35. Cross

Sin drags me. Chunky, chafing ropes bound around my hands and knees gnaw on my exposed skin. The back of my boots catch on roots and undergrowth, shredding patches of wet leaves off the forest floor. Each bump ignites fresh agony in the wreck of my fragmented ribs, and my thigh leaks like a river as I channel more and more energy into my gift.

If they forget me, they’ll drop me.

If they drop me, I’ll get to Leni.

I throw more shadows and feel my arm break.

The pain is nothing compared to the anvil crushing my heart.

Only Leni keeps me going. Her face swims before me, cloudy eyes wide with love as she pulled the trigger on me. Denied me the chance to protect her.

Because she didn’t think I could?

Luke’s wide, sweat soaked back is turned to me as he scans the trees with the scope of his rifle. Rune’s injured—badly—bleeding out in Lev’s arms. Atlas sets a brutal pace from behind me, urging us faster farther. The rest—a limping Meda, Drake, and Zeke—cover the flanks, anticipating attack.

Does Atlas think Leni leaving will hurt me less if she’s harder to get to?

Does he think distance will somehow stop me from succumbing to the curse again?

He’s wrong.

“She’s killing herself!” I shout, thrashing against the restraints. Leni’s bullet gouges deeper into my muscle, drilling greedily. “Turn around. Let me go! We need to stop her!”

“We’re in no shape to face the prince now,” Atlas grunts. “We retreat to fight another day.”

Another day.

A day while Leni suffers under that sycophant’s control? Bile and blood rise in my throat. “I’m not leaving her with that fucking monster.”

“You’re no use to her dead.”

A red and black haze clouds my vision. I twist in Sin’s grasp, fingers curling into claws, frantic to get free, but too exhausted, too spent to make any headway. I rasp to Atlas, to anyone that will listen, “I’m no use alive without her.”

“Keep walking,” Atlas directs Sin, as if he can’t hear me.

Fuck that. They can drag me into the pits of Tartarus and I’ll still never quit going after her. “Take me to Draven,” I beg, pathetic and not caring. “Take me or it won’t matter if I live. Please. Listen to me.”

Atlas is done hearing me.

He nods to his left. “He’s blowing position. Silence him.”

Then I see Zeke’s scarred eyes, and a rag shoves down my throat.

“We didn’t want it to come to this,” Atlas informs me, cold and clinical. “The female made her choice. She chose the Blackguard over herself. We’re the selfish bastards who have to live with it.”

Selfish bastards.

That’s exactly what we are.

Animals. Horrible, heartless beasts. Tears sting my eyes as I continue to struggle. “No,” I plead, muffled through the cloth, useless. “You don’t understand.”

Zeke shakes his head as he places his hand on my leg, trying to heal me.

I kick at him. Healing is not my priority. I need them to understand. It was not my secret to tell, but now I must.

“Stop it,” Zeke grumbles. “I’m helping.”

“Please,” I beg again, dropping the shadows until Zeke’s face is completely visible. “Please. I’m your brother. Please.” My voice cracks with emotion.

Zeke glances at Atlas, then he’s pulling the rag from my mouth.

Too late. A blinding white light flashes over us and seconds after, a teeth chattering blast sends the forest into deadly quiet. Fire, a blaze of white flames erupt straight into the air, then explode outward, searing everything in its path.

The inferno rages, scorching damp leaves and waterlogged wood like fuses. Massive trees become columns of silver flame piercing the sky like raised swords, casting an eerie glow over us.

I’m paralyzed, unable to breathe as I stare at the roiling colorless flames. It smells like heat and smoke, and my brothers converge into battle ready positions, injured in the center, strong surrounding, weapons out and armed. A form we’ve assumed a hundred times, every time prepared to fall on our swords for our family.

But there’s no one to fight.

Leni’s guaranteed it.

“Holy shit,” Luke gasps as white flames jump from tree to tree, rip across wet ground like it’s covered in gasoline.

It stops inches short of Atlas’s boots. “She’s …” His mouth gapes. He turns his eyes to me, face pinched with sorrow and regret. “She’s a Phoenix, and you knew. Why—”

A strangled breath catches in my throat. “It wasn’t my secret to tell.”

“She killed them,” Lev mutters, throat thick, entranced, face alight with the white glow. “For us.”

Zeke shoves the heels of his hands into his eyes. “No. She died for us.”

They’re quiet. Mourning. Observing.

I’m fighting.

I’m not mourning.

