Shadow of the Phoenix

by Rebecca Harwell

  She needed to draw the nivasi’s attention to her, no matter how painful that might be. After all, even without the Cressian serum, she could withstand the blows. Or at least, Nadya hoped she could.

  The white-clad figure across the square raised her hands, and the stone that Nadya leaned against threw her forward. She skidded across the ground, disturbing the bodies of fallen Cressian, Erevan, and Nomori alike. Before she could stand, stone flew at her chest, battering her until she dodged out of the way. Slowly. Painfully.

  The Cressian nivasi had yet to break a sweat as her blank gaze and deadly aim followed Nadya across the square. The battle raged on around her in the streets and alleys of the Nomori tier and the ground itself fought against her. She had to face what had become apparent even to her. She could not, in fact, withstand the onslaught of the Cressian nivasi without the serum.

  A large boulder hit Nadya square in the chest as she fended off several Cressian soldiers. She screamed and dropped to the ground. It roiled and trembled underneath her. Up, she willed herself, get up! Her limbs shook as she struggled to her feet, bits of gravel falling off her armor.

  Suddenly a familiar shout broke the air, and a large form slammed into her. A spike of rock was hurtling toward her, and she staggered out of the way of the missile before it crashed into a nearby pile of rubble, exploding with force upon impact.

  Shadar Gabori fell to his knees, clutching his right shoulder. His leather armor was torn and bloody, and his rapier hung limply in his right hand. He looked up at her with a pained smile. “You made it home,” he rasped.

  This time, Nadya heard the whistling of sharp rock cutting through the air. “Papa!” she yelled, launching herself forward. A barrage of rock and earth hit her back as she shielded her father.

  “I—” Words failed her. If—when—she took the serum, it would be too late to tell her father good-bye.

  The Guardmaster of Storm’s Quarry rose. He transferred his rapier to his left hand, and then popped his shoulder back into place with a sickening crack. “Fight well, daughter,” he said, “and we will see one another again.”

  Before Nadya could respond, he charged a group of Cressian soldiers who had cornered two resistance fighters. Three perfect slashes of his blade, and the soldiers dropped to the ground.

  All around her, the fight for the freedom of Storm’s Quarry raged on. The streets that she once ran down as a child now became tactical avenues in which small groups of the two forces hammered at one another. Musket men crouched behind large chunks of rubble, reloading with frantic fingers as their comrades brandished rapiers above them. The fighting spanned as far as she could see in the Nomori tier, and it had spilled over into the higher tiers of the city. Although the bulk of the resistance’s forces were concentrated down here, gunshots and screams echoed from all levels of Storm’s Quarry.

  A pillar of earth shot up from the ground in front of her. It collided with her chest, pushing her up into the air. She flew across the Nomori square, landing with a thunk on a solid rooftop.

  Everything hurt. Blood dripped down her face, stinging her eyes. Underneath every breath, she heard the soft cracking of her ribs. She rolled over onto her side and retched against the pain. Only blood escaped her mouth to pool on the rooftop next to her head. She tasted nothing but copper, smelled nothing but blood.

  “Nadezhda!”

  The fuzzy voice continued to pester her ears as she blinked slowly, trying to regain her senses. Get up, Nadya, she screamed at herself. Get up and fight! You cannot give up this easily.

  A hand grasped her shoulder, pulling her to a seated position. Nadya sat atop the Nomori bathhouse, its low roof filled with debris both familiar and alien to her. Levka Puyatin crouched next to her. His tunic had been torn down the side, and it seeped blood. He was pale faced and shaking, and Nadya couldn’t ever recall a time she had seen the former magistrate look more vulnerable.

  She supposed she didn’t look too well at the moment either.

  “You are being destroyed out there. If you keep going like this, that nivasi will kill you. I’m sorry, but you cannot win without this.” Levka held the vial of concentrated stardust out to her. “Storm’s Quarry needs you. It needs the Iron Phoenix, with power to stop all this destruction.”

  Blood bubbled out of her mouth as Nadya laughed harshly, unable to hold back the tidal wave of emotion that swept over her. Sharp pain shot through her rib cage, and she winced. “Never thought you’d say that, did you?”

