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Pyre of Broken Wings

NYX

P ower and pain are fickle, deceptive forces.

Both can rule and consume you, taking root deep in the furthest corners of your soul, breathing life into aspects of yourself that you didn’t know existed. Both can hide dormant, going unnoticed until it’s too late. They can be a symbol of growth or regression, and usually, it’s impossible to tell which one it is until the effects are irrevocable. And no matter how potent they may seem, no matter how vigorously they burn through you, they never stay. Whether you grieve or celebrate their departure, you cannot trust their absence, either.

Where power resided once, it will again. Where pain existed before, it will surely return.

But both were illusions, especially power. Even when it coursed through your veins as a physical substance. Mine had been stolen, diluted, subdued, and made into a mockery more times than I could count. And now Solaris, who was once the most formidable creature I had ever known, had been stripped and ravaged. Abandoned and discarded as no more than an empty, desiccated shell. I didn’t even recognize him.

He was dead. Fuck, he was really dead.

He died in my arms and I’d felt the exact moment it happened.

My chest caved in. Became a deep sea chasm. The absence of his heartbeat was as visceral as if it were my own.

I wept.

I hated it. I hid my face from Jed, feeling beyond stupid for being so emotional. Solaris didn’t deserve my tears, my grief. But it flooded from me anyway as if I weren’t a creature of fire at all. As if there was nothing to me but the bitter salt water streaming down my face.

He was just lying there. Lifeless and broken. They had broken him. Snapped his wings. Marred his flesh in so many different places, it was impossible to tell where one wound ended and the other began. They’d poisoned him. Corrupted his blood with their demonic venom that was rotting him from the inside out.

His sister. His own fucking sister. And I left her alive.

His power will return. He won’t stay like this. He can’t. He can’t.

“Nyx.” Jed’s hand was on my shoulder. “Breathe. It’s okay.”

I sucked in a pathetic quivering breath.

“He died once before.” Jed’s voice lacked emotion. “He came back then. He will again.”

I nodded. He was right. He had to be right.

“I-I’m sorry,” I sputtered. “I don’t know w-what’s wrong with me.”

“Shh.” Jed pulled me away from Solaris’s body. Wrapped me in his arms. Held me as I sobbed.

We sat together on the floor, our limbs tangled. I buried my face in his chest. His skin was so hot, I heard my tears sizzle as they dripped onto him.

I couldn’t tell how much time passed. The ever-lit fire crackled and spat, the moon passing the window by. When my tears finally dried, I pulled away from Jedidiah, wiping my face and feeling like a fucking fool.

“I should have killed them. I should have fucking killed them all. Why did I hold back? I had some stupid moral calamity. I didn’t want to be the monster everyone’s painting me as. But now—now I am filled with so much regret, I can’t breathe. I’m drowning in it. They should all be dead . For what they did to you both. I’m going back. I’m going to—”

“Nyx.” Jed’s hard tone cut me off. “You were outnumbered over a hundred to one. Half the time without magic. It was so fucking reckless. Do you know how reckless that was? I am so, so pissed at you for that. They could have killed you. But they didn’t—you got us out. You did good, baby. You did good.”

I dared to meet his eyes. My chest tightened as I did. My gaze dropped to rove over him. His bare chest rose and fell, and he had more scars now. My blood may have healed the infection and the wounds, but silver moon-shaped scars remained. On his chest, his shoulders, his arms. The pale lightning bolts littering his flesh now had the company of crescent moons.

Tears welled in my eyes once more. My heart fucking thundered, smoke seeping from my nostrils as my hands balled into fists.

“The next time you face them, we will be standing at your side,” Jedidiah promised. “You’re not the only one who wants them dead. You won’t be fighting alone.”

A chill rushed through me. The idea of the three of us fighting together…

Unstoppable.

Jed stood up, scratching the back of his neck and stared down at Solaris with an unreadable expression. After a long moment, he blew out a breath. “I’m gonna go look around. I can’t just sit here.”

“I’ll come,” I replied instinctively.

“No. You should stay. In case…” He trailed off. His throat bobbed. “You should stay.”

