Phoenix Academy: Forged (Phoenix Academy First Years Book 3)

by Lucy Auburn

  “And to me,” I mutter.

  “Of course. Most of the stories are the typical tale, but one is about a young man, a traveling bard who brought a peculiar singing lady with him to every tavern he stopped at.” He thumps the front cover. “Cedric the Bard, they called him. I think he was a Black Phoenix, and the ‘singing lady’ was a siren demon he was somehow bonded to. The details of the story may be of use to you. I’m researching through old histories and stories about bards to see if I can find any other details on him. I’ll get back to you if I do.”

  Suddenly I’m touched. He’s gone through a lot of effort to get this to me: one of few remaining, intact bits of history on a Black Phoenix who lived long enough to actually use his powers. “Thank you. I’ll be sure to read the story as soon as I can.”

  “Fantastic.” Ocean clears his throat awkwardly. “Though I have to remind you, it is a book about martyrs. So the story doesn’t end well.”

  “He dies a gruesome death. Of course.” Joy of all joys. “I won’t go in expecting a happy ending.”

  That would be too much to ask for.

  Back in my room after class, I almost put the new book in the top of my wardrobe, where things go and never return, but stop at the last moment. It may not have a happy ending, but I do want to know more about what the lives of those who came before me were like. And from the sound of things, this Cedric the Bard was at least interesting.

  So I take the book with me to my bed, stepping over the blazer and socks I threw on the floor and snuggling down into the covers. I’m still getting used to these cold winters; if I didn’t have Phoenix Fire class first thing in the morning to warm me up I think I’d probably sleep in until noon.

  Cedric’s story isn’t hard to find in the table of contents. It’s one of the longer tales, all of them named after the tragic figures being written about, all of them dead, no doubt in gruesome ways.

  The tale starts out by describing Cedric in flowery language. I skip ahead to the part where it talks about who he was: a bard, a kind of traveling storyteller who writes down people’s tales and turns them into songs for entertainment. This was television before people had such a thing.

  Poor pre-television people.

  Cedric was just an average bard, it appears, until something changed. He went off hunting with a bunch of drunken nobles and disappeared off the path. When he returned the next day, his hunting companions were shocked—they all thought he’d been run through by a boar and disemboweled. Gross. But Cedric was right as rain. Even more, he had a new, strange tale. This one was his own, about how he’d fallen off his horse, nearly gotten his neck broken, and woken up to see a beautiful, pale mysterious figure in the woods with him.

  Of course, I'm sure from the subtext, Cedric really did die. He’d broken his neck, to be specific. And the mysterious figure was no pretty pale lady, but a siren demon, one now bonded to him by his first death as a phoenix.

  Cedric, apparently, was completely ignorant of the supernatural world until this moment—a lot like me. He’d been abandoned as a babe and raised by monks until the day he struck out on his own to make a life for himself outside the monastery he’d grown up in. While he had fast fingers on musical instruments, a talent for horseback riding, and a keen ability to hunt even in rough terrain, there were no signs that he was a Grim prior to his death that night in the woods. That was probably his saving grace.

  Grims, after all, aren’t big fans of their fellow evildoers dying and coming back as phoenix. At least not unless they can use our hearts for their shitty dark spells. No doubt this story ends with his brethren Grim finding Cedric and turning his intestines into rope.

  I get sucked into the stories of Cedric’s life as an entertainer taking off. Sirens, after all, are capable of seducing humans as well as lulling phoenix into a catatonic state. Once he had his bonded demon at his side, Cedric found himself in high demand, not just in taverns but in noblemen’s houses and even, at one point, the home of the king’s nephew.

  Fly too close to the sun.

  There are only so many pages left in this story. I know I’m coming towards Cedric’s end, and there’s not much in here about his powers. The writer likes to wax poetic about his bond with the mysterious pale woman who sung with him, but there’s nothing here about phoenix fire or special powers—at least not yet. Nothing to explain why my instincts told me I could hold Lana’s heart in my hand and keep it alive, or to tell me how it was that Meyer drained Laena’s death energy from her, and I could sense it.

