Phoenix Flame

by Sara Holland

  Against it all, Brekken looks even more beautiful, more unearthly. I’m not sure that I like it. It’s a reminder of just how different we are, he and I. But when he reaches out across the car hood and catches my hand in his, I don’t pull away. Nor when he slides slowly against me until our sides are pressed together, both of us leaning on the other.

  “Brekken,” I murmur in the lull between two shrieking fireworks. “Are you sure you want to go to Fiordenkill with me?”

  I weave our fingers together, sparks firing in my blood just like the ones raining down from the sky. I don’t know why I’m afraid all of a sudden, but the fear is here now and I feel like I need to give voice to it.

  “Maddie.” He looks down at me, strange light playing across his cheekbones, tiny reflected fireworks scattering in his eyes. “Of course. You know I would never let you go alone.”

  “It’s just …” I take a deep breath and shift my weight on the hood. “Something could go wrong. We could get caught.”

  “Then wouldn’t you shelter me?” he asks. His voice is gently teasing, but there’s an edge of something serious there too. “Keep me safe at Havenfall?”

  “Of course.” I look hastily back at the sky. “But I don’t want you to risk your future on my account.”

  For all I disdained Mom’s and Marcus’s warnings, I can’t seem to get their words out of my head now. They echo there, like buggy recordings.

  I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that it’ll never work.

  We in this family have a bad habit of falling in love with Fiordens.

  Do you think Brekken would be happy here at the crossroads?

  In the moment of quiet between words, everything working against us crams into my head and I almost convince myself that all this, the fireworks, the kisses we’ve shared, his closeness now, are flukes and delusions. That he only cares for me as a friend, and everything else is spun sugar and wishes. But then he speaks.

  “I’d risk everything.”

  All traces of jokiness are gone now, his voice dead serious.

  I don’t look at Brekken, scared that if I do my face will reveal too much. But I can feel his eyes on me like a laser beam. He waits for me to turn to him, and finally I do.

  The world seems to have quieted around us. Like a dome has fallen over Brekken and me, a summer snow globe, the fireworks forgotten except for how they illuminate Brekken’s eyes. He brings his other hand over, grasping my right hand with both of his.

  “I know things have been …” He trails off, biting his lip.

  I’m not sure what he’s getting at. Busy? Crazy, scary, changed?

  Part of me just wants to go back to being kids, the easy closeness we had. But another part of me is ignited by this strange tension, wants to lean into it. A moth to the fire.

  “Things have been what?” I prompt.

  He shakes his head. “I don’t know.” He is very still, I realize suddenly, almost unnaturally still. Like he’s nervous. The only movement for a moment is the flutter of his pulse against my wrist, until the rest of his words spill out in a rush. “But I know I want to be with you, Maddie.”

  The sentence hits me as sharp and breathtaking as a frost wind. I open my mouth, close it, take a breath and try again. I don’t need to think about it. It’s just strangely hard to get the actual words out after shoving them down for years.

  But I manage it.

  “I want to be with you too.”

  For another few seconds, getting the words out is all I can do. I feel frozen, all the hesitation of years of not knowing how Brekken felt holding me still, pinning my limbs to my sides. But then something breaks open in me. He wants me. He just said it. He wants me, and I want him, and he’s here and I’m here and I want him. Want to be with him. There’s so much that could keep us apart, but right at this moment none of it matters. Tomorrow I can worry about it, but tonight Brekken’s eyes are the only thing in the world.

  So I lean in and kiss him.

  Leaving all the fearful things for another day.

  9

  The next morning finds us assembled in the tunnels in front of the doorway to Fiordenkill. I can feel the cold breeze on my face. Marcus raided all the closets and found Fiorden clothes for us, fur coats and such.

  We form a short line. Brekken, me, and Graylin. Two Fiordens and a human. Also here to see us off are Marcus, Willow, the Heiress, and Enetta. Despite all the help the princess of Myr’s given us, she can’t take the risk of coming with us and being caught. The ramifications of moving against Cadius Winterkill, for her, would be too high. So instead she’s supplied us with maps and weapons. We’re ready, or at least as ready as we can be.

