Author: Jodi Meadows

“Oh, Ana.” Anguish filled Sam’s voice. “I’m so sorry.”

At first, I saw only light.

The white stones resolved themselves into stairs. Or tiers. And skeletons. Silver chains shone in the strange illumination, glimmering as a dark figure in the center shifted and stood.

He looked small from this far above, but I remembered seeing him before: short and thick, bushy brown hair on his head and face. He’d looked strong, then, even dead or asleep or whatever he was.

Now, power surged through his movements as he grasped the chain linking the skeletons to one another—to him—and strode out of the temple ruins, dragging the dead behind him.

Janan had returned.

30

PROMISES

I ROCKED BACK on my heels. Sam’s hands dug into my sides to keep me upright, and he said something by my ear, but I couldn’t understand the words. All I could think was that we’d failed.

Janan had returned. Ascended. Both, because he was here and he was powerful.

We had failed.

Below, as Janan strode out of the decimated temple, the crowd split in two, leaving a wide, rubble-strewn path to the phoenix cage. They were silent, save the awed whispers and weeping. Stones continued pattering to the ground like the last moments of rain.

Silver chains clanked and clattered, and bones chattered as Janan heaved almost a million skeletons out of the pit. He dragged all the skeletons I’d seen inside the temple before; there’d been one for everyone in Heart, everyone who reincarnated.

Janan dragged nearly a million skeletons by those chains. He was impossibly strong. Impossibly alive.

As the crater emptied, I found dozens of skeletons left behind: darksouls.

The world roared and trembled as the pyroclastic flow burned through the forests of Range, rolled across the valley of Midrange Lake, and thundered toward Heart.

This was it.

I wanted to close my eyes, but I watched my death coming. It would be fiery and immediate, and terrifyingly beautiful.

The black wave crashed against Heart and split around the city wall, as though the stone were a blade. The particles of rock and ash and fire surged, blocking out the moon and stars. Everything beyond Heart was dark, burned away as the eruption blast continued, but inside Heart was bright with thrown temple stones and the glare of spotlights.

Heat poured through the city, a flood of sulfuric summer that made me shake and sweat.

But we weren’t dead.

I turned toward Sam, sure I wanted to say something about the way the pyroclastic flow split, unsure what exactly.

Deborl stood behind Sam, a jagged piece of stone raised over his head. Blood and grit poured down his face and clothes, and his expression was distorted into something savage and raw.

“Sam!”

He turned just as Deborl brought down the stone and thrust it into Sam’s shoulder.

Sam yelled and dropped to the ground, clutching the wound. Blood flowed down his sleeve, bright and red in the templelight all around.

Rage clouded my vision as I stepped around him and shoved Deborl away, putting all my remaining strength into it.

Deborl staggered and caught himself. His expression was wild, feral.

I gave a wordless shout and shoved him again, but Deborl was ready this time and held his ground. He lifted his hands to hit me, but before he could act, Sam surged up and threw his weight against Deborl’s smaller body.

Deborl fell over the edge of the roof and tumbled down the slope of expelled temple rock. His body struck stone again and again until it landed at the bottom, motionless as it lay in odd angles. Broken, with only darksoul skeletons for company.

Janan didn’t stop moving out of the crater, or even acknowledge Deborl’s fall. The clack of chains and bones overwhelmed all other sounds as Janan hauled the skeletons from the temple ruins and onto the market field.

People stepped back even farther.

Dragon thunder snapped as Acid Breath’s army returned to the city, now only half the original number. Their scales were covered in ash. The pyroclasts had shredded wings. Many swerved through the air, too burned or beaten to navigate properly. A few dragons dropped to the earth as they entered the city, the air relatively clear of the particles that would suffocate us. Their bodies crashed and made the ground shudder, uprooting trees or knocking over buildings where they landed.

Other dragons landed more gracefully, heaving as their talons raked the ground, while a few dove at Janan with their teeth bared and fury in their eyes.

Janan stopped in the middle of the market field and lifted his free hand.

No, it wasn’t free. His fingers were wrapped around the hilt of a long knife, the blade shining gold with phoenix blood. The blade arced over his head, flashing silver and gold, and every dragon diving toward him was thrown backward.

The beasts roared and clawed at the air. Wings flapped and limbs flailed, their serpentine bodies twisting violently before they landed around the city, unmoving.

I ached for them. We hadn’t been friends, but we’d been temporary allies. Acid Breath had liked my music.

Low groaning drew me back to Sam. He was kneeling again, clutching his shoulder. Blood flowed from between his fingers.

“Let me bind it.” I dug through my backpack for the bandages and antiseptic. “We’ll get it cleaned out and you’ll be fine.”

He shook his head. “I can’t feel my arm.”

That seemed bad. I tried to recall if Rin had said anything about losing feeling in limbs after injuries, but nothing came to mind. All I could think about was Sam, the way he groaned and clenched his jaw against the pain. “No, you’ll be fine. Just move your hand so I can wash the cut.” I was a terrible liar, and my voice didn’t sound as light as I intended, though I tried.

“There’s no point.” He sounded weak, exhausted, as though he were already dying.

He couldn’t be dying, though. He hadn’t lost that much blood.

“You need to go,” he hissed. “Hide.”

