The First Dawn (Daughter of the Phoenix Book Three)

by Victoria J. Price

  “No,” Fia breathed, pushing both her hands against Altair’s lifeless chest. “No!” She pushed again, and Altair’s head slid to one side. A roaring thunder tore through Alexander’s head, but he pushed it down. With war came losses, and there would be time to dwell on it later. Time to mourn his friend.

  Flames erupted on the palace steps. Lorn.

  Fia was trembling beside him, her hands still lightly resting on Altair’s chest. Alexander pressed her closer with the wing he’d had wrapped around her to shield her from any stray arrows.

  He put a hand over hers. “Fia.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, closing Altair’s eyes.

  “Fia, we have to go now, Lorn is here.” Alexander didn’t wait for a response, he pulled her gently away, swept her up in his arms and flew up the steps, stopping beside one of the pillars. Fia stepped out of his arms, still in shock. He glanced around, snagging Erebus’s gaze. The ancient angel gave him a knowing look, flicking his chin in Lorn’s direction.

  Only five of her soldiers surrounded her, and Alexander surged out towards them, taking them down one by one.

  “Fia, now!” Erebus called out, his shadows snaking around Lorn’s throat. Lightning struck the roof of the palace, filling Lorn’s eyes with silver. Alexander held himself back, though every one of his instincts screamed at him to fly down and pull the air from her lungs there and then.

  She threw her head back and laughed, pulling her arms free of Erebus’s grasp. How? Alexander didn’t know how she’d done such a thing. The dark shadows swarmed around her, and she sent a jet of flames right into them, and Alexander was certain he’d heard Erebus’s cry of pain. It wasn’t possible, was it?

  Erebus’s cloud of darkness fell away, and he dropped to the stone steps in his angel form, clutching at the web of black veins across his chest, that had now spread to his arms too, almost covering his white tattoo entirely.

  Alexander resisted the urge to step in. He was watching, and he knew Fia was too. If this was their one chance, they had to take it. He brought his sword down against the neck of a soldier, swung at another that lunged at him. Maab tore away at a third beside him, and Alexander turned his attention back to the steps.

  “Your shadows cannot stop me, Erebus. You are pathetic. Weak,” Lorn shouted over the storm. Her arms were held high, her hair pressed to her face in the rain.

  “Don’t do this, Lorn,” Erebus called out. “You have a choice. We always have a choice.”

  Lorn made a guttural sound. “The only person I cared for in this world is gone. Ohinyan can rot, for all I care.”

  The storm was right above them, and Alexander hovered a few feet above the ground, a wave of his magic blowing back another cluster of soldiers who all fell to their backs, heads cracking against stone. Someone moved out from behind one of the stone pillars below. Fia. He hadn’t noticed her creeping closer.

  “Lorn, wait!” Fia called out as she ran towards the Makya. Alexander flew down to cover her, extending a shield between her and Lorn. If Lorn struck out, he knew Fia would be ready for her, but so was he.

  Lorn turned to face Fia, flames held in both hands ready to throw, her face lined with rage.

  “Please, Lorn. I know the power is too much. I feel it too. We can stop this. If you’ll just come with us,” Fia pleaded.

  Lorn’s face seemed to crumple for a moment. “There’s no coming back from what I’ve done. What I’ve become.” The embers in her eyes flared and she rolled her neck. “No amount of power is too much for the fire mother,” she snapped, and her flames encased her.

  Fia shook her head, didn’t even step back from Lorn’s inferno. “Terah told me. It consumed the second fire mother. It was too much for her to bear alone.”

  Something flickered across Lorn’s face, something that told Alexander she’d felt the truth in Fia’s words. The power was eating away at her, but the expression faded just as quickly as it had come.

  “I’ve made my decision. I will never go with you,” Lorn hissed, throwing her flames at Fia.

  But Fia was ready, a jet of blue flame surging straight through Alexander’s shield to meet Lorn’s, and he resisted the urge to step back from the heat. Fia stepped closer, driving Lorn’s flames back towards the Makya, and Alexander heard Lorn’s gasp of surprise that Fia’s flames were so strong.

