DOFAB#3

Chapter Twenty-Two

~ KINLEY ~

"You can't be serious, Kinaley? This is suicide." Neziri latches onto my wrist, chest heaving, nostrils flared. The climb up the stairs to the roof deck taxing.

"It's not suicide. It's sacrifice. And that's what we temple priestesses were created to do." I tug free, Tristan appearing, carting the trunk of my belongings behind him.

If I don't leave now, I never will.

"Wheels up in three." He passes Neziri and me, heading toward the raven helicopter where his unconscious creation is being loaded into a steel crate.

"You get on that helicopter and you are dead to me, you hear me? Dead."

Rawness scores my throat, a thousand stings of angered honey bees. Whump-whump-whump, the rotating blades of the helicopter beat overhead. I've done a lot of reckless things in my life. Entered a wolf's den. Held a hornets' nest. Made friends with a violet-bellied viper. Waded through a grove of stinging nettles. Applied to Nadora. But nothing as reckless as sitting across from our greatest enemy, heading to Valderan Territory, a place no eevie has ever ventured for good reason.

"Current time 1201. ETA to Scourge 1500. Cargo jet on standby to take hostile asset home." The pilot's voice comes through the clunky earmuffs placed over my head.

Downward pressure cements me to my seat as the helicopter lifts off. I don't need my eyes open to know my sister is right where I left her. Next to my belongings, waiting for pickup by another helicopter and the rest of the vamperial guard following.

I should said I love you, or may Rien's clovers always fall upon you. I should have said, become the nameless one that will restore the willow and when you do, and our gardens are once again in full bloom, remember me. I didn't say any of those things. Instead, I said...

I was dead to you the day we sprouted.

A coolness sweeps across my wind-chapped cheeks. Tristan's hellfire blue irises stare down at me. The escaped tear he's caught a perfect, round raindrop that's fallen from my soul.

"Tears of sorrow. Tears of happiness. They come from the same place." Tristan stays standing, holding onto the strap above me as he raises his curled finger into his direct line of sight. He studies the tear carefully as if he expects at any moment for it to transform magically into a seed that will crack open and a petalfly will be born.

It doesn't work like that. Not every tear contains a seedling. But what I do know for sure is if I let myself continue to cry. Eventually, they will come.

"What place is that?" I ask as the helicopter turns, heading toward our connecting destination in Scourge. From there, Valderanna is about a sixteen-hour flight. I pick at a tangled clump of my crimson-saturated ringlets, a piece of brain falls onto my lap. Hopefully, there will be time in between flights to wash up.

"Love," Tristan answers. His one-word reply sounds as if it comes straight from the beating vessel in his chest.

Every beast needs a weakness. Mine sacrificed herself to save this world, Tristan's earlier spoken words rush me like the winds blowing in through the open helicopter doors.

I think I understand now. The phoenix of the eerie didn't rebirth the world to find Tristan again. She did it to save the old world from his destruction. Because, rather than letting her die, he was willing to sacrifice the entire world for her. Something the Beast of the Damned in front of me would do again in this new world if the siren hadn't guided me to her nest. That's what love is to a dark being. The power of destruction at whatever cost. What makes little sense still is the siren. Are there more phoenixes like her that give fallen worlds second chances? Do they all expire once they decide to make that sacrifice?