"Oh," Stellan breathes, his eyes widening. "Oh, that's..."
"Yeah," I agree, feeling the balance settling into my bones in a way that's both foreign and perfectly right. For the first time since I died, the constant pull of the death realm eases. "That's what I thought."
I keep hold of his hand. The contact is comfortable now, neither burning nor freezing but perfectly balanced. I guide him to sit on one of the courtyard benches. My body protests the movement, exhaustion making my limbs heavy, but I push through it.
"Now. Let's talk about control through opposition."
I settle onto the bench beside Stellan, maintaining the hand contact because it's helping stabilize his wild fire. "You're afraid of your fire, which means you're constantly fighting it. But fire isn't your enemy, Stellan. It's you. It's part of you. And the more you fight it, the more it fights back."
Stellan slumps against the bench, exhaustion written in every line of his body. "I know that. Logically, I know. But you don't understand what it's like, Harlow." His voice breaks on the words, and old trauma wraps around him like chains. "The fire doesn't just flare up—it consumes everything. I've destroyed so much. Furniture. Rooms. Once I nearly burned down our entire house while my family was sleeping inside."
This is the real issue. Not lack of control, but lack of acceptance. Stellan is trying to master something he fundamentally hates about himself.
"But you didn't," I say quietly. "You stopped it."
"Barely. And my father..." Stellan's jaw tightens, pain and bitterness warring on his face. "He owns cigar shops. His whole life is built around controlled fire. Precise flames. And his son can't even exist without accidentally setting things ablaze." He laughs, but there's no humor in it. "Do you know what it's like to see disappointment in your father's eyes every single day? To know that no matter what you do, you'll never be anything but a liability to him? A danger?"
I pause, gathering my own painful memories. The pool. The drowning. The cold water filling my lungs. Skye screaming my name from the edge, unable to reach me in time. The moment everything went dark and then something else. Something in between.
"I know what it's like to become something your family can't accept," I say, my voice rougher than I intend. "I know what it's like to look at the people you love and see fear where there used to be warmth."
Stellan's eyes meet mine, orange and gray-blue mixing with my pale blue-white. Two boys who became something their families couldn't love. Two people carrying the weight of what they are.
"How do you deal with it?" he asks. "The fear? The guilt?" I squeeze his hand, feeling our essences pulse in sync through the contact. "I don't. I just exist anyway. I decided that if I got a second chance, even if I didn't ask for it, even if I don't understand it, I'm going to use it. I'm going to live, or whatever this is I'm doing, as fully as I can."
I reach out with my free hand and touch his chest, right over his heart. The heat radiates through his shirt, and the warmth should hurt, but balanced by my death-cold it just feels right. "You're not a monster, Stellan. You're just rare. You're special. You're a phoenix, and that means death isn't the end for you. It's just transformation."
My body sways slightly, exhaustion catching up with me, but I force myself to stay focused. "The things your fire destroyed? They're just things. And your father's disappointment? That's his failure, not yours. You were a child who didn't know what he was. You still don't fully know. None of us do. But that doesn't make you a monster. You are an incredible, powerful, beautiful creature you're meant to be."
Stellan's eyes are wet, tears forming and immediately evaporating before they can fall, turned to steam by his heat. "You think I'm beautiful?"
The question is so vulnerable, that something in my chest clenches in ways that shouldn't be possible for someone who's technically dead. "I think you're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Especially when you stop being afraid and let your fire show. When you transformed into the phoenix that first time, I couldn't breathe. Not because I was scared, but because you were so stunning I forgot how."
I pull him closer, until our foreheads touch, ice and fire, death and life, cold and heat finding perfect balance in the space between us. My body shivers despite the warmth, another wave of exhaustion hitting me, but I don't pull away.
"Let me help you find the balance. Let me be your anchor. And maybe you can be mine too."
Because that's what I realize in this moment. I've been existing, surviving, getting through each day, but I haven't been living. Not really. Not until these five mates came into my death-touched existence and reminded me what warmth feels like.
We spend the rest of the afternoon training, and it's different from Jade's method. Where Jade used passion and desire to draw out the fire, I use calm and meditation. We sit together on the bench, hands clasped in perfect balance, and I teach Stellan to visualize his fire not as a wild thing that needs to be caged, but as a river that needs to be channeled.
"Feel it flowing through you," I murmur, my voice low and steady. "Not fighting it, not forcing it. Just letting it move naturally, like water finding its path."
Stellan closes his eyes, his breathing evening out. The fire around him shifts, becoming less chaotic, more controlled. Progress.
We practice temperature regulation next. Stellan heating up while I cool him down, finding the perfect middle ground where he's warm but not burning, powerful but not destructive. Every time he gets too hot, I pull him back with my death-cold. Every time I start phasing too far into death realm, his warmth anchors me to life.
It's a dance, a balance, a give and take that feels more intimate than it probably should.
"Now emotional control," I say, steeling myself for what comes next. "I need to try to trigger your anger. Make you feel things that might make the fire explode. And you need to use our connection to pull back before it does."
Stellan's eyes snap open, concern written across his features. "Are you sure? What if I hurt you?"
"You won't." I'm more certain of that than anything else. "Our essences balance each other. As long as we're touching, you physically can't burn me. The worst that happens is we both get uncomfortable."
He nods slowly, trusting me despite his fear.
I start gentle. Making cutting comments about his control, pushing buttons, using my death-touch to send uncomfortable chills through our connection. Stellan's fire surges in response, orange bleeding into his irises, heat building around us. But before it can explode, I squeeze his hand, and he grabs onto our connection like a lifeline.
