Reborn

GREY

Chapter 1

Stupid Necklaces

I’ve never felt I had a future.

I never wanted to fight. I’ve never been one to step toward the action.

I’d rather stay behind.

But the King wants Guard and Soldiers. Fighting is always encouraged.

I never take part. I never want violence.

I’ve always hated fighting.

It’s why I became a teacher, rather than a Guard or Soldier in the King’s army.

Why does hatred always seem to turn into violence? Why does that violence turn into murder? Why do others always seem to have to die in an endless cycle of hatred that never seems to end? Why must we so quickly jump to destruction that can never be undone or taken back? Why must others lose their lives at the hands of the rage of a few?

What ever happened to listening and learning?

Surely there’s a better way that doesn’t involve fighting.

Why must hatred broil into violence when we don’t have to sort out problems using our fists? We can talk and avoid committing actions we can never take back.

The King seems to disagree, and he tries to funnel as many as he possibly can into his Guard and Soldiers. I felt the pressure to join, the urge to follow what so many of my classmates did, but I couldn’t make myself.

I didn’t want to fight. I don’t want violence. There must be another way. Always, there has to be another way. No matter the circumstances, taking a life can never be undone. That singular action has such a strong ripple effect; the life you took, that being had friends and family who loved them. Their lives will never be the same. Even just fighting to injure. What if you break their leg and it never heals right? What if you accidentally make contact with a lethal injury?

I can’t do it.

And somehow I ended up as the Dove, with the malachite medallion around my neck and healing powers to prove that it wasn’t a dream.

It hangs heavy around my neck like a leaden weight, a permanent reminder that others expect something of me I don’t know that I can give.

With my sister by my side, Alex, the Wolf, my best friend, maybe I could do it.

But she is gone, missing, and I don’t know what to do.

I kneel on the ground in some unknown location in the Sea, hunched over as my fingers lace themselves through my hair. A scream bubbles up in my throat, a lump I cannot swallow down.

“Where are you, Alex? What happened?”

We had been fighting in the Sea, battling the Dragon that’s now nowhere to be seen.

Arcane sacrificed his life, shed the Midnight Tear, and removed those he perceived as evil. His powers created a spiraling force that absorbed everything, then spat it right back out. I got pulled in, as did Alex. There was nothing, and I floated in the false peace of emptiness like a feather cradled within the embrace of a breeze. It felt so soft and kind, though I know empty wouldn’t solve the problem of the King. I knew Alex was somewhere there with me. That was enough; she was there and we still had each other. It was the last time I saw her.

And then I got thrown back onto Ragdon clear across the Sea, ripped from the place Arcane’s Midnight Tears had brought me to, and I couldn’t find Alex. She’s gone, missing, and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do without my sister. I need her by my side, the goofy support who throws in her opinion, speaks her mind, and sticks up for what she believes in. She listens, knows what to say, and is the most capable being I know. I need my sister. I need to know she is ok. She never would have just left.

I can feel the panic rising up in my chest in a choking network of thorns and vines that make my skin feel far too small. My throat seals shut, every breath coming shallower and more ragged than the last, and I shake as the edges of my vision blur and my brain flatlines into the spiraling thought in my head: Where the fuck is Alex?

“Alex,” I wheeze. “Please, Alex. Come here. Come back. Where are you?”

I sit in silence for far too long. Every bit of my body screams at me to move, to search, to do something. Anything. Alex is somewhere out there, and she needs me. What if I can’t get to her in time? What if something terrible happens because I was just a little too late. What if I should’ve already been going, already been on my way. I don’t know where she is; I don’t know where to start looking, but she’s not right next to me so anywhere that’s not here is better than here.

Except… I can’t move. My body remains frozen, locked up in a state of panic, a spiral I cannot break out of. It’s like I’m plummeting through the air again after the Guard’s arrow pierced through the wrist of my wing when Alex and I first tried to escape over the Lava Flats, on the run immediately after we found the pewter pendant and the malachite medallion.

“You can’t do this to me, Alex.”

It’s selfish, I know. The wording, it cuts as sharp as a blade. It’s somehow Alex’s fault that she’s gone, even though I know with every bit of my being she wouldn’t just leave me.

“I’m sorry,” I choke out in a broken whisper as tears roll down my cheeks in slick waves. “I’m sorry, Alex.”

“You can lead, Grey,” Myles says, dark brown eyes wide with hope. His voice comes from somewhere behind me. “I don’t like the King. Wyatt doesn’t either, and there are more of us. We’d follow you. We’ll find Alex.”

I shake my head.

“Not without Alex,” I reply, voice high and thready. The smoke from the Dragon and the burning Sea drags across my throat like coarse sand.

“I know,” he says. “We’ll find her first. Nothing without Alex.”

Myles’s words run right over my head. “Alex is a better fit,” I murmur. “She… I’m not built for that.”

Surely he knows I’m not fit for that. I can’t lead. I need my sister. I need to not have everyone watching. I need the calm order and routine that being a teacher brings, even if the King’s teachings change as often as his moods. But wrangling a classroom full of children and swallowing down the ache at the lessons that focus more on the King’s wants rather than the truth is easier for me than joining the ranks of the Guard and Soldiers. I’d be away from the comfort of what I know, but I’d have to so physically fight. I’d have to make the conscious decision to intentionally cause harm, perhaps even kill. I’d have to obey a King I’ve never understood. Teaching isn’t easy, but it was better than the alternative of the Guard and Soldiers.

