And I was fucking done.
Done with the world, with the lies, with the manipulation and everything else that had stacked this moment against me.Fire erupted from my palms. Not controlled. Not careful. Just pure desperate survival instinct and rage that I’d suppressed my entire life.
The room ignited.
I felt Silas’s panic down our bond, felt him trying to reach me, felt the distance between us like a physical wound because he’d been searching for Calder. Wickett moved through the flames with a yell. He was relentless. I stepped away, but his blade found me anyway, sliding between my ribs.
Pain. White-hot and absolute. I collapsed, hand pressed to the wound, feeling blood pour between my fingers as he pulled the weapon free. Then stepped over me, walking toward Gran’s limp form with deliberate purpose.
“Two Phoenixes in one day.” He looked back at me, and his smile was the cruelest thing I’d ever seen. “What luck.”
His hands closed around Gran’s neck.
Snap.
The sound echoed in the burning room, louder than the fire, louder than my scream, louder than everything.
Rage.
Fury.
Every emotion I’d ever suppressed, every bit of fire I’d refused to acknowledge, every ounce of power I’d spent my life hiding...
It all came to life as Wickett vanished, leaving me to die.
The room became an inferno. Flames consumed everything, eating through stone and wood and air. I didn’t care. Couldn’t care. Could only crawl toward Gran’s body, toward Aureth’s broken form, toward the two women who’d died trying to save me.
My vision blurred. The wound in my stomach was too much. Too deep. I was losing too much blood, and the fire was burning through oxygen faster than I could breathe.
Silas. I held onto him down the bond. Held on to his panic and outrage and absolute determination to reach me.
Silas. Silas. Silas.
The world went dark around the edges.
A roar shook the building. Silas burst through the wall—not the door, the actual fucking wall, flames parting around him like he was made of the same fire as me.
And then he shifted.
Into the man I’d glimpsed again and again. The beautiful, dark-featured stranger who lingered at the edges of my vision. Who’d stood on the Nexus field and stared at me. Who’d led me through the Dyssaran alley to find answers about Calder. Not a stranger at all.
It’d always been Silas.
He lifted me from the floor like I weighed nothing, cradling me against his chest.
“Stay with me, little flame. Don’t give in.” His voice carried an accent I couldn’t place, ancient and warm despite everything burning around us. “Your burning would consume this world... and you. I won’t let that happen.”
Strong arms carried me from the building, flames parting around us like they recognized Silas as their master. The heat rolling off him wasn’t the kind that killed; it was the kind that held, coaxing every trembling part of me into stillness, as if my soul knew exactly how to respond to him.
I was drowning. Not in water. In grief. In the weight of everything I’d lost in the span of minutes—Gran, Aureth, whatever foolish hope I’d been clinging to that somehow this would all work out.
I fought the sharp pain in my throat as I tried not to cry. Tried to hold back the sobs that wanted to tear through me while my body was already tearing itself apart from the wound in my stomach.
I couldn’t fight it. A single tear broke free, sliding hot down my cheek.
Silas looked down at me, and those piercing blue eyes, now in a human face, held something I couldn’t name.
He was devastating. Bronze skin warm even in the firelight, highlighting sharp cheekbones and a strong jaw that could have been carved from stone by someone who understood exactly what beauty meant. Black hair fell across his forehead, slightly disheveled, framing features so striking they didn’t seem quite real. The kind of face that belonged in ancient legends, on gods and heroes, not kneeling in ash and blood holding a dying witch. Three vertical lines marked his neck, each ending in sharp points. The unmistakable brand of a demon.