  Fia must have heard it too, and she used the opportunity to tackle Lorn to the ground, rolling with her down a few of the stone steps. Alexander’s heart was in his mouth, but then he saw the flash of orange pass between them, saw the flicker of confusion across Lorn’s face. Fia had done it, she’d syphoned Lorn’s powers without hesitation.

  The Makya screamed, her fingers digging into Fia’s shoulders, but nothing happened. Fia swung her arm back, her fist connecting with Lorn’s jaw and the Makya’s head lolled back against the steps.

  Another three soldiers lunged for Alexander; he plunged his sword through the chest of the first, the remaining two he tugged the air from their lungs and they fell. He couldn’t lose sight of Fia.

  Below on the steps, she pushed off Lorn and turned away from her to check on Erebus. Alexander was already flying towards her, his soldier’s instinct telling him to never take his eye off an opponent. On the steps below, Lorn blinked, shook her head. Thunder boomed overhead, and Alexander knew the moment he had been waiting for since he’d first had the idea back in Deganis was finally upon him. He felt it in the crackle of the air.

  He reached a hand to the sky and pulled, just as Lorn dived for a sword from a fallen soldier. She raised it high to throw at Fia’s back at the same moment a bolt of lightning sparked against Alexander’s fingertips, and he hurled it at the Makya with every inch of his power. He hadn’t created it; he had harnessed it.

  Alexander saw Fia turn, saw her face light up just as the lightning struck Lorn and a scream escaped her. The sword dropped first. Then Lorn fell forwards down the steps, tumbling into Fia’s arms. Alexander was already on a gust of wind to carry him, his feet touching down beside Fia before she caught Lorn’s full weight and staggered back a step.

  “Her magic is heavy,” Fia said softly, lowering Lorn to the ground. The Makya’s gaze was lifeless, her body still. And Alexander did not regret killing her; there was no doubting her intentions when she’d raised that sword at Fia.

  Erebus stepped up behind them, grasping at his chest. “She would not have lived for much longer, with or without it.”

  Alexander studied Fia’s face as Erebus’s words sank in. He didn’t dwell on Lorn’s death, but he knew she would. There was no doubting it.

  The rain eased to a fine drizzle, and at the bottom of the steps, Noor threw an axe into the chest of a charging soldier. Henric and Milena tore through another. Maab’s roar broke through everything, his gaze fixed at the sky.

  Alexander swung at a soldier that charged at him and looked up. Before the storm, the sky had been dark grey, and now it was utterly black.

  Fia’s fingers laced through his, and he met her gaze. “It’s time,” she whispered. “I have to go to the aether. Now.”

  Time. That feeling of dread washed over him, that there was some vital piece of information she’d held back for herself.

  She released his hand and turned to Erebus, a hand to the black veins that now reached his eyes as he approached them. “You can take me, can’t you? To the aether.”

  He nodded once, his lips pressed together in a firm line. He looked far too wounded to be doing anything.

  Alexander began to protest, but as if Fia knew what was coming she said, “Only Erebus can survive it.”

  Not her. Only him. The fight seemed to fall away from them. The sounds of swords clashing and soldiers charging drowned out by Fia’s words.

  “You don’t have to do this, Fia. We can find another way,” he pleaded, but he knew it was a lie. They were out of options.

  “I’ll come back for you,” she said, as if she’d read his thoughts. It was a promise, a promise to
find each other, no matter what came next. The promise he’d made when he’d taken her back to Earth. The life they could have had together seemed to flash before his eyes as her fingers twined through his. His throat burned, but he swallowed it down.

  “I love you. I will love you even when I am nothing,” he breathed, taking her face in his hands, his shield extending around them, protecting them. He would have given anything to trade places with her. To keep her here. Her green eyes were bright and glassy, but he saw what flickered there. Hope.

  She leaned up on her toes, pressing her forehead against his. “This isn’t goodbye, okay?”

  He wanted to stop everything. Wanted to fly her away from all of it. But he knew she’d never turn her back on Ohinyan. He knew she’d see this through, and he loved her all the more for it.

