“And Sabra?” I ask.
This time, Phoenix’s smile is genuine. “She’s good. Really good, actually. Being freed from the blood slavery was like... she said it was like waking up from a nightmare that had been going on for years. We’ve been talking. Really talking, for the first time since we were teenagers. Having her mom back helps of course.She’s just so… happy and relieved. She can have a life now. They both can. Even if it’s weird that the body her mom is in is like… basically the same age as her.”
“I’m so glad for them,” I tell her.
She bumps her shoulder against mine. “Me too.”
We sit in comfortable silence for a while. I can hear the sounds of the city outside—cars, voices, the general hum of life continuing on. It’s so different from the forest where I spent two hundred years alone. So different from the cold isolation I knew before Phoenix found me.
“Can I ask you something?” Phoenix says eventually.
“Anything.”
“When you were creating those runes—the ones that anchored you to this world—what were you thinking about?”
I turn to look at her. She’s not meeting my eyes, focused very intently on her coffee mug.
“You,” I tell her honestly. “I was thinking about you.”
She does look at me then. “Just me?”
“Just you,” I confirm. “You’re the reason I want to stay in this world. You’re what makes it worth being here.”
She sets down her coffee mug carefully. “That’s a lot of pressure to put on one person.”
“I don’t mean it like that,” I say quickly. “I’m not saying you’re responsible for my happiness. I’m saying you make me want to choose happiness. It’s just that I understood it and felt it for the first time because of you. There’s a difference.”
She’s quiet for a moment, processing that. Then she says, “I’m not good at this.”
“At what?”
“This.” She gestures between us. “Being vulnerable. Letting people in. I’ve spent my whole life keeping people at arm’s length because I was terrified they’d find out what I really am.”
“And now?” I ask.
“Now you know exactly what I am,” she says. “You’ve seen me at my absolute worst. You watched me open a hole to a realm of frozen darkness and nearly get pulled back into it.” She laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “You know what I did to get to this realm. And somehow you still look at me like I’m something precious.”
“Youaresomething precious,” I tell her.
“I’m a spirit who clawed her way into this world by making blood bargains that created vampires,” she says flatly. “I’m the crack in the barrier that almost let your father unleash an army of demons. I’m?—”
“You’re the woman who saved me when I was buried alive and half-mad,” I interrupt. “You’re the person who stood between me and my father even though you were terrified. You’re the one who figured out how to trap him when no one else could. You’re the Phoenix who rose from the ashes.”
She’s staring at me now, and I can see her eyes getting bright with more tears she won’t let fall.
“You see the good in me even when I can’t,” she says quietly.
“You see the good in me too,” I point out. “You always have.”
She reaches out and takes my hand. Her fingers are warm now, no longer the frozen cold they were three days ago.
“I want to try,” she says. “This thing between us. I want to try to make it work.”
My heart feels like it might burst out of my chest. “Really?”
“Really,” she confirms. “But you need to know—I’m going to be bad at it sometimes. I’m going to push you away when I get scared. I’m going to say mean things I don’t mean. I’m going to?—”
“Phoenix,” I interrupt gently. “I know. I’ve known you for years. I know what I’m signing up for.”