  There has to be more I can do. I can’t just be a Grim with a little extra flare of phoenix fire. And surely there’s something meaningful behind the fact that I’m bonded to not one, or even two, but four demons.

  If only there was a living Black Phoenix I could ask.

  My stomach growls, so I dog ear the page of the book that I’m on, throw it onto the nightstand, and head towards the dining hall. I may not know everything about myself or my powers, but I do know one thing: feed me when I’m hungry, and don’t get me wet without following through.

  “When you said ‘meet me in the graveyard’ I thought you were kidding. But there really is one out here.” Pulling my jacket tight around me, I survey the little fenced-in area with its modest rows of tombstones. “Of course I’m not really meeting you here as much as summoning you here. Kind of takes the fun out of a date, doesn’t it? In the movies the guy always picks the girl up.”

  Sebastian snorts. “How heteronormative.”

  We’re on the southeast side of campus, out beyond the picnic table and the wild woods. The path to get here was more of a suggestion than anything, just a tiny bit of cleared land on a downslope. I nearly skinned my knees getting to the gate.

  “The map of the campus says this is where the chapel used to be. I wonder what happened to it.”

  “You don’t read your history books closely, do you?” Those blue eyes of his are cutting into me. “Lana Tower’s mother Renata tore the chapel down after religious zealots killed her firstborn son. She decided religion wouldn’t be a part of the campus, no matter what. But they kept the graveyard—it’s where all the Towers kin are buried.”

  “Huh.” I glance over at him, curious. “I didn’t realize you knew so much about this place.”

  He shrugs, looking away from me evasively. “There were... books. When we were summoned. He didn’t always pay attention to all four of us, so sometimes I’d find something to do while waiting my turn.”

  My heart squeezes with pain and regret as I realize he’s talking about Meyer. They’ve barely talked about it since; for the others, at least, it seems like they moved on quickly. But the bitterness in Sebastian’s tone tells me that his time with Meyer still weighs on him.

  I dare to probe further, wanting to know every bit of pain he’s ever felt. “What do you mean, waiting your turn? You don’t really talk about that time.”

  “I don’t want to burden you,” he confesses. “Especially given your relationship with Meyer. If there’s any chance that anything there can be salvaged, I don’t want to poison you against him.”

  Hatred burns in me, against the man who helped make me and then, apparently, walked away completely. “You know poison. Sometimes it’s deserved.” I reach out, grab his hand, tug him close to me. “Tell me.”

  Those blue eyes are probing my face, staring deep into my soul. “Okay. But while I talk, let’s walk among the dead.”

  “Ah, yes.” Dark humor bubbles up in me as I stare out at the neat little rows of graves—plenty of space left for Lana, and the Towers to come after her. “Wouldn’t want the dead to be lonely. It’s terrible for them not to be graced with our company.”

  Sebastian adds, “They might just raise from their graves and start shit.”

  “Only if I make them with my necromancy.” He smiles, and my heart skips a beat. “Let’s go, before I freeze to death standing still for so long.”

  Sebastian interlaces his fingers with mine and starts ma
king a circle on my palm with his thumb. The feeling of his touch is soothing, affecting me as always. He pulls me towards the graves, walking loosely and casually around the edge of the cemetery. The wrought iron fence around the perimeter looks unkept; it’s rusted in places, ivy tightening around the decorative tops to the posts. It’s strange to realize just how old this campus is, how many students have walked these grounds—and how many Towers headmasters have lived, died, and been buried here.

  And they say Grims are creepy. At least I don’t have any relatives buried in the place where I work.

  It takes a long moment for Sebastian to start talking again. I wait for him, patient and expectant. I know how much it costs him to open up. There’s a price to the airing of his pain.

  In Sebastian’s world, there is pleasure and there is pain. The things that live in between, the mundanity and neutrality itself, are foreign to him. His is a soul that careens between absolutes, feeling everything no matter what. Everything he does lives on one side of the scale, and this—this, more than anything—is all pain.