  Levka raised his eyebrows. “No, I did not. Especially in the midst of a fight.”

  “Right.” She struggled to her feet. To her surprise, Levka rose with her, steadying her arm. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

  He nodded. After a long pause, in which the screams and rumblings of the fight faded until Nadya heard only his heartbeat, Levka said, “I do regret it. No matter how much I’ve tried to do so, my ends never justified the means.” It was his turn to laugh. “I tried to rid my city of nivasi only to prepare it for invasion by the most powerful of your kind.”

  “You still see us as the same.”

  “You are the same. Dangerous creatures, possessing power no mortal ever should.” He looked at the vial in his hand. “But we mortals have found a terrible way to use it.” He placed it in her bloodied hand, closing her fingers around it. His eyes found hers, and Nadya could not look away. “There is no redemption for what we have done—what I have done. I—”

  The stone rooftop of the bathhouse crumbled beneath them without any warning. Nadya had only a moment to shove Levka out of the way before she fell through, hitting the ground with a sickening crack. Stone poured down on top of her. It cut off the light from the stars as the earth bored into her, flattening her against the ground, the vial of stardust protected by her arm. Her stomach screamed with pain as the stone forced itself down farther and farther. Underneath, the cobblestones cracked. She couldn’t draw a breath. Her vision swam until she saw stars, and darkness began to creep around the edges. A darkness like the suffocating void Gedeon had forced down her throat.

  Hear me if you’re there. She prayed to the stars above that she could not see with the last bit of consciousness she had. She received no answer. The empty place on her arm where her seal had always been ached. How could she expect an answer here, in the midst of a city, when she found only silence in a shrine steeped in the presence of the Protectress? Tears welled at the corners of her eyes. How could she think she was destined to be the Iron Phoenix, to save Storm’s Quarry, when she held everything special about her in a glass bottle?

  I choose to believe otherwise.

  Her mother’s words, spoken when she was within sight of the Protectress, echoed in her mind, drawing Nadya out of the fog that had enveloped her.

  Pain laced every part of her body. She struggled against the weight of the stone above her, but it did not move. Grunting, Nadya managed to move her hand to the small space in front of her face. In the dimness, the glass vial glinted. If she took it now, trapped as she was, she’d have the strength to break free. To fight the Cressian nivasi. To free her city from the hand of Wintercress.

  Nadya knew Levka was right. Storm’s Quarry depended on her taking the Cressian alchemical power for herself, becoming a nivasi powerful enough to defeat the one that commanded the very earth. Strong enough to tear away the stone that now crushed her.

  Monstrous enough to hurt everyone she loved with a single touch.

  It could have been the pain, the strain on her body to keep functioning as a building’s worth of stone pressed down upon her, but Nadya felt vomit rise in her throat at the thought of turning herself into a creature like the Cressian nivasi. Into…

  Kin.

  The word echoed so strongly in her mind that she wasn’t sure it was her own.

  Kin. The Cressian nivasi might not have been born of Nomori blood, but the stardust that infused her body was the same that thrummed through Nadya now, barely holding off the mountains of stone from cr
ushing her.

  She had spent so long separating herself from Gedeon, from the tales of Durriken the Butcher. Believing that she was special and chosen, and somehow set apart on a different path from the vicious nivasi that littered Nomori legends. Meeting Shay had chipped the first cracks into that facade, and the discovery at Brome had shattered it.

  Perhaps, she thought as her lungs struggled to rise, this was the gift given to her—a life that was not dictated by carvings of stone in an ancient temple.

  Could she risk her city and the woman she loved on such a belief?

  A roar tore loose from her throat and Nadya heaved upward with all her might. The stone above her barely moved, and she pushed again. Blood trickled out of her mouth and down her chin as she pushed, lungs bursting, at the rock above her.

  A grind. A crack. A whiff of fresh air, and Nadya summoned the rest of her strength.

  It was barely enough. She rolled out from underneath just as the pile of stone crashed back down. Nadya knelt, catching her breath. In her fist, she still held the glass vial.

  Make a choice, Nadya. Shay’s voice echoed in her mind. Make a choice that there is no backing away from.

