“He wasn’t going to let the phoenixes stop him from becoming immortal. Now that he understood how it could be achieved, he’d do anything to get it. He would begin with himself, and when that worked, he swore he would do the same for everyone else. In the meantime, he would reincarnate everyone, exchanging their souls with new souls. Everyone would perpetually reincarnate; no one else would be born because he could only reincarnate you.”
Sam jerked his head up and stared at me. Stef shot me a warning look. But before anyone could ask, I pressed on.
“Janan said the key to the phoenixes’ immortality was a death of their own making. After everyone was secured in chains, tied to him forever, he took the knife he’d used to harm the phoenix, still with its golden blood on the blade, and plunged it into his own chest. He shed his mortal form and became part of the tower, which was already half-alive with phoenix magic. And everyone inside the tower was bound to Janan.
“They reappeared outside the prison wall as adults, with no memory of what had just happened. Only Meuric remembered. He was meant to encourage people to worship Janan and prepare for Janan’s return. When they went inside the prison wall again, there were houses everywhere. The prison had been transformed into a city.”
Whit frowned. “But I thought there was a big fight over who would live in the city. . . .”
I nodded. “There might have been. I imagine everything was chaotic and strange then. The book doesn’t go into detail about that.”
“What happened to the others?” Sam asked. “The people Janan took to find the phoenix.”
I glanced at Cris, at the other sylph hovering around the cave with us. Several of them moaned and curled in on themselves.
“No.” Whit shook his head. “That’s not possible. Because Cris—”
“It’s the truth.” I raised an eyebrow at the sylph, and several of them nodded, odd little twitches. “What happened with Cris was unprecedented, but the others were cursed by phoenixes. They repented. They wanted forgiveness. Phoenixes didn’t trust them exactly, but they’d seen what Janan was trying to do. They gave the prisoners a chance at redemption.
“They had every prisoner do as Janan had done. They drove their own weapons into their chests—the weapons still covered in phoenix blood. The prisoners shed their mortal forms, but they had no one bound to them, no physical ties to their towers. They soon emerged as sylph: bodiless souls of shadow and fire.”
“That doesn’t sound like a chance at redemption,” Whit muttered.
“Redemption comes when they stop Janan from ascending.”
“How were they expected to do that?” Stef sounded indignant. “They were just going along with what Janan ordered. It could have been any of us he’d dragged along. Any of us—” Her voice broke, and she balled in on herself. Sam leaned over to hug her, and everyone was quiet for a minute.
“What about Cris?” Whit’s voice was hoarse.
I couldn’t look at the sylph next to me. “He was trapped like this because he performed the same ritual the others had. None of us realized what would happen after.”
Cris murmured a song, as if reminding me his plight wasn’t my fault, but . . . I could have done something. I could have made him wait. I could have insisted.
I should have.
Sam’s tone was all caution. “Earlier, you said Janan talked about exchanging souls. Does that mean we knew?” He faced me, expression torn.
He wasn’t supposed to figure it out.
“Did we know, Ana?” Sam’s voice dipped low and dangerous. “How long have you known that we agreed to the exchange? How long have you known we agreed to let newsouls be eaten so we could live forever? How long have you been hiding it from me?” There, at the end, the words caught and grief showed through.
I whispered, “Since Stef, Cris, and I were in the temple.”
He turned to Stef, naked betrayal in his posture. “You knew, too?”
She gave a single nod.
Without another word, Sam got up and left.
14 BETRAYAL
I STARTED TO go after Sam, but Stef shook her head. “Give him some time.”
My knees hit my sleeping bag and I slumped over the notebook, pages still open and glaring with the truth. He wasn’t supposed to know. Not ever. “How long?”
Stef shrugged and seemed to struggle for words as Whit frowned and looked like he wanted to follow Sam outside.
“I didn’t want anyone to feel guilty.” It was the truth, but my words were hollow, because there was another, stronger truth: I hadn’t wanted to deal with their guilt and grief. Already, the stress of what we had to do was overwhelming. “Besides, I know why you made the decision. I understand.”
Whit scowled up at me. “Why?”
“You were scared.” I couldn’t raise my voice above a whisper. “You were in a strange and frightening land, and Janan offered you a way to come back if you died.”
“Many of us were more afraid of Janan than we were the rest of the world,” Stef added quietly. “He’d angered phoenixes. He’d done something so huge that phoenixes stepped in to punish him. Whether or not we knew the truth of what happened, we knew it had to be bigger than we were, and that meant Janan was, too. So we agreed because it seemed like he could protect us or destroy us. We made a decision based on fear.”
“And it seemed like newsouls would never even know what they missed.” I tried not to think about the non-voice I’d heard in the temple once, or the weepers: newsouls.
“It doesn’t matter if they didn’t know what they were missing,” Whit said. “We knew. We knew what Janan would do to them. We made that decision.”
Awkward silence filled the cave, and after a while, Whit went out after Sam, a spare coat slung over his arm.
Stef glared at me. “If you’re going to be so bad at keeping secrets, you need to figure out a more delicate way of revealing them.” She turned away and bent over her SED.
Now everyone was angry with me. Stef, because I’d told the others, and Sam and Whit because I hadn’t told them before. I probably deserved to be left alone.
But even as I leaned my forehead on my knees, Cris curled up next to me, a companionable warmth.
“Thanks,” I mumbled, and he gave a quiet hum. I hated Sam being mad at me, but what I had to do next would make it worse.
With a tired sigh, I grabbed my SED and shifted to the map, trying to work out time and distances.
After an hour, Sam and Whit returned to the cave. Stef and I both looked up expectantly.
“Ana,” Sam started, but I stood and shook my head.
“You might as well just sit and listen to what I have to say. None of you are going to like it.”
Sam’s dark eyes narrowed, but he leaned against the wall, next to Whit. Stef gave me a wary look, and Cris lingered in the corner, invisible among the shadows.
I begged my voice not to shake. “This is my plan. It’s going to sound rash, but unless any of you have better ideas, it’s the only plan we’ve got.” Dread coiled in my stomach as my friends’ expressions grew more and more skeptical. “We get the dragons to help us.”
Sam turned ash pale. Stef glared like she was ready to kill me, while Whit just looked stricken and like he hoped maybe this was a joke.
If only that were true.
Cris gave a small, disbelieving trill. Everyone’s eyes darted toward him, but no one spoke. They just waited for me to explain myself.
“It sounds horrible, but hear me out. The dragons have—They might have—I read in the books—” The words tumbled from me, tripping and bumping one another. Everything came out in the wrong order.