  He kissed her deeply, without a thought for where they were or how many eyes might be watching. He kissed her as if it were only the two of them, standing at the edge of the world, alone.

  But it wasn’t, and they were out of time.

  Chapter Thirty–Six

  Fia

  F ia stepped back from Alexander and took a deep, steadying breath. Maab and Noor were close by, Maab’s white tiger left behind for his male form as he held a torch in the darkness to fight off soldiers. Runa and Malachai touched down beside them, as rough and bloodstained as the rest of them, keeping the soldiers back so that she could leave with Erebus.

  She looked from Alexander to her friends, and it struck her then. Home wasn’t a place, wasn’t that tiny flat back in London, or any of the places she’d been to in Ohinyan. It was the people who filled her life. The people she loved.

  Erebus cleared his throat. “I’ve wronged Ohinyan,” he said quietly to no one in particular. “I’ll spend the rest of my life making amends.”

  The black veins had spread further; across his chest, down his arms, covering his white tattoo almost entirely. They wrapped around his throat and up his face, the tips just touching his eyes. He toyed with something in his pocket and pulled out a necklace with a stone the colour of the ocean. “This body is dying,” he said. “And there’s nothing like staring death in the face to make you reflect on your past misdeeds.” He gave her a wry smile, repeating the words she’d said to him only a short while ago. It felt like an eternity had passed since that moment. This body was made new upon my release, but it is weak. How long had he known his body had been failing him?

  “There was a time, after Terah died, when I told myself if I broke free of my prison, I would make every day count. I would do things that mattered because she couldn’t. But years passed, and I… I wasted it all.” He looked from Fia to Alexander, and Fia saw, through her own eyes, a glimpse of the man Terah had fallen in love with. “Every moment we live and breathe—whatever form that’s in—matters. I know that now.”

  He took Fia’s hand, and pressed the necklace into it, but didn’t release her. “This is the only thing holding this body together. And it belongs to Evina. Tell her… tell her I’m sorry.”

  “But you…” The words stuck in Fia’s throat. He hated his ethereal form. Loathed it, he’d told her. Said it was barely an existence at all. It is an absence of everything, to exist that way. Yet, he was afraid to die, so she supposed he had chosen this over not existing at all. Whatever form that’s in.

  Fia looked at her friends again, looked at Alexander, at the way the torchlight flickered across his face.

  “Are you ready?” Erebus asked. Your friends will find a way. Terah had known it would be him, and the thought struck Fia like a stone.

  She couldn’t tear her gaze from Alexander. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t bring herself to say goodbye. She couldn’t bear it if in their last moments together he thought she might not return, even though she knew now that she wouldn’t. There was no coming back from this. But she would do it for Ohinyan. For him.

  She nodded once, her heart threatening to burst through her chest. Erebus pulled his hand away and dispersed into his cloud of shadows.

  “I love you,” she said to Alexander, shoving the necklace into her pocket.

  Alexander stepped forwards just as Erebus’s darkness swarmed around her, and the last thing she saw was Alexander’s blue eyes, gazing back at her before everything went black.

  “I should never have taken it.” Erebus’s voice seemed to fill everything, but it was different in this form, emptier somehow.

  Fia steadied her breathing as a roaring rushing filled her head. They were moving, fast, but through what, Fia couldn’t tell; everything was shadow as he swarmed around her. “It doesn’t matter now,” she said softly.

  “Maybe it does. Maybe it was meant to happen this way.” His shadows pulled back a little, and through a thin layer of darkness, Fia saw that they were surrounded by stars and clouds of colours, like dust and rainbows and the Northern Lights spread across a starry sky. Her breath snagged in her throat. The colours seemed to bend and flex. One moment they were vibrant, the next they were dull, the next they were nothing, then vibrant again. There was no sound save for the roaring inside her, no temperature as far as she could tell, just a stillness, an absence, an abundance all at once. It was breathtaking, and as she tried to calm her breathing, she told herself she would get to tell Alexander every tiny detail, somehow. It was the only thing holding her together.

