Phoenix’s Refrain by Ella Summers

3

Deities, Danger, and Drama

Irushed over to my sister. Tessa was gripping tightly to Gin’s lifeless body. She couldn’t let go. I waved my hand over Gin, trying to heal her with Fairy’s Touch, but she was already dead.

“Stop fussing over her,” Faris scolded me. “We need to get going before the passage closes.”

I turned on him, growling, “My sister is dead, and all you’re worried about is your stupid passage.”

“She is a phoenix. She will rise again. But we don’t have time to wait.”

“You really are a callous son of a bitch, Faris.”

“And you’re an emotional wreck. Pull yourself together, Pandora. We have work to do and no time to waste on useless tears.”

“Faris is an insensitive ass, but he is right, Leda.” Grace pointed at the glowing curtain of magic. “Look, the passage is already closing.”

I saw it. The light curtain was flickering and buzzing like it was about to go out.

And right now I didn’t care. Sure, Gin would live. She would rise again, and it would hurt like hell. But that wasn’t the point. Just because someone was basically indestructible, that didn’t mean you stopped caring about them. Because once you started doing that, you were well on your way to treating all people as disposable. That was the gods’ whole problem. And the demons’ problem too. They didn’t care about anyone. They didn’t understand love, compassion, or anything that connected people to other people.

“If we don’t do this now, we won’t get another chance for a while,” Grace said to me. “Not until the moon is full again. Don’t you want to know who is sending you those visions? Don’t you want to know why?”

Yes, I wanted that. Of course I wanted it.

“It isn’t you?” I had to ask.

“No, Leda. It wasn’t me.”

And for some reason, I actually believed her.

“They’re right, Leda. You need to go,” Tessa said to me. “There’s a reason everything happened this way, a reason we all came to be here on Earth and ended up with Calli. It’s all linked, Leda, and you need to figure out why. Go find your answers. I’ll teleport with Gin. I’ll bring her back home.”

I hesitated.

“Gin would want you to go and figure this out,” Tessa said.

I rose to my feet. “All right.”

I joined Faris and Grace at the glowing magic curtain.

“What is it?” I wondered. “A magic mirror, a passage to another world?”

“Not quite,” said Grace. “It’s certainly similar, though. I don’t think it leads to another world but rather to a secret place here on this one.”

“Wherever it leads, it won’t work for long,” Faris said impatiently.

As we passed through the glowing curtain, I glanced over my shoulder. A winged rat had taken flight; it was trying to follow us through. But it stopped just before it reached the curtain. It whimpered like it wanted to go through but couldn’t. More monsters had arrived. They looked agitated that they couldn’t follow us. Tessa, holding Gin, vanished from sight.

“They got away,” I said happily under my breath.

The ruined city faded away. We popped out the other end of the glowing curtain, suspended up in the air, nothing else but empty space all around us. Then a tornado shot up out of nowhere and swallowed us. Even beating my wings at full power, navigating the wild winds was tough. I grabbed my cat Angel before she got sucked in. The moment I wrapped my arms around her, wings sprouted out of her back.

“You really are a little angel now,” I said fondly.

She opened her mouth to meow, but I couldn’t hear her over the roar of the raging tornado.

That tornado was pulling us down. Down to the ground. Very, very slowly, it was drawing us toward a floating platform in the sky. My feet set down on hard rock.

The floating island was about the size of a football field and covered in asphalt, or some similar substance. I didn’t see anything obvious to explain how it was floating like this. Must have been magic. Or Magitech.

The floating island didn’t seem to be affected by the tornado. In fact, down here, standing on the flat pancake surface, that tornado felt like nothing more than a bracing wind. I could see it spinning around us, trapping us inside, on this peculiar island. It had zipped itself up around the island, so I couldn’t see past it. My new reality ended in a tornado.

This wasn’t a natural tornado either, the kind that rolled over land. This tornado had been spun together with magic. Just like the floating asphalt island.

Grace and Faris were looking around too. Faris threw a few spells at the tornado, obviously trying to break through it, but his spells just bounced back at him.