  But the choice had been made. Pocketing the vial, Nadya emerged from the ruins of the bathhouse. She imagined she looked a sight, limping, blood gushing down from the cuts on her head. But her gaze was steady and she made her way with purpose toward the weapon that had nearly destroyed her home.

  The Cressian nivasi stood in the center of the square, where the fountain once stood. Where Nadya and Kesali had shared their first dance and first kiss. Anger thrummed beneath her skin at the loss. Wintercress had taken so much from Storm’s Quarry, from her people. She only hoped she had the strength to take it back.

  Around the square, the fighting between the resistance of Storm’s Quarry and the Cressian army had ceased, as Nadya sensed all eyes turned toward her and the Cressian nivasi. In the distance, near the warehouse district of the Nomori tier, white flames rose in the air. Nadya sent a silent prayer for Shay, that she would make it out of this fight in one piece.

  “I have been told that I may accept your surrender, if you offer it,” the Cressian nivasi said in her uncanny monotone. “That you will make an interesting specimen.”

  Nadya suppressed a shiver. “I would die before surrendering. Before becoming an experiment for Wintercress.” Before becoming like you hung in the air between them, unsaid.

  “Then you will die.” She held up a hand, and the ground beneath Nadya opened so quickly she did not have a chance to leap away.

  The earth swallowed her legs, then her waist. It squeezed her on all sides, and Nadya fought back the panic that rose in her throat. “I do not want to fight you!” she shouted.

  The ground stopped moving.

  “Why not?” The Cressian nivasi’s voice held a bit of emotion—confusion—for the first time.

  “Because you and I are the same,” Nadya said, struggling to free herself. The earth held tight. Her bones creaked like she was being sucked through one of the lower tier’s steam pumps. “Because we are kin!”

  Her final word echoed across the battlefield.

  For a terrible moment, Nadya was sure the darkness that flickered across the nivasi’s face would lead to her being buried alive in the square that she’d once played and danced in. But instead, the earth opened slightly, and Nadya wrenched herself free.

  “No!” Prince Trillium stumbled through the debris, pushing his royal guards aside. He shook his blade at the Cressian nivasi. “You are no kin of this woman, this Iron Phoenix. You are mine. Because of me, you were made. You fight for me, for Wintercress. And for Wintercress, you will destroy the Phoenix.”

  Nadya swallowed against her dry throat. Whatever hold the Prince had over his nivasi was powerful, and she didn’t know if she could break it. The glass vial in her pocket felt as if it weighed ten stones, a reassuring, yet terrible last resort. “I only want to speak to you. I know what you are. How you came to be.” She withdrew the glass vial of stardust serum and held it aloft.

  “This woman wants your power for herself,” Trillium cut in. “See the vial she carries? It is filled with the same miraculous chemistry that created you.” The Prince spat at Nadya. “Lies and only lies spew from her mouth.”

  The Cressian nivasi slowly turned her eyes upon Nadya. “You found the cave? Where I was made?”

  “Yes, I did. I was seeking answers, not power,” Nadya explained.

  “And yet it is power that she now holds. Destroy the vial and the one who carries it, my lodestone. It is what you were made for.”

  Nadya felt the earth stir as the nivasi’s powerfully blank gaze fixed upon her, the intensity of her icy eyes growing with each rumble of the ground. I choose to believe. Mirela’s words became her own thoughts as she clutched the vial of her own essence. I choose to believe that you are listening from the stars. I choose to wear this cloak and fight for my people, my city.

  I choose to be more than stardust.

  Nadya held out the vial. Prince Trillium started forward, crying, “Do not let her drink it!” Around him, the remaining Cressian soldiers moved in on Nadya. The eyes of the Cressian nivasi never wavered. Rocks lifted up all around her, but Nadya just took a slow breath, and then shattered the vial upon the cobblestones. Its contents sprayed everywhere, mixing with the mud and blood and seawater that covered the ground, eventually to disappear back into the waters of Storm’s Quarry.

  “I never sought this power.”

  Both Prince Trillium and the Cressian nivasi stared at her, before the Prince ordered, “Now destroy her.”