  They were going further, higher, deeper, closer to the sun. Fia could feel it, could feel something beginning to build inside her as clouds of magenta and aquamarine rushed past. Only it wasn’t the clouds that were moving, it was them.

  “We’re getting closer,” Erebus said.

  She thought again of the museum in Denmark—of the statue of the journey of the sun across the sky and all it took to get it there, and if she ever went back, she’d add a cloud of darkness to it with the wings of an angel. She thought of all the lives lost to get her here, for this moment as the pressure within her seemed to build. It was Lorn’s power, entwining with hers, two halves of a whole.

  She felt the moment their magic settled into each other, the moment that power became a searing heat within her, seeking a release. Pain coursed through her body, and she felt Erebus’s shadows thicken around her—protecting her. But he couldn’t save her from this. She’d known it for a while now. She wouldn’t be going back. Not this time. The heat pressed at her skin from the inside out. Even if she’d wanted to cry out, she couldn’t make a sound, it was as if her body was no longer her own.

  It began to pour from her then. Light, so much bright white light, she felt it seeping through every pore, every strand of hair. The roaring in her head was so loud, Erebus might have been saying something, but she couldn’t hear what it was, couldn’t focus on anything but the pain slicing through her.

  She let it go, let it all push and pour and tear from her, her back arching as the light and power and force left her. The force of a sun.

  And then the roaring in her head stopped, and an explosion tore through everything. The third sun. Fia trembled as the last of the magic left her, felt the blazing heat of the sun through Erebus’s shadows, felt euphoric. Light. Like she was light itself.

  The weight of Lorn’s magic had left her. Maybe even her own. She was too giddy to care. It was beautiful, and she closed her eyes as the rays washed softly over her, safely enveloped in Erebus’s shadows, the quiet of the aether piercing everything.

  A stretched groan shattered her calm. “I’m sorry, Fia.” Erebus’s voice was small, weak. “I held on as long as I could.”

  Cracks began to appear in Erebus’s ethereal form. Rays of burning light pierced through to Fia’s arms and she cried out in pain. She felt Erebus’s grip on her loosen. No. The power of the sun was too much for him. More fissures split open and sparks of agony hissed along Fia’s arms, her legs, her torso. He was dying. He’d given up his physical form for this. Had he known all along?

  His cocoon of darkness slowly peeled away from her, sunlight attacking her from every angle. In
the back of her mind, sluggish like she was waking from a dream, the thought occurred to her: if he died, she would die too. But that didn’t bother her—she’d already accepted her fate. What bothered her was that he had just got his life back after all this time, and now he was going to lose it. What bothered her was that this was his greatest fear, and he was facing it. Because of her. It wasn’t fair. None of it was. Yet still, the dark cloak lifted.

  Fia reached out a hand in the aether for the darkness that was falling away from her, for him. “Don’t let go, I’ve got you,” she pleaded, a sob breaking her words.

  “It’ll be okay,” she heard him whisper. But it was too late.

  The last remnants of him misted through her fingertips into nothing.

  She tried to call out his name, but her voice was choked and raw. The sun poured down on her, burning her skin and her hair and her eyes until all she could see were dotted lights in front of her. But she wouldn’t shield her face, she wouldn’t look away from the last speck of black dust that was Erebus. In another life, we could have been friends. A sob broke free for him, and for her. The pain was unbearable. Everything was burning, and she had no flame left to summon after expending every last drop of her power.

  He’d given his life for her. Given in to his greatest fear, for her. For Ohinyan. For Terah. She tried calling his name again and instead felt a warm trickle down her chin. She knew without seeing that it would be blood. She wouldn’t see it anyway, she didn’t think she could see anything, ever again, for however long that might be. Not long, now.

  Dying. The word echoed in her thoughts. She was dying, and a cool calm washed over her as something flew towards her in the aether. At first, she thought it was golden, but everything—everything that was really nothing, in the aether—was golden; she couldn’t discern colours. It was ablaze, whatever it was, as it flew closer, and Fia realised she was falling.