  “He wanted me to hurt her.” I wait until he clarifies. “Meyer, I mean, wanted me to cause Headmaster Towers pain. It was... easier to confuse her if she was weakened by it. It helped his hypnotic spell take root despite her strength of will, and created the foundation for him to break her down and build her back up.”

  I shudder. “That’s awful.”

  “I don’t think she remembers it,” he confesses. “Which is probably for the best.”

  “I meant for you, too.” I squeeze his hand, which is cold in mine despite the warmth of his body strolling next to me. “You weren’t in control of what you did. He used you to essentially torture her, it sounds like. That can’t have been easy.”

  A moment of silence, comfortable and yet filled with unspoken pain. Then, “It’s never easy to cause innocents pain. At least when it’s the guilty, the dark-hearted and black-souled with ledgers of death and pain, I can do it. Hell, I even enjoy it sometimes.” He smirks and cuts his eyes over to me as he adds, “Richard was a piece of art in the end there.”

  I grimace. “He deserved it all. I’m embarrassed now that I screamed.”

  “Don’t be. Most mortals aren’t used to pain and torture.” His face takes on a contemplative expression as we near the first row of graves. “I’m used to being used to torture others and cause them pain. I’ve even been used to cause my masters pleasure.” The way he says it, so casually, twists my heart up in knots. No one with a soul as deep and sensitive as his should ever be used the way a tool is, demon or not. “I guess in the end, I enjoy the moments of free will I have more than anything, because at least then the pain and pleasure—or absence of it—is all up to me.”

  “I’m just glad you’re no longer under his thumb. The way he used the four of you...” I trail off, squeezing Sebastian’s hand, angry by the memory of them bowing to another’s will—and frustrated by the fact that it was my father who did it. It was so much easier when Meyer was just my teacher. “Well, I’m just glad it’s over.”

  “Is it?” His voice is so soft that I almost don’t understand the words at first. “As long as we’re bonded to you, Dani, I know we can’t be used, because you’ll never do that to us.” Those words warm my heart, even as I know there’s more to come. “There’s something to be said about the peace of taking away your classmate’s pain as she died. As long as we’re bonded to you, that will be my life.”

  Almost as if fate itself willed it, we stop in front of Melisandra’s grave in the moment between his spoken thoughts. I stare at her worn and moss-covered headstone, the oldest in the cemetery. Something brews inside my chest, a thought too big to be spoken aloud.

  “But Dani...” Sebastian lets go of my hand and looks up into the sky, which is the dark, dusty grey of twilight, sunset hanging just beyond the horizon. “You won’t live forever. And what happens when you finally die? Will we be freed from the bond only to be enslaved by another? Or will we pass on to the afterlife too?”

  I don’t know. So I confess it. “I have no idea. As far as I know, no one does.”

  He nods. “I expected as much. And I don’t expect you to have all the answers.” Those blue eyes of his look at me again, seeing straight into my soul and beyond. “But you have to remember, as much as I’d like to enjoy the joy of these free moments with you, I can’t help but look into the future and beyond.

  “I know pleasure and I know pain.” He blinks, grabs my hand in a gentle touch, his voice taking on a quiet and soothing tone. “Because of what I know about both, I’m well aware of the fact that the more I enjoy my time with you, the worse it’ll be when you’re gone and all this changes. So you see—I can’t help but hold back from you. I can’t help but feel bitter about the inevitable end. It’s all I see when I look in front of me.”

  I stare up at him, wishing there were words in my chest that could make it better.

  But I can’t, anymore than I can hang the moon in the sky or turn the living back into the dead—at least, not in the way they’re meant to be, whole and full of life.

  “I understand,” I tell him, two words that don’t make up for all the missing ones.

  And I stand on my tiptoes to kiss him, the pain in my heart only rivaled by the pleasure his mouth brings me as his touch meets mine.

  He can take away my pain.

  One day, I hope I’ll be able to take away his.