I refuse to believe she’s done this to me.

I didn’t think she’d ever risk it. She’d been so terrified of dying, of getting hurt. I should’ve told her I knew. Told her I’d never ask it of her the moment I figured out what she was, lying in that hospital bed with her.

It was too clear in her eyes. Who she was. What she was. Why she yearned for the ocean but never to swim. How she refused to be molded and used.

She had called them scholars, and she was the most cunning creature I had ever encountered.

Gritting my teeth, I gasp for air as white noise fills my ears, drowning out all other sound.

No. She can’t just waltz into my life and then rip herself out of it.

She can’t.

I dig my finger into my thigh, prying out the bullet stuck in the muscle. Searing agony takes over and I cry out, seeing stars behind my closed eyelids.

Ignore it.

Zeke scrambles to my side to saw through my bindings.

As soon as I’m freed, I sprint towards the heart of the raging fire, calling out her name with every breath.

Scorching heat slams into me, blistering my skin as I push deeper into the flames, groaning through the pain. Sure, somehow, that I’m headed in the right direction. “Leni!”

Her name echoes across the inferno, carried by the raging currents of wind and flame.

Twenty-foot trees are dust, decimated, turned to white ash. I trip, tumbling over my feet, crashing into the charred ground, coughing as thick smoke fills my lungs.

Luke’s hand shoots out, his breath ragged as he pulls me up from the ground. “We’ll find her,” he promises.

A wave of gratitude washes over me. I’ve never been so glad to have humanity on my side. With one arm around him, we dive further into the thick haze of smoke and ash, each step heavy and labored.

Amidst the crackling flames and crumbling trees, a faint sound rises above—soft crying.

My heart constricts. Luke tightens his hold on me and we sprint with every last ounce of energy to the sound.

I’d recognize the shape of her anywhere.

Buried deep in my shadows, glittering under the sun, kneeling in a wasteland of ash.

Nestled in her wreckage, tears streaming from her face, she rivals Aphrodite emerging from the foam.

She’s alive. The vise around my lungs slackens, if only by a fraction.

Releasing Luke, I scramble forward alone and drop to my knees at her side. “Leni.” I reach out to touch her, blind and deaf and numb to everything but her gently trembling body.

No tattoos, no markings, no jewelry. Her hair is silver and straight as a blade, long down her back, glimmering and smooth. No necklaces, not a stitch of clothing, just pure, unmarked skin.

A broken sob wrenches from my throat.

White fire continues to dance around us, licking at my clothes, peeling off my flesh. I ignore the sear, let the embers carve toward bone as the one woman who’s always remembered me looks up at me with dull, lifeless eyes.

My world shatters.

My fault. This is all my fault. I failed to protect her, to save her.

“I’m so sorry—” I take her hand.

She throws herself back from me, shaking her head frantically and covering her chest with trembling hands. “D-don’t!” she stutters, wide eyed, body shuddering.

I feel myself pale. Every breath seems to stick in my throat.

A Phoenix can only remember pain.

And she’s had so much.

Tears slide off her face, faster, more than I can follow.

Numb, in a daze, I take off my blood-stained shirt and offer it to her. Hoping, pointlessly, it’ll spark a memory, bring her comfort.

All it does is ram a dagger into my heart. The sight of Leni wearing my shirt, her body small and fragile beneath it, cuts me viscerally.

She has no flicker of recognition.

I drown with memories. Emotions tumbling like rocks down a cliff side, crushing me wit their weight and roar.

Alive, but at what cost?

She opens her mouth, closes it. Her eyes dart between Luke and me before settling on me with a questioning gaze. “Who are you?”

The question slashes at the deepest part of me.

I’m mortal again, returning from war, gun strapped over my shoulder, exhausted, lonely, walking into my home expecting warmth and getting nothing.

My heart jolts painfully. I can’t breathe. Pressure clogs my throat. I almost can’t hold her stare.

Leni clutches my shirt to her body, the black and bloodstains disturbingly stark against her all white.

I groan as I lift one knee up. The bad one, hers, and fold my hands over it. Bow my head. “My name is Cross,” I tell her, hoarsely. I force down a tight breath. “And I vow to keep you safe.”

She stares at me, expression unnervingly blank, and I stay like that until her shaking stops.

In the ash, a second knee joins mine, Luke’s deep voice proclaiming, “I’m Luke and I vow to keep you safe.”

He bows.

And then a third knee lowers. A fourth. A fifth. Until nine of us are there, rejoining the fight.