  But the woman did not move.

  “Neither of us chose to be this way. Maybe it was fate. Maybe the stars or the storm gods. Maybe it was pure bad luck that our blood was mixed with the essence of the night sky, giving us a life we never asked for.”

  The words poured out of her with a fury that took away her breath. “But our lives are not built on that circumstance. We have choices. I am the Iron Phoenix of Storm’s Quarry.”

  She drew a deep breath and grasped her hood. “And I am Nadya Gabori of the Nomori,” she said, pulling her hood back. The cool salt-tinged air stung the cuts on her face. She resisted the urge to look down, all too aware of the resistance fighters and Cressian soldiers watching their exchange. Seeing her without the comforting anonymity of the guise of the Phoenix. Crown Prince Trillium stared at her, surprise written across his features. But the Cressian nivasi only regarded her with blank eyes.

  “I have no name, but I call myself Lode.” The nivasi paused. “I am the lodestone of Wintercress’s future. Is that what you mean?”

  Beneath the bruises and cracked ribs, Nadya’s chest ached for her. Unmade from her old life and remade into a weapon, this woman—Lode—seemed to have defined her entire life around the machinations of Wintercress and its Crown Prince.

  Just as Nadya had seen herself first as only a monster, and then as only the Iron Phoenix.

  “No, it isn’t.” Throwing caution to the wind, Nadya stepped toward Lode. “You can be more than his weapon.”

  “Do not listen to her lies,” Trillium said.

  Lode asked at the same time, “How do you know?”

  “Our blood,” Nadya said slowly, reaching out to touch Lode’s hand. “Our blood is the same. You can make a choice, just as I have. Choose to be more than the weapon that he intends you to be. Choose your own path.”

  “I—” Lode hesitated. She held up her hands. Bits of rock debris swirled around them, reminding Nadya of Shay’s fire. “I do not know who I am.”

  “I do. We are the same. We are kin, connected by stars. Can you feel it?” Nadya asked and grasped her hand. The words she had needed to hear years ago when her nivasi powers surfaced, when she was a scared little girl who didn’t know why she had become a monster, rose in her throat. “You are not alone.”

  The ground stopped its trembling, and the city of Storm’s Quarry seemed to hold
its breath. Not even a breeze off the Kyanite Sea disturbed the stillness as the Cressian nivasi, a woman called Lode, considered Nadya’s words.

  “I would not choose to be this way. I want—I want to feel again.”

  “Cease this at once!” Prince Trillium’s eyes flashed with anger. Blood splattered his once immaculate armor, and the ceremonial saber he carried shook with unrestrained fury. “You are mine. I made you. Do not forget that.”

  Lode seemed to consider this for a moment, before she glanced at Nadya. “I have not forgotten. I have chosen.”

  “Then you have chosen treason.” He lunged forward suddenly. His saber sang through the air. Before Nadya could react or Lode could summon another shield of stone, a streak of flame shot through the air. It ripped through Trillium’s blade, melting the hilt, and struck him square in the chest. Fire consumed his armor and then his screams, and Trillium, heir to the throne of Wintercress, was no more.

  Shay, standing fifteen paces away, lowered her flame-wreathed hands. “Better than you deserve, bastard,” she muttered under her breath.

  Nadya’s heart felt like it would beat out of her chest as she passed her gaze over Shay’s frame, searching for injuries but finding none beyond the cuts and bruises of battle.

  Was it over now? Nadya wondered. She glanced around. Lode stood still, looking at Trillium’s body with detached interest. The Cressian soldiers in the square did not move. Their eyes flicked between the body of their Prince and the weapon that no longer fought for them, uncertain of what to do.

  “Storm’s Quarry!” The voice of Marko Isyanov rang out across the square. He emerged from a group of resistance fighters, Kesali at his side. They looked battered and worn, but uninjured, to Nadya’s relief. “Storm’s Quarry,” he bellowed again, “the day is yours!”

  A cheer rose up among the resistance fighters, growing steadily in volume as disbelief faded to relief, then to joy.

  “Wintercress,” Kesali shouted at the soldiers who stood uncertain, “what say you?”