My lips popped open to argue, but words evaded me. Instead, I nodded. “Okay then. Don’t be too long.”

We held each other’s eyes. There was so much that needed to be said, but neither of us spoke. The air between us was thick and dizzying by the time he turned and left again.

I stood by the open window. The air whispering across my cheeks was cold, casting goosebumps down my arms. Up this high, the world was blanketed in snow. It was nearly impossible to not think of my sister.

The city twinkled in the distance like a glittery mirage. She was down there somewhere.

I had avoided blackmirrors this entire time, too afraid to see what was happening. What my sister was enduring. Such a cowardly creature I was.

I trusted Emilia. She was fucking stronger than I had ever given her credit for. Than she had ever given herself credit for. She had always downplayed herself. The opposite of me. I faced the world with haughty, egregious pride. Shoved my power down people’s fucking throats. That was my armor. But my sister? She shrouded herself in a cloak of gentleness. Kept her eyes downcast as she spoke softly and let others lead. Her self-preservation came through keeping the power inside her hidden, like a new moon.

More tears threatened to burn down my cheeks. “Fuck!” I growled. “If I cry again, I’m going to kill myself. Seriously.”

I paced beside the window, damn near hyperventilating. “Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t fucking cry again.”

Solaris’s dead, broken body in my peripheral vision was not helping.

I needed to go find Jed. I couldn’t be alone. I couldn’t—

Two eyes beamed at me from inside the fireplace.

I froze. The wind ceased in that moment. Everything fell still, save for the dancing fire.

My chest rose and fell rapidly. I glided forward, drawn in like a moth to a flame. The two glowing orbs watched me, brilliant silver-blue.

As I got closer, the rest of his body materialized. Emerged into existence out of nothing at all.

The dragon lay coiled in the fireplace, relaxing on his bed of flames. The fiery club at the end of his tail flicked as he regarded me.

“You,” I breathed, slumping to my knees.

He cocked his head and made a purring sound.

“You saved us.”

He stared at me for several seconds. Then a vision popped into my mind. Niaxus, suffering in the dark crypt. A timelapse of all she’d endured—I felt it in my soul, how long she was down there. How she prayed for release. How every few years cloaked figures would come down and harvest parts of her. I appeared in the vision then, on fire. To free her at last.

When the images faded away, they left me breathless.

The gold dragon looked at me suggestively.

“I was so late, though. She had suffered for so long before me.”

He shared another quick vision, like a smoke-shape rising from the fire. A serpent that morphed into a dove.

I bit my lip, contemplating what he meant by that.

“What is your name?” I wondered.

He snuffed. Smoke curled from his nose. He rested his chin on his front talons. The flames in the fireplace yielded to him. Muting under him but rising high behind him.

“Do you not have a name?”

He gave me a slow blink.

“Am I supposed to know what that means?”

The dragon replied with nothing. He just stared at me.

I sighed.

We sat together in silence for a while. He lay curled on the coals, watching me while I stared dreamily into the fire.

“How have you grown so much in such a short time?” I asked.

At first, I thought he wouldn’t answer. Then he shared a series of peculiar visions in my mind. Montages of different earthly creatures under an ever-changing moon. Tarantulas, lizards, and snakes shed their skin, caterpillars closed their cocoons to emerge as butterflies, and birds shucked their feathers to be born anew.

When it was over, my confusion had only grown. I grimaced at him, my brows pulled tightly together. “What…so you…molted?”

He purred.

“I didn’t know that was possible.” I couldn’t hide the skepticism in my voice if I tried.

Then I scoffed at myself.

How could I be skeptical of what was ‘possible’ while I sat inside a haunted mountain, nestled between a fallen angel and a dragon resting upon a bed of fire?

I sighed, tucking my knees under my chin. I didn’t dare look back at Solaris, but I felt him. I sat only inches away.

The dragon’s aura seemed to darken.

“I know you don’t like him,” I murmured. “I’m not exactly his biggest fan either.”

The dragon’s front scales rippled and went black. I blinked, thinking I was tripping. The scales along his throat, under his arms, around the spikes of his face up to the crown of horns on his head—all morphed from gold to deathly black. His eyes narrowed into slits, irises churning with rage. A deep, guttural growl rumbled from his chest, smoke seeping from his jaws.

