Page 7

7

The Thread that Binds Us

SOLARIS

E ach beat of my wings cracked louder and with more fury than the thundering clouds I flew through.

She betrayed me .

My own sister. The one soul on this Earth besides my bloody raven who I had believed was securely on my side. Our purposes were intertwined. We’d had a deal, an understanding—a promise . She abandoned me.

I vividly imagined ripping out her heart.

Her death played like a movie in my mind as I soared through the storm clouds, weaving in and out of lightning that lit up the sky. The wings carrying me didn’t feel like mine . A notion I hardly cared to acknowledge. So heavy on my back. A colossal weight one might develop the urge to shake off. Why would that be? They were an extension of me , of my high celestial nature. A dark phoenix emerged from the ashes of the scorpion. I should have felt like a god.

But perhaps this was the cruel, truth. Gods are not free .

They had their own sentience, the wings. I had little say in where we were going.

In my arms, the girl remained unconscious.

I still had her. I’d Ascended, and I had her. Despite the unforeseen costs, all was not lost.

The malicious, dark magic-infused manacles on my wrists screamed otherwise. The absence of my shadows gnawed a black hole in my chest, bloody and irreparable.

But the foolery was on them . Those idiotic starseeds. Trifling with fate. They had no idea the evil they just set loose.

I would suffer the pain, the emptiness, the blasphemy of this. I would suffer through every wretched moment because in the end, I would come out victorious. Again . Cleaving my shadows from me would only plunge their world into darkness. It was only a matter of time before they were scrambling, desperate to reunite me with the shadows that hunted them.

Perhaps the foreign sentience of my wings was a blessing. My mind was lost, whirring in a cyclone of thoughts and memories. The wings tucked in, and I veered downward, leaving the clouds behind.

The City of Angels twinkled like a grid of fallen stars in the distance, but I wasn’t going there. I set my sights on the mountains.

Flight was one thing. Landing, however…

I shielded her as best I could. Despite my efforts, we struck the ground with tremendous impact, and everything went black.

I stalked through the entrance of the mountain with her cradled in my arms.

Shadows hissed in greeting, the dark interior coming to life because of my presence.

Yes, this lair would do just fine. For now. Until we were ready to be back in the city, amid the population we were destined to rule. The top floor of the Sun & Moon waited for us, blanketed in a thousand cloaks of protection.

I ventured through the long, dark corridors that had once been the halls of San Gabriel Academy. Muted lanterns mounted to the stone walls lit the way for me, only slightly. Shadows reached out for me, hissing, and crying, longing to be reunited. I felt it too. Both figuratively and literally. My wrists throbbed with the worst kind of pain. Never-ending pain. Pain that penetrated the skin and bone until it marred your very soul. Pain born of malice and black magic. The jaws of two rabid hellhounds forever latched onto my flesh.

But the physical pain was nothing compared to the betrayal burning through me.

Ra’ah would pay. Traitorous little mutt. The next time I laid eyes on her my fist was punching straight through her chest while she looked into my eyes, watching as I took her wretched life.

The girl in my arms began to stir and groan, ripping me from my visions of murderous revenge. “Ouch,” she muttered.

“Shh,” I told her. “You’re alright.”

She clung tighter to me. Her arms wound around my neck while her face buried into my chest. I felt her inhale my scent, a shutter rupturing through her.

Bloody hell .

It was nearly impossible to keep my head straight when she behaved like that.

I didn’t take it to heart. She wasn’t herself. She had yet to collect herself from the Clash of Spirits. Pieces of her soul were still floating in limbo, much like the shadows that had been severed from me.

She didn’t even remember what she had done, beyond ending me. She didn’t remember the true glory that she’d birthed with her flames.

I didn’t understand it. It must have been self-preservation —her mind blacking out important things to protect her. Though, I couldn’t quite understand why her mind would block out the fact that she’d hatched a dragon.

I kept waiting for her to remember. So far, it was as if it never happened.

And the dragon—I hadn’t seen it since we flew out of the Coliseum. He was with us then. But when we landed in the North, he was gone. I had no recollection of when we’d lost him.

My Firefly stirred some more, groaning still. “What…what happened…”

“We are back where we belong,” I promised her softly. We reached a set of dark, spiral stairs. I ascended quickly. Her room was at the top.

