uncle, wondering whether to wake him up.
No. He drew back his hand. Buck would only argue, and try to change his mind. He wouldn’t understand that this wasn’t a choice, or something Zephyr could control.
And anyway, it would be different, this time.
But just in case it wasn’t…
Zephyr stretched out on the bed. He closed his eyes.
Give me a little time, he prayed, as curling gray clouds wrapped around him. I hear you. I am coming.
But first, let me say goodbye.
Chapter 9
It began, as it always did, with lightning.
The white-hot bolt lanced down, shattering the night. It hit the house dead on, briefly filling it with searing light. Every window blew out. Glass shards hurtled though the air in a horizontal hail of razor-sharp fragments. Stone and timber buckled, cracking in the shock wave.