Grace laughed at his failed efforts. “Such a man’s idea, to think he can overpower everything with brute force.”

Faris’s dark brows drew together. “I have a lot of brute force.”

Grace laughed again. “Not enough, apparently.”

“And I suppose you have a better idea?” Faris demanded.

“Naturally. We are going to wait this out.”

Faris looked at the tornado, which was showing no signs of slowing down or fizzling out any time soon. “That is unacceptable.”

“You always were so impatient, Faris.”

“I have things to do. That’s what it means to actually be important.”

The look he gave her brought a frown to Grace’s lips.

“I know what you’re trying to do,” she said.

“Good for you.”

“And it won’t work. I’m not impressed by your ego, nor cowered by your shameless arrogance. And neither is Leda.” Grace looked at me.

“Keep me out of your lovers’ spat,” I said, not taking my eyes off the tornado. The spell had to have a weakness. If only I could find it.

“It’s a little late for you to be left out of anything, dear,” Grace said breezily. “You are, after all, our daughter, and therefore very much at the center of our lives.”

She smiled at me. The look on the demon’s face was positively doting. Honestly, it really freaked me out.

But it made Faris laugh. “She isn’t fooled by the motherly act, Grace.”

“You aren’t helping,” she snapped at him.

“I have no intention of helping you carry out your nefarious scheme.”

“Nefarious scheme?” She planted her hands on her hips. “What exactly do you imagine I’m scheming to do?”

“I don’t know.” Faris frowned as if the admission grated on him. “Or at least I haven’t figured it out yet. But I will find out what you’re planning. And I will stop you.”

Her eyes twinkled with delight. “Well, aren’t you a regular storm cloud on a sunny day.”

Lightning flashed across the sky, visible above the swirling tornado.

“Very funny,” Faris said drily to Grace.

“That wasn’t my doing.”

“Someone is coming,” I told my unhinged parents.

The tornado wall parted slightly, like curtains being drawn apart, then two figures stepped through the opening. The tornado zipped closed behind them.

I couldn’t see much of the two people, besides their silhouettes. But as they came closer, my breath caught in my throat. I gasped. One of them was Zane, my brother, the very reason I’d joined the Legion of Angels and set off on this mad, mad path of deities, danger, and drama.

The other person was someone I didn’t recognize, a woman with long black hair braided along the left side of her face. She was dressed in a leather suit that perfectly fitted her tall and slender body. She carried a long sword on her back.

My brother Zane wore a fitted t-shirt and a pair of thick pants made of a durable fabric, the kind you’d put on when you had to trek long distances across the wilderness. He’d cut his light brown hair since I’d last seen him. It was cropped short—and a little spiky. And he’d been working out. His chest was broader, his shoulders wider. It looked like I hadn’t been the only one to step up my physical exercise these past two years.

I rushed forward to hug my brother. “You’ve gotten bigger,” I teased him, pinching his biceps.

“So have you.” Zane set his hand on my belly.

I looked down, blushing. “There really isn’t anything to see yet.”

“There is for me,” he told me.

Zane was a telepath and a powerful one at that. He could see things that others could not, things that were there but hidden to the naked eye.

“In any case, congratulations, Leda,” he said with a bright smile. “I know this isn’t how you ever envisioned bringing a child into the world, but we will make it right. We will make it safe for her. I promise.”

I set my hand over his, my eyes tearing up. “I know I can always count on you to have my back, Zane.”

“And I can always count on you to have mine,” he replied. “Joining the Legion of Angels to gain the magic to find me…” He whistled, clearly impressed. “You are the truest, bravest, craziest sister that I could ever ask for.”

“But I didn’t have to find you. You found me. How ever did you escape the Guardians?” I asked him.

“River got me out.” He glanced at the woman at his side.

I looked at her. Something was…well, weird. Something was very off about all of this. I could feel it. Right now, my gut was warning me that this woman was a liar. It was warning me not to trust her.

But it was Grace who voiced my concerns. “That woman is a Guardian.”