“Or they could have been teaching you to make us stronger. If you had not been made into a phoenix, you would not have even had a choice to save me. You have been growing powerful during our separation, powerful enough to protect me now.”
He didn’t offer an argument. I’m sure my positive words sounded like a plea to save my life, and he was having a hard time finding the will to state all the reasons that that would be wrong.
He reached up to trace my lips. “I’m just waiting for you to ask. I know you better than my own soul. If I suggested that we tell these theories and myths to go to hell, you’d have fought me. It had to be your idea.”
“I knew it,” I said under my breath as I playfully squinted my eyes at him. This boy had learned to handle me years ago. That made him smile. It was a warm, playful smile. I was so shocked by it that my eyes grew wide, and that made him laugh out loud.
“What is that look for?”
“The old you was almost here,” I said as I traced the lines where his smile was.
“The old me?” he said, turning to his side so he could see me better.
I reached to trace a smile that I had yet to see in this reality. I was thankful that it surfaced in this dark conversation. “I remember you being so blunt that you were funny. You enjoyed teasing, laughing. Even in the darkest moments, you would find a way to lighten the mood. Your certainty was always there—you always made those around you feel safe, protected.”
He let out a sigh as his smile dimmed. “That is still me…I just don’t have much reason to tease or laugh as of late.”
“I want you to laugh, to tease, to be that protector, no matter what,” I said as my voice cracked. I needed to know that he would protect all those he was leaving me for, that our sacrifice would not be in vain.
He bit his lip as if he were choosing his words carefully. “I’m a fool for you…always have been…it never has and it never will matter what you ask me to do. The answer is yes.”
I had to tell myself to hold in the tears. I knew that between his words he was telling me that he would still change me, that if I asked we would both become the most selfish souls that had ever existed, that we’d take a thousand or so years together for the price of countless warriors.
I was still set on vengeance. And I hated to admit it, but I had some small hope that once that vengeance was met, maybe my body would find the energy it needed to heal itself, that maybe I could find a way to escape death. I wasn’t going to ask him to challenge his fears until I knew I had exhausted every measure I could.
“I know,” I whispered as I let my arm down and curled up against his warm chest. “I don’t think I can grasp what you are fighting, what you think I am, but I want you to be careful because if I’m seeing this the right way, if my life was so easily ended, if I was to only live a normal lifespan in the first place and my time to heal and save was not meant to be eternal, that can only mean that a lot of souls are about to fall.” I hesitated as I thought of the time it would take for me to die and be reborn again, the time for me to grow into a young woman. I had no idea if that was a short or long time in the span of souls. “If I let go, I just hope I’m back in time to matter.”
His arm tightened around me. “Old souls have been reunited. We are stronger now than we have been in quite some time.”
“So maybe I didn’t mess things up by dying. It is odd, though, that it was so easy to end me. I hadn’t even begun. You would think it would have been harder to kill someone who was needed for a not-so-distant victory.”
I could see him weighing each of my words. I was almost sure I saw him doubting himself, wondering if I had a point, if there was some unseen loophole we could fall through. The fading glimmer of the fire in his eyes told me that that hope left as swiftly as it arrived. I was these supernatural souls’ last hope, but no one thought to protect that asset from the unpredictable—death itself.
I lay on my back and stared at the vast ceiling. “I’m so angry. I’ll find my redemption tomorrow, but I will have lost everything in its wake. I had so many plans…”
“Tell me about them,” he said as he pulled me closer.
“I was going to do everything my parents did, and so much more.”
A glance from him beckoned a ball of fire from the fireplace. Like a ball of clay, it hovered over us, waiting for us to shape it.
“I was going to build schools.” The fire began to take the shape of a beautiful building. “Not just any school, but schools that brought out that special spark, that fire I could see in Gavin’s eyes as he wrote his stories, Mason as he played…Wilder as he painted. I wanted to find that spark in everyone, make it grow. I wanted the world to feel the warmth of it.” I watched the building expand as rooms with stages, vast libraries, and endless canvasses were shaped, as eager souls rushed in.
“I wanted to find every soul that had reached its breaking point and pull them back, show them no wish was foolish and that no matter what they had been through, it was over and now they would not only be safe and loved, but they would be the ones giving that last hope to someone. I was going to create a million Falcons.” The school turned into the manor, and the fire expanded, showing every glorious detail of our home. It was as if he remembered building every inch of this manor with his own guided hand.
The room in the center of the home, the one I adored, that held every ball or special occasion—even a few private dances—became clear. I loved that room because of the dome shape it was, for the three spiral staircases that hovered tightly against the walls, leading to every floor. I loved the red and the gold, how it seemed not only to fit a lost time, but every time. I loved how magical I felt in that room.
Phoenix did not bother to create Rasure’s wing-in-fire sculpture, but I knew where it was currently resting, that it all but assaulted the room I loved, how she was able to attach that wing to the core of the home. Only ten feet blocked that wing from connecting to my precious room, ten feet that I had to fight tooth and nail for. I only won because that was the oldest part of the house and an addition to it would rob the room of its unique character.
