"We need a plan," she whispered, her voice rough. "Not quiet."
"Plans require foresight," I said. "And right now, Aria, I am blind. Since you woke, since the dream you do not remember, the future has become a fog."
She flinched. It was small, a tightening of the muscles around her eyes, but to me, it was a shout.
"I told you," she said, her voice tight. "It was just a nightmare."
"Nightmares do not erase timelines," I pressed gently. "You are the center of the web now. If you are clouded, I am clouded. I need to know what you felt. What you saw. If we connect?—"
"No."
The word was sharp, a barrier slammer down. She looked up at me then, and the fear in her eyes wasn't for the future; it was for me. For what I might see.
"I don't want to know," she said, her voice trembling. "I don't want you to look at me and see... glass jars. Or monsters. Or a future where I'm just a vessel for someone else's legacy."
I flinched this time. The memory of my earlier vision, the pregnancy, the wrongness of it, hung between us like toxic smoke. I had hurt her with that truth. I had taken her body, which she had just reclaimed from the Council, and told her it was still a battlefield.
"I apologize," I said, the words heavy with my own centuries of regret. "I act as a lens, Aria. Sometimes I forget that the light I refract can burn."
She looked away, picking at a loose thread. "It's not your fault. It's just…” She let out a large breath before rushing onward, “I can't handle any more destiny right now, Elias. I'm full. I'm overflowing with destiny. If you tell me one more thing about what the Fates have in store for me, I think I'll scream until the roof comes down again."
I watched her. I saw the way her hand trembled. I saw the way she favored her left side, where the phantom pain of Ellie's knife likely still lingered. I saw the bruises on her wrists from Kaelen's grip when he froze, the scrapes on her cheek from the tunnel collapse.
She was in ruins. Beautiful, defiant ruins. And I was trying to read the graffiti on the walls instead of shoring up the foundation.
"Very well," I said, shifting my approach. "No futures, no prophecies, and no grand designs."
"Then what?" she asked warily.
"Healing," I said.
I moved around the fire, closing the distance between us. She tensed, but she didn't scramble away. I stopped a foot from her, close enough to smell the salt and stale air clinging to her skin, close enough to feel the fever-heat radiating from her exhaustion.
"You are in pain," I observed. "Your body is knitting itself back together, but the process is slow. The residue of the magic... It’s acidic. It eats at the nerves."
"I'm fine," she lied automatically.
"You are holding your breath to keep your ribs from aching," I countered. "Your hands are shaking because your nervoussystem is misfiring. You channeled the power of four demigods, Aria. You’re bruised in places that do not have names."
She slumped slightly; the fight drained out of her. "It hurts," she admitted, a whisper so quiet I almost missed it. "Everything hurts. My bones feel like they're too big for my skin."
"I can help," I said. "The Phoenix isn't just about rebirth from ashes. It is about the restoration of the form. I can burn the pain away. I can knit the fraying edges of your spirit."
She looked at me, skepticism warring with desperate need. "Like when you healed my shoulder? In the tower?"
"Deeper," I said. "That was emergency triage. This... this would be restoration."
"What's the catch?" she asked.
I smiled, a sad, small thing. She was learning. "There is always a price for magic. You know this. Energy cannot be created, only transferred."
"So what do you need?" she asked. "My blood? My shadow?"
"Tears," I said softly.
She blinked. "Tears?"
"Phoenix healing requires a catalyst of pure emotion," I explained, my voice dropping into the cadence of an old song I couldn't quite remember the lyrics to. "Water from the source of grief or joy. The legends say a phoenix's tears can cure any wound, even death."