  There are still a million thoughts bouncing around my head, but it’s like they’ve receded, their wasps’ buzz fading to a muffled hum. There’s fear there, yeah, but it’s distant. Worry, too, but I push it away. The gauntlet that protected Mom in Fiordenkill is on my wrist now. We have a plan. We’ll be all right.

  As long as nothing goes wrong.

  Marcus turns to me. “You ready?”

  My heart pounds, but I feel calm. I can smell the ice on the wind. I feel determined. Brekken squeezes my hand once, his bare skin slipping against my woolen glove.

  I hold my breath. And we step forward through the doorway.

  I see Brekken disappear first, the pale blue light of Fiordenkill swallowing him up. Then it’s Graylin’s and my turn. We cross the threshold from darkness into light, from this world into the next, and the ground drops out from beneath my feet.

  There’s pressure and a howling cold wind. The sensation shocks me and takes my breath away, takes everything away. I can’t feel Brekken’s presence, or Graylin’s. I open my mouth to call out for them, but the wind steals my words away too. I’m not sure I have a body anymore. I’m not sure I even exist. I’m scared suddenly, terrified, and it’s Mom’s name that flies to my lips. But then her face materializes in my head, cold and soulless as she told me never to love someone from another world.

  Then as quickly as the crossover started, it’s over. I hit the ground hard on all fours, feeling something cold and solid beneath my mittened hands. There is a howling in my ears, and the ground seems to be quaking beneath me, though I can’t tell if that’s just the aftereffects of passing through the doorway. I stay very still and focus on breathing. I can feel my lungs again, and I wait for my senses to come back to me. My heart is hammering.

  The first thing I notice is the wind. What I always knew as a faint, tinny whisper emanating from the other side of the Fiorden doorway is now a high, unceasing fury, centered somewhere very far above my head, twisting and rising and falling like the keening of a living thing. It pulls at my clothes, sneaks up the small openings at my wrists and ankles. If I didn’t have my face to the ground, pressed to my hands in a kind of downward dog position, I’m sure it would be blasting my face. The ground feels like packed snow—it’s sunk in a little under my weight. For a moment, I can’t hear anything but the wind, and panic fills me. Did something go wrong? Am I alone in Fiordenkill?

  Then there’s a heavy thump somewhere off to my right, and a familiar sound as Graylin curses when he hits the snow and rolls. Slowly, cautiously, I raise myself up into a kneeling position. I feel like I’ve just done the most intense workout of my life. All my muscles ache, my heart pounds, and my senses come back on high alert, adrenaline pumping through me.

  I’m in Fiordenkill.

  More specifically, I’m in what looks like a large, grand stone courtyard, walled off with massive slabs of shimmering white marble. Set into the one behind me is a doorway that mirrors the one on the Havenfall side, through which I can see the drab mountain gray of our tunnels. The walls contrast with the starry night sky, blending in with the carpet of pristine white snow covering the ground. Pristine, that is, except for the places where our company has broken through. Graylin is getting to his feet by the far wall, smoothing out his long green wool cloak and pulling up the ho
od. Brekken stands a few yards away, at the entrance to the courtyard, already standing guard. Beyond him, I can see a strip of glittering road, and my heart thrills at the sight.

  It’s so cold. Sitting up, I fumble in my jacket, scooting backward in the snow to be out of the danger zone. I pull my scarf out of my collar and take my hood off, quickly wrapping the scarf around twice and then pulling my hood back up. I thought I was prepared for the cold, but there’s something different about this even from the brutal Colorado plains winters I’m used to. It feels like this cold is deeper somehow, entrenched, maybe since it never lets up.

  Spring doesn’t come to Myr. There are other countries in Fiordenkill that are more temperate, but not by much. Graylin once told me that Fiordens weren’t like humans, in that humans tended to view cold as something scary and bad, lonely, deadly. Fiordens don’t see it that way, he said, maybe because they don’t know anything else. Their berries and herbs grow just fine in the cold, and the animals they hunt and domesticate could only exist in the snow. I run through all the information I’ve learned from Graylin, from Brekken, from the library and the delegates as I stand up on shaky legs. Feeling like a moment that I’ve been waiting and preparing for my entire life is finally here.

