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I'm gay.

I'm gay.

I'm gay.

The unspeakable words that had been a prison of constant torture now feel like my weapons and armor. I'm powerful.

I'mfree.

I want him. I want to be with him. I'm going to find him.

19

JACKSON

Irip through the boundary of the Shimat's control and tear my mind out of its clutches. I'm awake, but I'm engulfed in pitch black oil of its body. I yell for him in my mind as I fight my way toward the feeling of his presence.

You willnotstop me from getting to him.

And then my fingers reach a warm hand. The contact hits me like a live wire. I yank him toward me, and he pulls back, both of us fighting our way through the churning darkness of the Shimat. Then we're crashing into each other, and I wrap myself around him as tightly as I can. I feel the warmth of him against me and the strength of his arms locking me close, making sure that nothing can pull us apart.

Suddenly, there's this rush of energy filling me up—warm and golden andalive. It surges through my veins, and like during our flight over this desert, I feel the power crackling from meinto him, where it mixes with and replenishes his energy and explodes into something more powerful than either of us alone.

This is what I was meant to do. This is my purpose. Right now, with his arms around me and our power flowing together like two rivers joining into one, I finally get it. This isn't just about saving these people or defeating a corrupted elemental, or even a phoenix prophecy.

This is about us.

His chest heaves like he's been hit by a defibrillator, and a brilliant phoenix flame explodes around us. The darkness doesn't just retreat; itscreamsas the light tears through it like molten steel through ice.

We fall from the Shimat's body, along with Azin and Onar, their limp forms tumbling through the air. Airos shifts into phoenix form mid-fall, his transformation a burst of emerald and bronze flames that streak across the desert sky like a comet. He swoops beneath the falling shamans and catches them in his talons before they hit the ground.

Above us, the Shimat stands frozen with a huge crater blasted into its side, and Airos veers away toward the dunes overlooking the encampment. Then, the Shimat begins to shrink and convulse, its liquid surface hardening into brittle sheets that crack and peel away like burnt skin, shattering when they hit the ground in great thundering booms.

Airos gently releases Azin and Onar onto the sand as he comes in for a landing. I leap from his back, he shifts to human form, and we run to them. They've already regained consciousness, and we help them to their feet.

"It's over," I say.

Onar grips Azin's arm for support. "No. Not yet."

The Shimat lumbers toward us as it continues to come apart, the shattered pieces disintegrating and melting away into the sand. It's molting, but the poisoned heart still remains somewhere deep under the ground.

A fluttering inside of my chest tells me what needs to be done. It's the final remaining drops of the water elemental.

"Then let's end this," I tell them.

Behind us, the tribe approaches the dunes with Niah leading them. They're here to watch a prophecy be fulfilled. They're here to see a couple of Shalkeks kick a Shimat's ass.

Onar plants his foot into the ground with a solidthud. Azin, Airos, and I do the same. And then we dance.

The rhythm quickly reveals itself to us, flowing through our bodies like liquid fire, and we move across the sand with purpose, our feet carving intricate patterns into the earth. My eyes lock onto Airos's as we circle each other, and the worldaround us dissolves into a blur. He grins at me—that cocky, mischievous grin that always gets under my skin—and I can't help but laugh out loud.

Pure joy surges up through me, bubbling over and spilling out in ways I can't control. God, I don't think I've felt anything like this since I was a kid.

The Shimat's approach slows to a jerky, shuddering crawl. Airos takes me in his arms, and as we twirl around each other, another wave of phoenix power surges through me and overflows into him. Just the feeling of his touch is enough to spark regeneration. It's a chain reaction, a feedback loop. My head is filled with flashes of his hands exploring my body, of what it would feel like to finally have him the way I've been craving, and every heated thought sends another pulse of energy through my veins. Goddamn. Give me more of that shit.

With our powers in perfect resonance, the desert around us becomes an extension of our bodies. We can feel the heart of the Shimat in its aquifer deep below the ground. We capture it in a fist of sand, and the ground rumbles as we reel it to the surface. The Shimat writhes angrily, fighting to break free from both our grasp and the influence of the shaman dance, but we have it by the balls.

The desert soil erupts into the air like a massive geyser as we pull the heart out from the ground and lift it high into the air, trapped in a ball of sand. The Shimat floats above it, undulating like a sphere of water in zero gravity.