When you dream in someone else’s language, you’ve been sleeping too close to a nymph. They dream in all the tongues of everyone they’ve ever tasted. The sharing goes both ways.
Little Phoenix.
The world narrowed to the Oracle’s serene face, to the knowing curve of her mouth, to the casual way she’d just shattered the secret I’d bled to protect for twenty-seven years.
She turned and walked back toward the cottage, her raven spreading its wings once for balance, her steps sure despite the blindfold, despite the uneven ground. As if she hadn’t just reached into my chest and pulled out the truth Gran had carved from my flesh as a child.
I stood frozen at the clearing’s edge.
Someone else knew.
The thought circled like a vulture.
Was I already dead?
Someone elseknewwho I was. What I would become. The monster sleeping inside, waiting for the moment fire would consume everything.
But... the Oracle also knew how to break the blood oath.
Which meant two impossible things were suddenly, terrifyingly possible.
We would find Vitoria in Dyssara. The Oracle wouldn’t come if the path led nowhere, if the city was empty ruins or a trap waiting to spring. She’d seen something. Knew something. Had agreed to follow us into the Ash because a thread of fate led there.
And the oath could be broken.
We didn’t have to kill Vitoria. Didn’t have to choose between her life and ours. There was another way, even if I didn’t understand it yet, even if the Oracle’s cryptic words raised more questions than answers.
What did the Oracle really know?
Why would she help me break an oath meant to hunt the woman she thought had tried to kill her? Could the Oracle lie? OrhadVitoria done that? The poison? Unlike her. But I couldn’t get past the blades. If it were all a setup, how did they get those daggers? If Vitoria was free, and in a place proven by the marks on her weapons, had she killed Eda Mire?
If it were true, why would Aureth help me? Unless she’d seen past Vitoria’s capture.
Seen me burning.
The prophecy had always been absolute. Iwouldbecome the Phoenix, would ignite. I’d turn this world to ash and cinder and screaming. That’s what having the mark meant, what it had always meant, no matter how desperately we’d tried to carve it away.
What if the Oracle was helping me reach that moment?
What if breaking the oath, finding Vitoria, walking this path north into the unknown... what if it all led exactly where it was supposed to? To the place where I stopped running. Where I stopped hiding. Where the fire in my blood finally won, and I became everything they’d been right to fear.
I didn’t want to be that monster.
Didn’t want to stand in the ruins of everything I loved and know that my hands built the pyre. That my magic lit the match. That I destroyed everything trying to save one person.
The cottage door opened. Pip flew out, her wings catching the fading light. She didn’t call to me. Just waited, small and patient. Brave. Inevitable.
I forced my feet to move. One step. Another. The distance between the tree line and the porch felt infinite, each step heavy with the weight of secrets and fear and the terrible certainty that I was walking toward something I couldn’t stop.
Timber lifted his massive head as I climbed the decaying steps, yellow eyes tracking my approach with the unsettling intelligence all cinderhowls possessed.
I pulled the small strip of dried meat from my pocket. The kind I kept for Silas when he was being particularly difficult or when I needed him to forgive me for something that hardly needed forgiving.
Timber’s nose twitched. He didn’t lunge or snap. Just leaned forward and took the offering gently from my palm, his teeth never once grazing my skin. I knelt beside him, letting my hand rest against his black fur. It was softer than I remembered, warm, alive in ways that contradicted everything people were taught about creatures pulled from the Ash.
“There are good people in the world,” I whispered. “Not many. But enough. Enough to matter. Enough worth protecting.”
“There are,” Pip whispered, though she stayed close to the door.