  I tip my head back, look at the sky, and gasp, the sound muffled by my layers of scarf. I had glanced up upon first coming through, but not really looked, not really seen until now. There are so many stars. Thousands, it seems like, and they’re bigger than the stars on Earth, closer. Instead of a uniform cool blue, they appear in all colors, blue and purple and red and orange and gold. And that’s not all. At the edge of the sky, a curtain of interwoven colors is appearing, creeping over the top of the marble wall. Shimmering strands of pale green and blue and pink, swaying gently between the stars like seaweed caught in a soft current. The aurora. It hovers at the fringes of the horizon now, but when it covers the whole sky, that’s the Fiordens’ signal to enter the doorway into Havenfall, for the summit to begin.

  I cross over the snow to Brekken, my feet sliding awkwardly in the slightly-too-big boots I’ve borrowed. My body feels different in a way I can’t put my finger on. Lighter. Is it possible that there’s less gravity in Fiordenkill? I wonder giddily as I approach Brekken.

  He looks different here in his home world, different enough for me to pause a few feet away, just so I can look at him a second longer before he notices me. The light here is strange. Although it’s night, it’s not dark by any means; the light from the stars and the aurora, reflected off the marble walls and the snow on the ground, casts everything in an ethereal pale light. It reshapes Brekken, deepens the contrast between his pale skin and copper hair and blue eyes and the deep green of his soldier’s coat. It sharpens him, bringing out the fine angles of his face and the hollows in his cheeks and around his eyes. It makes him look less human.

  It makes me remember what he is. While the delegates have never seemed not-foreign to me, strange in their habits and speech and manner; while even Graylin catches me off guard sometimes when his accent sneaks through or he catches a falling wineglass with supernatural reflexes; something had shifted over the years and allowed me to see Brekken as just like me. Maybe I was trying to convince myself there was some kind of future for us, that he could stay at Havenfall, stay on Earth and be happy. But looking at him now, it’s so clear that this is his home. Maybe he would be happy elsewhere, but it would never be home, the way Graylin has made it so.

  Brekken is looking intently out at the road, the wind tugging at his hair like a familiar friend. His eyes gleam with the reflected sky, and his posture is tall and proud, a soldier’s. Beyond him, through a huge black wrought-iron gate, I can see a long straight road shimmering with ice, lined by great thick-trunked trees with graceful, downward-pointing boughs, like silvery pines.

  He doesn’t seem to notice me there until I take another step, the snow crunching beneath my feet, and he turns toward me, blinking, clearing some unnameable emotion out of his eyes. A soft smile curls his mouth.

  “So what do you think?” he asks.

  “It’s beautiful,” I whisper, looking at the reflections of the stars in his pupils. “But why is this area empty? I thought the doorway was always under guard.”

  “It usually is,” Brekken replies. “But my mother pulled some favors and arranged for the guards to be elsewhere tonight.”

  “Thank goodness.” I’m too embarrassed to admit that I hadn’t even thought about guards on the Fiorden side until now. I was too focused on the next steps of the plan we made: learn as much as we can about the gauntlet, stop over at Brekken’s grandparents’ home to get ready and gather our strength, and then make our attack.

  “Do you know the way to Winterkill?”

  Brekken shakes his head no. “But they do,” he says, lifting his finger to point.

  I follow the line of his arm, down the stretch of ice road, and my heart jumps into my throat. Someone is coming—no, something—something huge. It’s strangely silent except for a soft whooshing sound that gets louder and louder. Finally I understand what I’m seeing: a huge sleigh made of black polished wood, trimmed with silver and bone.

  The sleigh is pulled by five ice wolves, each as big as a horse.