In Phoenix’s sculpture, there were children—too many to count—running through the halls, dancing and frolicking in that center room.
“I was going to make my parents, my family proud, but instead I crashed into a lake. The money I was going to use to free the world ended me, simply because Rasure wanted that same money for God knows what. I even tried to give her most of it. I just wanted the house and enough to maintain it. I knew at the very least I could open the doors to those who needed a home. I trusted that the money for everything else would come someway, somehow.”
“She fought you for the house?” Phoenix asked as his glance added the trees, the roots that connected beneath the surface.
“From day one, she wanted me out. She tried to have me locked away, saying I needed help with my grief, but Skylynn protected me from that. Since my parent’s death, I have spent every night under this roof. Even when I wanted to run, give in to her, I couldn’t leave. It was mine.” I squeezed his warm hand. “It was ours.”
“I still don’t understand how you moved it here,” he said in awe as the fire image spun above us.
“Is that not in the goddess handbook—moving massive homes for the hell of it?” I teased.
That made him laugh. “No, Love, I don’t think it is. I can’t imagine the energy it would have taken.”
“All for naught, apparently.”
“We have right now…” he said as he sent the fire back to its place.
“Block the doors with fire and tell the world to let us be…at least for now,” I whispered as I rolled to my side to face him.
His hand began to move across my back, ushering me into a deep sleep. “Done,” he said in a murmur. “Rest now. Your redemption and new life are mere hours away.”
“I want my old one,” I said as I closed my eyes and flashes of the life I had with him danced in my thoughts.
<
br /> “I should be back before you wake.”
My eyes flew open wide. “You’re not leaving. I have never once slept without ice surrounding me in some way. You owe me at least one night of warmth.”
“By the time I leave your side, you will be so warm that no ice will invade your sleep. I don’t have to go yet. I will wait until there is no time to spare, and while you sleep I will fight your demons—only saving the last blow for you.”
“Promise me you’ll smile, tease, and protect others while you do just that,” I said with a sleepy smile as my eyelids grew heavy.
I couldn’t understand why I needed to sleep if I was dead, why I felt so tired, so weak. I was terrified that I would be taken to that lake again, relive that death once more. To fight it, I focused on this house as it was lifetimes ago.
I dreamed, for the first time ever, in Phoenix’s arms. I dreamed the right way.
I walked every floor, every room, letting the memories of my past fill the air. I never wanted to forget all that I had seen under this roof. As if I were called to it by the room itself, I kept finding my soul in the dome room, standing on the top stair, looking down to the beautiful floor.
Over and over I tried to move from that spot, but the smooth stones across the floor, the pattern they had, kept calling my attention back to it. It was a wide circle with triangles reaching out. Inside of that, a smaller one within had the triangles going the opposite way. That pattern repeated until the circles were too small to be seen, offering an optical illusion that looked like wheels turning in different directions…like the insides of a clock.
Before long, the room started to vibrate and I began to see symbols that I thought I knew but could not comprehend. In the dream, I ran down the steps as fast as I could as the pattern on the stones began to spin and a beaming light came from the center of the floor. Before I could reach that light, my eyes flew open.
I wasn’t nestled against Phoenix before an inviting fire, I was in my darkroom. Mason’s phone was vibrating once again, waking us both but the ringing was an illusion. Gavin was at my desk, writing something at the speed of light.
I sat up slowly, trying to reason my way through my dream and figure out how I’d gotten here all at once.
“Where is Wilder?” I mumbled.
Gavin looked up from his work, seeing both me and Mason wide awake now. “I haven’t seen him. It’s well past the point he should have shown up to meet us here.”
“How far past that point?” I asked with fear in my tone. I knew that somewhere Phoenix was in fierce battle right at this very moment. I was terrified I would never see him again, that I didn’t say enough, that he didn’t know that…I loved him.
“I’m starting to think that time is an illusion in death, but I know I woke some time ago, that I have been fighting with these words for what feels like an eternity,” Gavin replied, turning back to my desk.
Mason and I stood to see what he was working on. It was the creed that both Skylynn and Phoenix had recited. ‘To redeem your soul, you must pass through the line of the moons—the flaming sons of the east and the west—to reach the seventh sister, whose touch will destroy the flames of evil that bind you.’
Over the words ‘line of the moons,’ he had drawn what looked like horns, with a line…no, it looked like the symbol of the ram. “What is this?” I questioned.
“Aries. I’d written a short story about symbols that had dual meanings last winter. The Zodiac symbol of Aries means ‘two moons’—at least I think it does,” Gavin said as he drew a triangle. “An Aries is to stand in front of you, with sons of the east and west to your side—you’re in the center. Mason was born in the east, I was born in the west.”
“Was Wilder tested by Skylynn? Does he have fire wings?”
“Never found him,” Mason answered.
“He’s an Aries, though,” I said as I vaguely remembered that.
