“Although, I wonder, did the baby whose body you stole at conception even have the chance to gain a soul? Or like Ammit here,” he gestures to the blonde woman backing up to the very edge of the circle, shaking her head like she wants no part in whatever this is, “did you just kick it out so you can wear the flesh suit? Don’t they have a saying here about stealing candy from a baby? You stole the baby’sbody, so what does that makeyou?”
“Shut up!” Phoenix says, hands shoving against her ears. “I didn’t know! I didn’t understand about humans. I just felt the warmth! I just wanted to be part of the warmth; I was so cold! I was so, so cold.”
A tear slips out of Phoenix’s eyes and I’m through with my father’s manipulations. Burn me to a crisp on the spot if he will.
I step in front of Phoenix to block him from her. “Stop it!”
“And you. The rebellious little whelp.” My father’s skewering gaze lands on me, and I feel it like a knife slicing through my sternum. “The little lonely boy who only ever wanted his big brothers to see him and let him be a part of things. Always sohungryfor attention and love.”
“You starved me of it intentionally.”
“I was making you a better weapon,” my father bites out. “I was honing you for obedience.”
“I never wanted to be your tool of destruction!”
My father shakes his head. “Such a disappointment. A flaw I will fix with your incoming brethren. With your wife’s blood and your angelic ancestry, the blood compulsion I will lay upon them will be total and complete. I will be true god to spirit and human alike. A perfect culmination of the history of this world and all others coming into a perfect harmony.”
“So you can perfect your machine of destruction?” I sputter in disgust. Him talking about harmony is the biggest joke I’ve ever heard. “How is that harmony?”
But for the first time since the sacking of Rome, I see a smile of peace and satisfaction on my father’s face. “It will be glorious. I will raze this so-calledearthto ashes. Then let empires rise again, and right as these willful, foolish humans believe the earth is theirs to conquer and rule, my army will cull again. It will be the most perfect circle of my everlasting dominion of this world and all others we can discover. “
“Dominion by destruction?” I bite out. “You were the only monster the whole time. You made us believe it was us, but really, it was just you.”
“We’ll never help you,” Phoenix says, squeezing my hand back hard and stepping up beside me. As if the two of us are anything against a power as mighty as my father, when we’re still caught in his trap.
“Don’t you see?” My father laughs. “Today is your lucky day. Today both of you little desperate beasts can have everything you wanted but could never have. Just look.”
He points behind us. Golden runes light up beneath our feet, and Phoenix gasps.
“Layden, look!” Her voice sounds full of wonder.
I don’t want to look. I know the moment I do, my father gets what he wants. She grabs my hand, and I want to yank her away. To warn her of the danger.
But her voice is so insistent when she cries, “Layden!”
In spite of myself, I turn.
For a moment, I see it. The little house at the end of the cul-de-sac. It couldn’t be more perfect. Sea-foam green with white shutters and a white picket fence. The grass is impossibly green, and the sky impossibly blue.
“Oh, Layden, I couldn’t be happier,” Phoenix says from beside me in the vision. I look over, and she’s in her wedding dress.
Except it’s the way it ought to have been. She’s beaming up at me. She’s so beautiful, and so happy. Of course she’s happy. We’ve just come home from our wedding and now we get to begin our wonderful life together.
“I never even dreamed it could be so perfect,” she cries, grabbing my hand to drag me forwards across the grass. “Come inside with me!”
And I want to. God, how I want to. She’s smiling at me like that, open and free and happy. She’s never looked at me like that before.
I can’t help laughing and running to catch up. Then surprising her by grabbing her around the waist and lifting her in my arms. She giggles with joy as she tosses her arms around my neck. I’ve never heard her so happy andlight, like all the heavy burdens she usually carries are totally gone.
Life starts here. There’s only now. This moment.
I have everything I ever wanted—her.
The love of my life, in my arms.
Joy like I’ve never felt before wells up in my chest and I drop her back down to the ground. But I still cling to her, because suddenly, a shot of dread pierces the joy and sunshine and perfection of the moment.
Because something feels wrong. The edges of the vision shimmer slightly. The colors are too bright. Phoenix’s laugh sounds just slightly off-pitch. Manic. Like she desperately wants this to be true, too, but feels the off-ness of it.