  My jaw drops. They bound toward us, paws silent against the ice, blue and black eyes gleaming in the starlight. Teeth too. Their coats are black and brown and silver and white. The wolves are bound together and to the sleigh by leather harnesses. As they pull to a stop a few yards from the gate, I see that a woman with long copper hair is holding the reins. She dismounts and comes toward us, patting each of the wolves as she passes them. Steam rises from the animals’ coats and from their open mouths, long red tongues lolling out between white teeth. I’m so transfixed by them that I don’t realize at first that Brekken has opened the gate and gone out. Not until he strides up to the woman and envelops her in an embrace.

  My gaze snaps to them. After a long hug, the woman pulls back, holding Brekken by the shoulders.

  “My son,” she says with a big grin on her face.

  And as soon as she does, I can see the resemblance between them, the ivory cast of their skin, the mischievous grin.

  Something goes hollow inside me. Of course I’ve heard plenty about Brekken’s parents over the years. Both generals in Myr’s army, they were delegates at Havenfall before I was born. They’re highly decorated and Brekken looks up to them. I had never given them much thought before now, but seeing Brekken with his mother fills me with a sense of longing that feels like a gut punch.

  What would Mom do if I hugged her like that? Our visits are no-contact, so I don’t know for sure, but I can’t imagine any other response but her just standing there, stone-still, her arms limp at her sides.

  Still, when Brekken turns toward me with a smile, I do my best to return it. He beckons me forward, and I step out of the courtyard gate. Graylin is a few steps behind me.

  Deeper into Fiordenkill.

  Even though I only move a few feet, it seems to me that the cold gets more intense. And I start to feel the stirrings of pain deep in my bones, in my veins. My body tells me to go back to the doorway, back to safety. But I trust that the gauntlet on my arm will keep me safe. It has to. Just for a few days, I tell myself.

  “Mother,” Brekken says with a smile as I get close, looking between the copper-haired woman and me. “This is Maddie. The girl I told you about.”

  I can feel my eyes widen a little at those words. What has he told her about me? But I keep my cool as best I can, smiling and extending a hand. She ignores it and goes in for a hug, her slender arms wrapping around me tightly.

  “Madeline,” she says warmly, pulling back so she can look at me the same way she did with Brekken. “I am so pleased to finally meet you. I’m Ilya.”

  “I’m glad to meet you too,” I say, blushing, hoping it doesn’t show too much under the scarf.

  Ilya’s face is uncovered, of course. She’s as unbothered as all Fiordens a
re by the cold. Sprays of fine lines fan out from the corners of her eyes and mouth, but otherwise she could be thirty.

  “Brekken told me how well you held the inn together this summer while your uncle was ill.”

  Surprise and warmth fill my chest. Brekken thinks I did a good job? And he told his parents? Well, his mom, at least. I recall he once told me that his father traveled for months at a time, chasing rare elk on commission from the royal family.

  Ilya lets me go, still smiling. “Well, we can catch up later,” she says, her Fiorden accent making each word distinct and elegant. “Now, let’s focus on getting you people somewhere safe.” Ilya separates from me and goes to greet Graylin.

  Brekken squeezes my hand briefly—I startle at the pressure of his fingers over my mittens—and draws me to the side of the sleigh.

  I follow, intensely aware of the presence of the ice wolves. Instinct makes me keep my head down, not to let my gaze meet those dark, intelligent eyes. They seem happy enough, though, panting slightly and shifting their massive weight. Brekken pats their flanks as we pass, just like his mother. Part of me wants to touch them, too, but I don’t dare.

  At the sleigh, Brekken opens a door in the side, revealing a comfortably appointed interior with four front-facing carved seats heaped with furs and a sleek bone-colored railing to keep riders in.

  “Stay awake during the ride if you can,” he says. “I’d like you to see Fiordenkill.”

  My face tingles as I imagine sitting up there in the cold. But at the same time, something in my chest ignites at Brekken’s words.

  Brekken busies himself with our supplies, sliding the stuff we’ve brought—Fiorden bags and Earth duffel bags full of clothes, money, food, weapons—between the benches. Graylin and I thought we should travel as light as possible to avoid notice, but Marcus and Brekken share a Boy Scout’s mentality of never ever getting caught unprepared.