And then he was running toward her, and the flames were cackling, waiting, but he tore through them as if they were nothing but air. He grabbed her hand, pulled her to him. She gasped. The inferno shrieked and fell inward to attack the intruder, the one who disturbed its wake. And Elena felt its primal hunger to tear into Leo’s flesh, to burn his skin down to his bones and then his bones to smoke. She saw what he would become. A pile of char, a heap of soot.
“No!” she cried, and she swung Leo behind her and swept her hand. The flames died with a hiss, turning to ash that rained into her eyes.
Behind her, Leo gasped. When she turned to him, he pulled her into a tight embrace, whispering.
She had not heard him over the song of the flames, but now, in its aftermath, she heard him.
“Don’t,” he choked. “Don’t turn into her.”
They gave her stronger medicine afterward, and Elena drifted between dreams of burning flesh and dying women. She awoke in fits, slick with sweat, and Diya would place a cold towel on her head and hush her back to sleep.
When her fever finally broke, Elena was alone. She sat up slowly. They had brought her into unused guest chambers. A mirror stood across from the bed.
Her hair was a wild tangle. Dark rings circled her eyes, her lips pale and flaking. Her skin still smelled like the burning banyan leaves.
With a groan, she stood. The floor felt cool, and her toes curled. She heard a soft knock as the door opened.
“You’re awake,” Leo said, entering the chamber. He hesitated, his voice small in a way she had never heard before. “Should I call for tea?”
Slowly, she nodded.
He turned and whispered to someone outside, but she could not see who. Her father closed the door and gestured toward the seating area.
She sank down, resting her head against the back of her chair.
“How do you feel?”
“Like I’ve been dragged through the desert,” she croaked.
Diya arrived carrying a pot of tea and glazed cups. Leo poured the tea, his hands slightly shaking, and then handed it to her. She held it close to her chest but did not drink.
“Try it,” he encouraged. “It’s a gift from the Verani king.”
“I thought he wasn’t coming to the coronation festivities,” she said.
“He wants to pay tribute,” he said, his eyes meeting hers over his cup, “to the Burning Queen.”
Elena stiffened at the name. “Is that what they’re calling me?”
“The servants and the guards, yes, but the name will spread,” her father said. “Such names tend to.”
She could not tell if he was admonishing her, and she was too fatigued to care. Her father avoided her gaze. She waited for him to speak, but he remained quiet. An awkward, heavy silence sat between them. Brutal and familiar, full of all the unsaid things she wished she could tell him.
The ache in her chest grew more acute, and she saw it grow in him too. In the way his shoulders slumped, the way he fidgeted—he never fidgeted—pinching the skin between his thumb and finger. Leo reached for his cup, but he did not speak. She willed him to. Wished for him to ask—just ask. But he avoided her eyes, and for the first time, Elena did not see the man she feared and revered; she saw a broken man full of pain.
Pain that she had inflicted, knowingly.
All I wanted was for you to ask, she thought. But as her father sat before her, unable to even meet her eyes, Elena realized something else.
Grief was a double-edged sword from which they both drew blood. And they had wielded it against each other so callously. She had wounded him by her betrayal; he had punished her by denying her birthright. And at some point, they had gone too far, so that now, in their home that smelled faintly of smoke, they regarded each other like strangers.
And Phoenix Above was she tired of it.
Leo had always taught her to draw out silences. To make the other person uncomfortable, afraid. But silence was also a way to mask vulnerability. It took courage to make the first move.
Elena reached over and placed her hands on top of her father’s. And finally, finally, Leo looked up and met her eyes.
“I thought you would leap into the flames too,” he said, and at the sound of his voice cracking, at the enormity of his admission, her heart welled.