  Chapter 23

  I’ve got trash in my hand. I’m just taking it out. There’s nothing emotionally significant in what I’m doing. I shouldn’t feel anything more than what the garbage man feels when he dumps a load of tampons and empty wine bottles into the back of a dump truck.

  This is what I tell myself, standing in the headmaster’s office, as I brush bits of shredded paper off the photo book I found in Meyer’s desk and prepare myself for a trip to Darkness Island.

  Because, apparently, I’m a masochist who dives through the trash.

  They say curiosity killed the cat. They also say satisfaction brought it back. In this case, it would be my dozen lives—minus one—that would bring me back, not satisfaction, which I’ve only found in bed with my guys.

  The adage, or metaphor or whatever you want to call it, still holds true though. Because I’m about to fuck my own shit up voluntarily just to sate my curiosity.

  I want to see his face when I return a bunch of sentimental photos of me to him. That moment when he realizes I know—when he sees that I’m well aware of the fact that he could’ve given me a home at any time—that’s the moment I want to see on his face.

  Just as long as I don’t let him into my cracked and scarred phoenix heart. He hasn’t earned that, and based on all the shit he’s done to the people I care about, he never will.

  “Are you sure about this?” The headmaster’s steady gaze is run through by doubt. “Because once we go in, that’s it. You can’t go back out again until I’m through with my rounds. And whatever he says to you is permanent. If he says something manipulative or cruel, it’ll stick with you. I can guarantee that much.”

  “I can handle it.” I’m not sure that I can, but I’m sure that I have to figure out how to. “If he tries to fuck with me I’ll shut it down. It’s not like I have to listen to what he says or talk to him. I’m just going to give this back to him.”

  “Okay.” She studies me. “I respect your choice. Just remember that I warned you.”

  The more she warns me off, the more I want to prove to her that I can handle it. It’s just a book of photos, after all—one I can’t stop thinking about, my head full of questions. I’ve refused to look past the first page of pictures of me, afraid there are even more inside of me growing up, year by torturous year. But the temptation to look at it more is overwhelming. Throwing it out didn’t work, so I figure if I return it to him the urge will go away. Bonus: I won’t be able to retrieve the book from his cell like I fished it from the trash.

  Maybe it’s a dumb idea.
But it’s my mistake to make, and fuck knows I’m well-versed in making them.

  Clutching the photo book in my hand, I follow her out of her office and into the evening air. The headmaster, apparently, prefers to go to her secret island prison complex later in the day, when the campus isn’t full of students to see her disappear into a magic door in a tree. That works just as well for me, because Mateo insisted that our date tonight happen during “the witching hour” for whatever reason. That gives me plenty of time to tag along with Headmaster Towers and drop off this cursed book of photos in Meyer’s cell.

  “Ready?” The headmaster steps in front of the wide trunk of the tree that leads to the island, key in hand.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  “You can still turn back,” she reminds me. “I can bring that book you’re holding to him, if that’s what you’re doing.”

  “No.” I shake my head, putting as much forceful determination in my voice as I can manage. “I want to do this myself.”

  “Fine. Let’s go.”

  Yet again, she puts the key in a little notch in the bark that barely looks like a lock. Makes the sacrifice for the portal spell. A white slice of energy turns its trunk into a pitch black door across space itself. This time, I go through first, determined to prove myself. There’s a brief shivery moment of cold and nothingness as I cross through the door, replaced by vertigo as I reach the other side. It’s weird to have my senses tell me that I’m far from where I just was—the air is different and the sun outside the windows has moved, but I took just a single step.

  It’s disorienting, to say the least. Those bullet trains in Japan have nothing on this magic. The headmaster steps up beside me and closes the door like it’s nothing, but she has to have done this a thousand times in order to be used to it.

  “C’mon, I’ll lead you to his cell and drop you off there. Afterwards I have to make the rounds, but I’ll come back to get you in thirty minutes or so. Don’t go anywhere I can’t find you; I don’t want to have to go looking for you.”