“Barely,” Gavin said. “He was born on the cusp. What I don’t get is why we died. We were all there. We should have survived.”
“No one knew to protect us. We were meant to protect them,” I said quietly as I thought over my and Phoenix’s conversation last night. All at once, I grew anxious. I wanted to know he was OK, that everyone fighting with him was.
“But you were in the center,” Gavin argued as he drew a circle around the triangle. “Half of a star; no matter where Wilder stood—whether it was to the north or south—you would have been in a pentagram. That should have kept you safe inside or outside of this house, which rests on the same mark. All of us were together. If we weren’t, it would almost make sense.”
As he traced the triangle, the symbols from my dream rushed through my mind. The floor of the dome room was moving in my thoughts. Fire was all around the staircases, the dome was open, and the stars above were spinning wildly.
I turned briskly and climbed on the couch so I could reach the large stone that hid my journals.
Mason came to my side and helped me slide it back. I reached my hand in the dark hole and felt around until I felt the one journal that I did see flashes of memories with when I found them. They were vague, though, like the journal had sat on something of mine several times but didn’t belong to me. That was half the reason I kept the others in the first place. I wanted to know why they had no memories attached to them.
I squinted my eyes closed, trying to make images appear so I could see the memories attached, but they were too weak. I barely saw any flashes in my mind, and the ones I did see were of candlelight, an inkwell, and a strong hand racing across the pages. I left the others where they were and pulled that one out just before Mason secured my hiding spot once more.
I hopped down from the couch as I started to turn the pages. Most of this book contained some kind of blueprints to the manor, but words in newer ink were added around the drawings, along with more symbols. I turned to the page that had the dome room on it as I laid it down on the desk next to Gavin and Mason came to my other side.
In this image, the marble floor was different. It almost looked more like the working parts of a clock because half of the circles were facing the other way. In the center was what looked like a girl with her legs pulled to her chest and her head down. Just before her legs were seven stars. I could not help but feel some kind of despair coming from that image, like she was trapped by some unseen force…maybe even the seven stars before her.
Just above this image, there were more, in an order that looked like transformation. When seen as one, the images showed the girl rising slowly, the seven stars moving out. Just before where the girl was standing, three birds came to her, one before her and one on each side. The ones to her side had daggers clenched in their claws. The one before her seemed fiercer than the others, without a weapon in its talons.
By the time the image showed the woman standing, the seven stars were outlining the image, the two birds had their swords crossed above the girl, and the third was so bold that it was the background. The girl now looked comfortable, confident, bold, and in control.
“I’ve seen this,” Gavin said as he reached for the words around the images, the tiny symbols.
“Where?” I asked with a gasp.
“Dream,” Gavin breathed.
“I think I have, too, brother,” Mason said. “This is ice,” he said, pointing to the faint triangle symbol around the girl in despair. “I remember the cold…” He pointed to what could only be flames, faint lines around the point where the seven stars seemed to escape into the heavens. “This is fire. This is warmth.”
“And this is both in balance,” Gavin said as he let his long fingertips trace where the girl was standing, just before a flaming bird. Fire and ice.
Gavin squinted his eyes closed like he was trying to remember something—or trying not to. Either way, his mind was clearly racing. “Son of a bitch! We were supposed to die,” he said with a gasp.
“That or we did before,” Mason said as he turned the page.
Th
ere, I saw my dream sketched out in a very primitive way. Flames were all around the staircases, and the ceiling looked open with rushes of stars flying by. The floor had more detail, almost like it was falling, and the roots under the house were there, but they looked more like detailed symbols, rings inside of each other, spheres inside of those rings, and one focal point in the center that was made to look like it was shining.
“Sirius,” Gavin said under his breath.
“We moved the house,” Mason said as he locked eyes with Gavin.
I had no idea what was going on. I didn’t like how something was clicking for them, but I was blind as a bat. All I wanted was for someone to tell me that I was that girl, that my seven devils would be set free, that I, the girl made of ice, could stand with fire.
“Explain,” I demanded as I felt my stomach tighten. Where was Phoenix? Why was he not back yet? He needed to see this.
“Does it not look like this goes down?” Mason asked, pointing to the floor that had the most detail. “Like a stairway?”
“It does go down,” Gavin agreed. “That is where they are, either the clocks or the souls—something is down there.”
“New plan, boys…we are not moving on tonight.” I wasn’t going anywhere until both Phoenix and Skylynn saw this and explained to me how what I was going through now was written forever ago. “Call me crazy, but if someone drew this they were probably drawing something they witnessed,” I tapped my finger on the book, “meaning this already happened, and obviously something didn’t pan out right. I’m not dying only to face my seven devils again.”
I gazed down at the drawing, trying to call back memories, hoping some would lead me back to what could have happened in that room. But I couldn’t manage to see the last moments, which told me they had to be agonizing, that my mind was blocking me on purpose.
“I got nothing. I have no memories of anything like this.”
“I think we do,” Mason said, still gazing down at the book.