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.”
Meaning I could die. Still— “I don’t want it, not if I have to be alone.”
The phoenix bowed its head. “Then I think you know what to do with it. But know that it will work only once. As the sylph are receiving their second chance, that is what you will give to the others.”
Then Stef and Whit and Sarit and Armande might be alive again. And Sam. Would I, too?
I bit my lip before I asked. The answer might sway my decision, and there was only one decision I could make.
“Thank you.”
The phoenix surged up, trailing sparks and ash as morning paled the sky and stars grew dim. The pyroclastic flow was gone. The sky was clear. Dawn was still and quiet. My sylph were saving the world, redemption at last.
Only the quiet gasps of my weeping and the rattle of Sam’s final breaths cracked the air.
I had to work quickly.
I put my flute back into its case, kissed Sam’s lips, and approached the nearest section of chain.
“Ana?” Sam rasped. “What are you doing?”
“I’m choosing you.”
“Wait, think about this.”
“I am.” I forced a smile as I knelt. “And I’m choosing life. I’m choosing you.” Before either of us could say anything more, I closed my hands around the chains that linked everyone together, and released the light. It burst out of me until I was a star exploding.
And I could see everything.
33
BEGINNINGS
IT MUST HAVE been years and years later when Sam awoke to existence once more, because everything had changed.
What was left of the white city bore veins of obsidian, scars on stone that no longer healed itself. Midrange Lake had become a lake once more, forests had grown back, and animals had returned. After the eruption, Range filled itself with new life.
By the time Sam returned, everyone seemed to understand that this was their final reincarnation. This was it. Only one life. Cherish it.
But Sam already knew that. When he dreamt, it was of the last moments of his previous life, and Ana talking with the phoenix. Then Ana glancing back at him, choosing him, and giving up the light.
The ache of missing her carried through death, through his first quindec, and though he searched for her, the world was filled with newsouls now. Orrin, Lidea, and Geral had long ago returned from their quest to protect their newsouls, and soon there were schools for the new and old. Soul Tellers still had jobs, finding the oldsouls born and cataloging newsouls. Sam spent months poring over the results, looking for Ana, but her soul had never been recorded into the database. If she’d been reincarnated, no document could tell him.
Maybe she would return. Maybe she would not. She hadn’t known when she let go of the light. He’d seen the question in her eyes, and seen her decide not to ask.
He wished she had.
On a sunny morning, Sam and his friends sat around a table by Armande’s pastry stall, sipping coffee and listening to a flutist play somewhere across the crowd. The music was familiar; lots of people played “Ana Incarnate” since Phoenix Night.
So many strange faces crowded the field. The din of conversation surrounded the table, all laughter and haggling and babies wailing. It was market day, which brought traders and buyers from the new settlements around Range. And students, he hoped. Music teachers still had to eat. The sign he’d made, advertising openings for students, had already received several curious looks from both children and adults. He tried to ignore the questions people asked one another when they thought he couldn’t hear: Was he the Dossam who’d written “Ana Incarnate”?
“How’s the new piano working for you, Sam?” Cris asked, searching his empty coffee cup for one more drop.
“Spectacular. When Orrin is reborn, I’ll compose something for him. I still can’t believe that with everything going on during his return to Heart, he managed to convince people to help collect supplies for the piano.” Sam shook his head. His friends were amazing.
“I want a sonata.” Sarit leaned her head against Cris’s shoulder. “And a symphony. Yes, I think that will do.”
Across the table, Stef laughed, his voice deep and full. “You don’t want much, do you?”
“Only what I deserve.” Sarit grinned and took a bite of her sticky bun.
Sam closed his eyes and enjoyed his friends’ presence and the sweet cacophony of Heart, but the flutist playing “Ana Incarnate” somewhere toward Phoenix Memorial caught his attention. A deep ache welled up in his chest as he saw her again: Ana, giving up the light; Ana, choosing him; Ana, giving up her life to ensure that others survived.
The grief was infinite.
Something about the vibrato caught him, and a section of triplets. Familiar . . .
“Are you okay, Sam?” Stef raised his eyebrows.
“I think so.” They all knew how he felt about the waltz, both a blessing and a curse. Most days, he wished no one would ever play it again. But this flutist. The way they played. Sam shivered. “I have to see something.”
He pushed himself away from the table and navigated the crowd of tents and people, catching a glimpse of himself in a mirror he passed: white-blond hair, fair skin already red from sunshine. The stranger in the mirror every lifetime never got less unsettling.
He passed advertisements for newsoul-focused communities, others for oldsoul-only communities. Not everyone was satisfied with their second chance.
Where the temple once stood, now there was a memorial, an obsidian phoenix wreathed in roses of every color. The flutist played somewhere on the steps leading up to it.
He pushed between tents and stalls until finally he saw a girl on the stairs, lost in the music of “Ana Incarnate.” Heavy black hair tumbled over her shoulders, and her limbs were all angles, like someone who hadn’t fully grown into her body. She would be tall, and for someone who looked barely a quindec, she played remarkably well.