I’d made this room just for her. I may have vanquished the blasphemous school that existed here before, but the bones of the place, the interior of the mountain, was too good to go to waste. I kept it mostly intact, and I chose the best room for her. Right at the top of the peak, with a stone terrace that had an immaculate view of the city. A chamber built for a queen. Black marble floor, white fur throw rug. A fireplace charmed to stay forever lit. Black candles on every surface. A king-sized bed with the most expensive sheets and quilts the city had to offer.

Nyx Morningstar despised me. She had every right, and she was stubborn enough to keep it going for centuries. I wasn’t deterred in the least. We were eternal, her and I. Time would never be a problem for us.

She could despise me for as long as she wanted. One truth would remain. Together, we would be. Light and dark, fire and shadow. Bound by the soul, cosmic opposites, forever twining.

I placed her down on the bed. Her silver hair sprawled around her on the black pillows and silk sheets. A shock rushed through me when I saw her eyes were open. Dark and shiny, taking in the sight of me placing her into bed. My heart instantly started to race. Her expression was unreadable, leaving my mind too much room to wander.

“Solaris,” she breathed.

“Yes, Firefly?”

“Where are we now?” Her voice was coarse and fractured, a slight wheeze hiding behind her words.

“Where we belong,” I told her.

“LA?”

“Where we belong,” I said again. “Above it.”

Her thick, dark eyebrows which were such a startling contrast to her light hair, narrowed in confusion. “Above it?”

“Rest now.” I straightened up, keeping my face a mask of stone. “Once you are well, we will talk.”

Of course, she couldn’t do what she was told. Her features assembled into a frown as she sat up. She winced, clearly in pain. I felt it as if it were my own. “Everything hurts,” she whined. “We crashed, yeah?”

I swallowed, the thump of my heart full of an emotion I didn’t recognize. Heavy and damp on the soul, I ached for her in a way that nearly winded me. “My apologies.”

“You’re apologizing?” She blinked up at me and then laughed. “Fuck, Solaris. Where are we?”

I released an aggravated sound. “If you really must know, we are in the San Gabriel mountain.”

“ What ?”

“Rest now.”

Instead, she tossed her legs off the side of the bed and darted straight for the terrace. Her hair blew behind her in the cool breeze. She gasped when she took in the long expanse of land between us and the city.

“I thought you destroyed this place.”

“I gutted it, you could say.”

Her shoulders rose and fell. She turned around slowly to face me, smoke curling from her nostrils. “Gutted it.” She repeated the words slowly. “Gutted the academy. Consumed everyone on the beach with your shadows. Slit the throats of the mortals occupying the cabin you broke into. I guess there’s nothing you won’t do to get your way, huh, Solaris?”

“What do you care about a couple of mortals? They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. I needed to get us out of sight, and theirs was the first shelter I saw.”

She shook her head at me, incredulous. “They were innocent.”

I scoffed. “No one in this realm is innocent, Firefly.”

She stared at me. I would have killed to hear her thoughts. I could see the wheels turning behind those large, dark eyes. They were like black holes, drawing me in. I was freefalling all over again, into the depths of her.

“Don’t look at me like that, you freak.” Her lips tore back over her teeth into a snarl. In the same moment, the ground beneath our feet began to tremble. The flames over the candles went wild, the pictures on the wall rattling. The earthquake came on quickly and effortlessly.

She was devastating, so glorious. She could collapse this mountain peak if she saw fit. I wondered how far I’d have to push her to make that happen.

“Magnificent,” I breathed.

My awe only fuelled her rage. The earthquake amplified while the candles combusted and burnt away completely. Her hatred for me shook the world.

But then, the strangest thing happened. She opened her mouth to spar with me before shaking her head and apparently thinking better of it.

Disappointment clogged my throat as I watched the fight in her eyes burn out.

She ran out of the room I’d made for her.

I let her.

She vanished, leaving nothing but the smell of sweet burning smoke. I felt her go. Down, down, down. The shaking world began to still as she put some distance between us. With each step she took, the thread that bound us stretched. Stretch it could, but snap it could not. Running away, no matter how far, wouldn’t change anything. It would only prolong the inevitable.

The hair on the back of my neck bristled. Right then, I knew I was being watched.

Instinctively, my eyes darted out the window. Two streams of pale smoke twirled through the night air, rising to frame a set of silver-blue eyes that stared back at me, burning with threats and promises.