My heart stuttered and then raced.

“Whoa,” I breathed, eyes wide.

After a moment, the dragon relaxed. The scales reversed back to gold in a wave from top to bottom. His eyes stayed angry.

“I understand,” I spoke slowly. “To be fair, though… Without him, you wouldn’t be here right now.”

The dragon’s stillness felt like a fist around my throat.

He vanished.

“No!” I cried. The flames in the fireplace went back to normal, with no clear spot in the middle. As if he had never been there.

His absence tipped something over that broke in my chest, leaking emptiness through my veins.

I hid my face between my knees. Held out as long as I could before I caved and dared to steal a glance at the body near me.

Death is nothing to us, Firefly.

But he was wrong. I had nearly been snatched from this world by those infected bullets. And now him. Lying there, completely fucking broken and dead. Even if he did come back like he did last time, would he come back the same?

Death loomed over us just like everyone else. Perhaps even more.

“Even dead, you chase the light away,” I told him.

I sniffled, moving closer. His eyes were half open. Dark purple lids rested in the middle of his silver eyes, which were looking blankly at the ceiling. I closed them. His skin had always been cold but it was hard now too, like porcelain. His broken wings were devastating but still majestic, stretched out long and jagged under him.

“It’s not like you don’t deserve this,” I whispered. “It’s karma, isn’t it? You stole my power. You tried to break me.”

There was a ringing in the silence.

“Part of me understands why you did it. I saw you in the shadows. I saw the manacles and the collar and the fucking predatory freaks surrounding you. I know they took everything from you. I can only imagine what it forged you into. The part I don’t understand is why your ire had to land on me . I never did anything to you!” I laughed humorlessly, wiping my nose. “Then again, fuck—what can I say? I’m notorious for firing my pain aimlessly at those around me. To spread my misery and try to get it out of me no matter the cost.”

I laughed again, another pathetic crack under the weight of the truth.

“I only saw a glimpse into your past and that was enough. I—it’s too much. I can’t go there because—there was something else there too. Something I heard behind a door in that hallway. Something I saw when I went into the shadows to find you and Jed.”

A painful lump formed in the back of my throat that was nearly impossible to swallow around. “I hurt Emilia,” I breathed. “And I don’t remember it. I told myself it wasn’t true but I can’t lie to myself as easily as I used to. I know I’m missing memories. You told me so, right? Said I didn’t remember what I truly was. I just—I can’t. I can’t go there, not yet. It will break me. If I remember, I…”

I stared down at my fingers, fidgeting with them. I stayed silent for a while.

When I spoke again, my voice was rasped and barely audible. “You were right all along. The girl I was before I met you wasn’t real. My paper crown, as you so poetically put it. It’s true. I have spent an outrageous amount of time—my entire life—meticulously putting this armor together. Kill or be killed. Hurt or be hurt. Strike or be struck. Be stronger, be prettier, be more powerful, be meaner. Control the pain. Let it be on my own terms.”

With a hard swallow, I turned my gaze down to Solaris. Agony surged through my chest at the sight of his gaunt, ashen face, his soft expression. Now that the rage and pain had left with his soul, he looked almost boyish in the firelight. Lying in a sad heap on his pyre of broken wings.

It hurt so much to look at him.

“But I’ll always hate you for coming out of nowhere, determined to show everyone the chinks in my armor. To make them yourself. You’ve done a pretty impressive job at convincing both of us that it all had some bigger meaning. Sometimes I wanna believe it. But it’s bullshit. The thing is… I see you. I see you , Solaris, and I understand you. Therefore you can’t fucking fool me. Everything you’ve done to me has been out of cruelty. Pure, good old-fashioned cruelty. You hurt me because it felt good. I know the feeling all too well.”

I gulped down the pain of my words. “So, that’s why no matter what you say—no matter how I feel , this will always be us. Exactly as we are now. A karmic bond tied together by blood, oaths, pain, and cruelty. Nothing more. Nothing less.”