I shook my head. “Where would I hide? There’s nowhere left. I’m staying with you.”

Sam closed his eyes and nodded. “Guess you’re right. What happens now?”

I had no idea. I’d assumed that if we failed, we would be dead. The possibility of living beyond the moment of ascension hadn’t occurred to me. “We watch. Maybe there will be another chance. We need to be ready to take it.”

“Yeah, okay.” He didn’t believe me, but he didn’t argue.

We sat together on the roof, facing the industrial quarter and the cage. Janan finished crossing the market field, his every movement precise, careful, as though he’d forgotten what it was like to have a physical form.

“Where are the sylph, do you think?” I asked.

While Sam was distracted by the scene below, I cut his sleeve off and worked on binding his shoulder. The wound was bad. Bits of stone were stuck inside him, glowing, and I couldn’t stop the bleeding long enough to get a good look at anything. It was just red. And bad. A hole in my Sam. I poured antiseptic over the gash and held a bandage over his shoulder, pressing as hard as I could.

“I don’t know.” Sam stared at Janan, at the cage. “They went inside the temple, and they’re not here now. Maybe he . . .”

“Maybe he did the same thing to them he’s been doing to newsouls.” I choked on tears as I pressed another bandage against the soaked one on Sam’s shoulder. I could almost hear Rin’s instructions in my head: Don’t let up the pressure, no matter what; put new bandages over the old one until the bleeding stops.

His voice was low and exhausted. “Did we send them to their deaths?”

“We didn’t send them. They went because it was a way for them to contribute. It was something they could do. They didn’t want to be spectators in their redemption.” I’d failed them, though. I hadn’t stopped Janan.

Below, he was threading an end of the chain through the bars of the phoenix’s cage. The racket was incredible as he dragged the silver and skeletons, and for the first time, the phoenix under the cloth moved.

“Did you see that?” Sam leaned forward; the bandages slipped on his arm. “What is he doing?”

“The phoenix moved.”

“Why doesn’t it fight?” Sam whispered. “It could fight and free itself.”

“Maybe they drugged it or hurt it. I don’t know.”

“It could burn itself up and start over.”

“Not here.” I shifted closer to Sam. “Can you imagine being in such a vulnerable state? Between lifetimes with your enemies all around you?”

Sam looked at me, and he wasn’t just a boy anymore. He was an oldsoul, one who’d spent a hundred between-lifetimes in Janan’s grasp.

He’d told me once death felt like being ripped from oneself, like being caught in talons or fire or jaws for years until he was reborn. He hadn’t known then that Janan was his enemy, but now he knew. He could refer back to those memories with new light. And new fear.

“The phoenix will let it happen, whatever happens next. Unless more phoenixes come to save it.” How long had it taken the other phoenixes to save the one from five thousand years ago? Hours? Days? Weeks? And what would Janan do with the phoenix? Nothing good, that much was sure. “I want to save it,” I whispered.

Sam’s expression lifted. “Save the phoenix?”

I nodded. “Whatever Janan is doing next, he needs the phoenix. Deborl sent Merton and the others—his best warriors—to find a phoenix and bring it Heart. We couldn’t do anything for it before because we didn’t want to ruin our chance of the poison working, but the poison is gone. Whatever Janan is doing, he’s not done yet, and we’re not dead. We can still do everything in our power to keep him from succeeding.”

Sam smiled. “Yes, we can.”

Below, the chain was threaded all around the phoenix’s cage, and people were grabbing hold of the silver links and dragging the skeletons into loops around the cage.

If Janan had said anything to them, somehow instructed them, I hadn’t heard it. “We need to get closer.”

Sam looked down the side of the building. The slope wasn’t exactly sheer, but it would be difficult to climb, especially since Sam couldn’t feel his arm. He had nerve damage. That was what Rin would have said. It would take months to heal, if it ever did.

I pressed a third bandage against his shoulder and taped them as tightly as I could. “We can’t go straight down. We don’t want them to see us.” Though it seemed unlikely anyone would. They were all staring at Janan, waiting for something.

For a moment, I entertained the idea of staying up here and shooting Janan, but I’d already seen how easily he dismissed dragons. My pistol was no match. And besides, he was immortal. What could possibly hurt him now?

I glanced beyond the city wall one last time, the heavier pyroclasts settling while the ash and lighter particles hung in the air, making Heart seem encased in darkness. Inside the city, dragons rolled and gasped, fighting the ash they’d inhaled. The exploded debris from the temple still shone with templelight, eerie and beautiful against the blackness outside.

Not far from the Councilhouse, I found what I was looking for.

“Come on.” I slung my backpack over my shoulder and helped Sam to his feet. Janan’s people were still arranging the skeletons, so we had a little time. He was immortal. He probably wasn’t in much of a rush.

Sam and I staggered across the rubble-strewn roof until we reached the northern edge.

A dragon looked up, blue eyes foggy with weakness. The ringing in my head was faint, along with Acid Breath’s voice. <We have failed. The song lives on.>

Oh. When they’d dived earlier, they hadn’t been attacking Janan. They’d been going after Sam’s skeleton. If only Janan had known, he probably would have let them.

I held tight to Sam’s arm and spoke to the dragon. “Help us get down.”