“There’s more,” she says. “About how Phoenix found me.”
My chest tightens. I nod for her to go on, even though I’m not sure I’m ready for it.
“He didn’t know who I was at first,” she says quietly. “But someone else did. A boy. One of his fighters.” I freeze. She looks up at me, eyes swimming. “He goes by Felix now. But that’s not his name.” Her voice trembles. “It’s Jared.”
The name punches through me, a sledgehammer to the sternum. My throat locks. I see him, flashes of bare feet on dusty floors, a gap-toothed grin, the way he used to tug on my sleeve, believing I could fix anything.
“He started fighting in Phoenix’s circuit. I have no idea long he’s been doing it, but he’s good. Scary good. Phoenix noticed. Asked questions. Jared told him everything. About me, you, about the night everything went to hell. Phoenix helped him get clean too. It nearly broke him. But Phoenix pulled him back.”
I try to speak, but there’s nothing but the sound of my pulse crashing through my ears. Then I hear it. Footsteps. Soft. Sure.
I turn toward the sound as Phoenix steps toward the adjacent doorway, his expression unreadable. He doesn’t speak. Not yet. Just meets my gaze with something heavy and knowing.
“I’ll get him,” Phoenix says quietly, almost an afterthought, like this isn’t the earth shifting under my feet. “He’s in the back. Was helping break down the ring.”
Helping. Working. He’s here.
A breath escapes me. Half a laugh, half a sob. I brace my hand against the wall. My pulse is a war drum in my chest. Every piece of me pulling toward the next room, gravity inverted.
Jared. Felix. Alive.
“I need to see him,” I whisper.
Phoenix nods once and turns toward the back hallway. He slips out of the room, smoke in human form, and the silence he leaves behind is thick enough to choke on.
Amelia stands across from me, close but not close enough. Her arms are crossed over her chest, but it’s not defensiveness, it’s containment. If she lets go, the years will spill out all at once. There’s a scar near her collarbone I don’t remember, and something haunted in her eyes that wasn’t there the last time I saw her. Before everything went to hell.
And still, she’s her. My baby sister. Alive. I’m barely breathing.
Candace hasn’t said a word beside me. She’s been steady this whole damn time—through the fight, through Phoenix’s reveal—but I can feel the tension thrumming off her, a wire pulled tight. She’s not scared. She’s ready. For whatever this is. For whoever this is.
Her fingers still tap faintly against her thigh in a quiet rhythm. I curl my hand around hers, grounding myself.
“I should’ve done this earlier,” I say, voice low, thick with everything I haven’t processed. “Amelia… this is Candace.”
Amelia turns to her. Her face softens, but her eyes sharpen, taking Candace in with the focus of someone solving a puzzle halfway through. There’s something unspoken that passes between them, something I’m not sure how to explain, but I feel it in the shift of Candace’s shoulders. Not fear. Not uncertainty. Respect.
“She’s the reason I made it here,” I tell Amelia. “I’d be buried under it all if it weren’t for her.”
Candace shoots me a look, the kind that says I’m overselling it. I’m not.
Amelia smiles faintly and steps closer. “You’ve got good taste, Kai.”
Candace snorts under her breath, but I feel her fingers tighten in mine.
“I can see it,” Amelia goes on, nodding as though confirming something to herself. “You look at her like you’d set the world on fire if it ever laid a hand on her.”
I glance at Candace. “I would.” She gives me a quiet, almost-shy smile, one that still knocks the air from my lungs.
“Thanks for taking care of him,” Amelia says, shifting her attention back to her. “He always needed someone to balance out all that brooding alpha energy.”
Candace grins. “I try to remind him he’s not invincible. Doesn’t always work.”
“No,” Amelia murmurs, eyes soft. “But it’s the trying that matters.”
She looks back at me, and for the first time since I saw her, there’s no fear in her face. Just… light. The kind that says she’s starting to believe this isn’t a dream. That she’s seeing her brother clearly and realizing we both made it out of the fire.
For the first time in years, I feel something new blooming in my chest. Hope. Footsteps echo down the hall before the door eases open again.
