The phoenix was quiet now, watching everything, though I couldn’t guess its thoughts. I left Sam leaning against the bars while I searched for a latch. But if there were a way to open the cage, it was near Janan.
“Hey, phoenix.”
The black eyes turned on me.
“I want to free you.”
Its head tilted.
“But I need you to use the phoenix song. The one dragons are afraid of. Sam knows it, but he doesn’t know it. And his arm is hurt too badly to play my flute. I need your help.”
“You just go right up to anything and talk to it, don’t you?” Sam closed his eyes and smiled. “I love that about you.”
“Everything else has talked back so far.” I turned to the phoenix again. “I need your help. Please.”
The phoenix shook its head.
No?
Because it wouldn’t take a life and risk its own cycle of rebirth?
Then what was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to stop Janan? How was I supposed to ensure newsouls had a life?
I’d already failed the sylph.
Hadn’t I?
On the dais, Janan lifted his knife into the air. A man went flying backward, like the dragons had earlier. Janan was just adding to the chaos.
If he’d consumed the sylph when they entered the temple, were they already gone? Or slowly digesting as the newsouls had?
Fine. I’d try it myself. I lifted my flute and started to play.
The flute whispered a song, high and thin with my nervousness. But Sam looked up. The phoenix softened. And Janan spun, looking for the source of silver sound and defiance.
I began with four notes, hesitant but hopeful as the flute’s voice swelled into a familiar waltz. I played waves on a lakeshore and wind through trees. Lightning strikes, thunder, and pattering rain.
It seemed impossible one flute could do all that, but I wasn’t alone. Sam hummed with me, heat and anger and honey sweetness as I played the music of my heart. His heart.
He was doing it, the magic. We were doing it.
When I looked at him, he was smiling.
More voices joined. Men and women close by caught the note Sam hummed, and sang with him. They formed a wall around Sam and me, the cage. And when Janan raised his knife to flick them away, nothing happened.
Another rush of voices raised up, strange and unearthly and coming from somewhere I couldn’t see, but they sang wild harmony and countermelody.
Even the stomp of boots and the clash of weapons joined our song, weaving into the music with the thunderous bass of surging pyroclasts.
I poured my soul into this, the threads of voices weaving into sound that seemed to transcend music. This was something altogether new, strange and lovely and magical.
Music thickened over the night as though this was the only thing in the world, the only thing that mattered. Janan dropped to all fours and shuddered as smoke peeled from his body, black and undulating.
Sylph.
The fighting stopped as more people began to notice what was happening, began to add their voices to the song. Lightning snapped through and Janan screamed as blackness overwhelmed him. All my sylph freed themselves and left Janan lying on the dais, unmoving. Scarcely breathing.
As the voices rose higher and sylph added their own melodies to the waltz, I lowered my flute and approached Janan.
My knife, a slim rosewood handle and tiny steel blade, found its way into my hand. I climbed the dais and crouched next to Janan, looking up only a moment to find most of Heart watching to see what I would do. A few people held back others, but most—most just sang and watched, because somehow this was my choice.
Oldsouls or newsouls. Beginnings or never-endings.
Sylph flowed around me, Cris next to me, and waiting by the phoenix was Sam. He looked tired, barely alive, but when I closed my eyes, I remembered the way he’d held me after I hadn’t killed Deborl. He’d said he was glad I hadn’t.
I looked back at Janan. Could I show compassion for a man who’d caused millennia of pain for newsouls, who’d captured a phoenix twice now, ready to sacrifice it for his selfish desire to live forever?
Who was I to decide who lived and died? That was a decision Janan had been making for others for thousands of years. I wanted to be nothing like him. I wanted to value life, all life, regardless of how despicable some of it could be.
And who knew—maybe there was something else after death. Just because it was unknown didn’t make it bad. It could be good.
I sheathed my own knife and took Janan’s bloodstained knife from his hand.
Light and power flooded into me, dizzying and far too much for one soul to hold. I fell back, and the last thing I heard was the phoenix singing four notes.
32 LIGHT
THE SKY WAS deep violet when I opened my eyes.
My skin tingled and my heart thrummed too fast. Maybe this was what it felt like to be struck by lightning.
Janan was gone, as were most of the citizens of Heart, though the skeletons were still there, their silver chains dull and tarnished. The expelled temple rocks were murky white now, no life left in them. The sylph were gone, too.
“Sam!” I jerked up and scrambled to my feet, stumbling down off the dais before I realized Sam wasn’t standing by the phoenix cage anymore. He was slumped on the ground, breathing shallowly. Someone had placed my flute in his arms, but it slipped from his grasp as I dropped to my knees before him. “Sam.”
He made opening his eyes look like agony. “Ana. I waited for you.” His voice was a pale breath, a memory.
“Didn’t anyone help you?” I checked the bandages on his shoulder; they were new, but damp with sweat and blood.
“There’s nothing to help. I’m sorry.” His good arm jerked upward, but it fell and he sighed. I took his hand and pressed his palm on my face, now slick with tears. “That was it, wasn’t it?” he asked. “The phoenix song?”
“I think so.” It had felt like magic, and it had stripped Janan of his immortality. Sam had been humming. So had others. The sylph. And the phoenix.
Had I used the song? Or had Sam?
Did it matter?
The dragons had been afraid the phoenix song would destroy them. The song hadn’t destroyed Janan; sparing him had still been my decision, in the end. But we’d made him mortal again. If no one else killed him first, he’d one day die of old age.
Sam’s fingers curled against my cheek. “You have it in you now. The light. I see it. Beautiful.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” But I did know, didn’t I? My heart raced, my thoughts were sharp and clear, and something had changed inside me.
I looked around, but the only one left was the phoenix. The cage door hung open and the phoenix itself perched nearby, wings tucked against its sides.
“Ana,” it said, voice high and low and everything in between.
Now it spoke back?
“The sylph have gone to absorb the fires beneath the caldera, to settle it and keep it from erupting further.”
“No.” Cris had told me that wasn’t possible. It was too much. “That will kill them.”
“Yes,” said the phoenix. “And they will be reborn, per our agreement. They will have one life, the life they would have had if they hadn’t followed Janan that day.”
“What about everyone else?” What about Sam? I could still feel his pulse fluttering weakly under his skin, but for how much longer? What happened when he died? I’d already lost everyone else.
“That,” the phoenix said, “is your decision. Dossam is right. The fire of infinity has passed from Janan to you. You took it when you took his blade. You may keep it, or you may give it away, though your body might not survive a second transfer of the light.”