"What do you mean?"
"She couldn't hear them when she left us," Lex said. "She'd shut them out."
Bala rubbed her face in her hands, sighing at all the new information. "Fucking curses," she uttered before slapping her hands to her knees. “Why am I here?”
“She wants to talk to you,” Nadir answered.
“About what?”
“About the nature of her arriving in Man’s hands,” Nadir said.
Bala felt the warmth drain from her face as she thought of the group of rebels that had made their way to her home. “She met them, didn’t she?”
“I don’t know the details,” Nadir sighed.
Bala cursed her luck under her breath. “How do we see her?”
“You’ll come with me to market in the morning. Look as my assistant.” He stood from the ground, wincing as he grabbed his side. “Nyssa asked that you wear a dress and cloak. To blend in.”
“Excuse me?” Bala balked.
“I told her you wouldn’t like it," he muttered. "There's something else too."
Lex and Bala both straightened. "Are you planning on keeping us in suspense a little longer?"
Nadir glared at Bala. "She has fire."
The statement staled between them.
"Sorry, what?" Lex asked.
Nadir rubbed his neck in his hands. "She has fire. Similar to her brother's but different. I asked Lovi about it. He thinks because Arbina marked them at the same time that she may have given that power to Nyssa as well."
"Nyssa has never shown any—“
"She's also never been pushed to her limits and felt as scared as she has these last few weeks," Nadir cut in. "I think her core latched onto the last source of power it could find to try and protect her once she pushed out the creatures. She said the day she ran away, she had another attack on the beach, and it manifested around her." His gaze flickered between them, and he hung his head. "She doesn't know how to control it. It rises like the Prince's does. As ash and black streaks on her skin. But her eyes are not black. Her eyes are molten fire. And the flames... They’re black and amber."
Bala clutched the edge of the chair as she sat up, gaze staring at the ground, her chest stilling with the news. "Shadow fire," she uttered breathlessly.
"You've heard of it?" Nadir asked.
"I saw a story of one of the past kings to have a fire like that. The first Promised King, when they weren't even kings yet. When Arbina used to mark her children with the Sun in the room with her to show off."
"How is it I do not know this?" Nadir asked.
"Probably because I only saw it when Draven and I went to the scroll cave beneath Lake Oriens a couple years ago," Bala answered.
"I knew it," Nadir declared. "That's where he found that damn scroll."
"That's neither here nor there," Bala said as she stood. "But what it did to that King... He could walk in shadows. Burn things with a flinch of his finger. And he was well practiced with it."
"Nyssa met the phoenix two days before she left," Lex interjected then.
Nadir and Bala both turned. Lex's gaze met theirs, her arms hugging her chest.
"Lovi took her," Nadir remembered.
"She said she felt Aydra hugging her," Lex said.