I still feel the guilt over teaching what I know to be false. Feeding children lies was something I promised myself I’d never do, but I couldn’t not. Fear kept me from keeping my promise. The horror stories of the King, meeting him, the Generals few ever saw and fewer still lived to speak of, the punishments brought, each tale worse than the last. I could never figure out how much was truth and how much was tall tales. What would await me if I went against the King’s orders and someone caught me? The thought of having that many eyes on me, having to say with such clarity exactly what I did and how I did not agree with the King, knowing that I wouldn’t be walking away unscathed with no consequences because that’s not who the King is, it all terrified me. I don’t want the eyes on me. I don’t want to feel the weight of everyone watching, waiting, judging. If I got caught, the King and his closest followers would look even harder at the education the children received. If they removed me, they could replace me with someone worse.

I did the best I could in the cramped little classroom with rows of desks leaning against each other from joints long since worn out. I had my own desk in the corner that I rarely used for anything other than storing stacks of paper. Within the King’s lesson plans, I found ways to add in as much accuracy as I could. I tried to teach my students to think critically, to question, to study different perspectives, to see biases.

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I know I wasn’t any hero to my students, but perhaps I kept them a little further away from a villain. Maybe a few didn’t join the ranks of the Guard and Soldiers. Maybe a few were able to realize that the King wasn’t some savior, even if only in some ambivalent way.

But what did it matter now that Alex is missing? All her time teaching those stupid battle exercises to the students seeking to become Guard and Soldiers didn’t save her. All her time goofing around with Camden and hearing the stories he told her from Katelin’s time working alongside the King in a job that mostly entailed looking busy and staying out of the way when the King got angry didn’t save my sister either. Us sticking together and trying to just go in, do our jobs, get out, and keep our heads down didn’t save her either.

What could I have done?

Maybe if we didn’t go to the Erebus Tree that night. Maybe if Alex and Camden had gone off to go grab a quick dinner. Maybe if I had just refused. Maybe if—

“Don’t do that, Grey.”

Brook nudges her nose against the back of my head, shoving me forward and pulling me back to reality.

I look over my shoulder and frown. Don’t do what?

“What ifs will only drive you further into panic. What ifs will change nothing. No one can change the past, not even Lucius or Erebus. We must focus on the present and what we can do now.”

“If we’d never gotten these stupid necklaces,” I spit, tears springing up in my eyes as my voice becomes thick and I grab the malachite medallion in my fist, “then Alex would still be here.”

The medallion weighs heavy. I want to rip it off. I want to sprint to the cliffs of Siren’s Lookout and throw it as far as I can. But I can’t. Something keeps me from turning the want into an action. Some twinge deep in my subconscious that I hate. Some little piece intertwined with the heat I feel when my healing powers kick in. Some little nudge that keeps the malachite medallion with me because I’m the Dove and it’s my power.

I thought maybe it could help me, but now I just hate it.

I need my sister. She needs me. I need to be there for her, because she’s all I have.

Panic rises in my chest, and I curl my fingers as my breath catches in my throat and my skin crawls and itches and it’s too small and there’s not enough air and I can’t breathe and I’m going to vibrate out of my body and—

“Grey!”

Jabez’s voice snaps me out of my spiraling fear. Bits of ash and soot cover his blue fur and stain his paws.

“I can’t-. I-I need-. I have to find her. I can’t… I can’t lose her. She has to be ok.”

I jab a hand against my cheek to wipe away the tear that falls.

“We’ll find her,” Ky says, voice soft.

His ears and tail droop, and his brown eyes hold too many emotions for me to count.

Phoenix snorts and throws his head to the side, rocking on his paws and flexing his toes to unsheathe his claws. The wound on his shoulder puckers and stretches when he straightens a foreleg. A wicked laugh bubbles in his throat.

“If the cream puff did anything, he’s double dead. And before you say it, Ky, I’m making that a thing. If he doesn’t know what’s coming for him, he really is a fucking idiot. A bigger one than anyone coulda thought. Fucker’s gonna get everything tenfold. Lucius won’t know what to do with him when they come for him. There’s not gonna be anything for them to take.”

Phoenix pulls his lips back into a sharkish grin, all fangs in a predatory smile. Flames burn, embers glowing in his eyes. Harsh shadows flicker across his body, cast by the crackling fire.

My heart squeezes and I shift where I sit, pulling a knee close to my chest. He has every right to feel however he does, but the thought of him inflicting that suffering upon another living being makes me squirm with a knee-jerk no. Hurting someone back doesn’t undo what they did, and taking a life doesn’t hold them accountable like justice would.

But if the King did something to Alex. If he hurt her. If he… if he… if he did something worse.

I don’t even want to think it.

If the King was responsible for why Alex is missing, though, maybe I would feel differently. I’d never tell another that how they feel is wrong. I want the King to face what he’s done and have to answer to it all. I don’t want him dead; I want him in a prison cell. If he’s hurt Alex, I don’t know what I’d do. I don’t know if that would change what I want to happen to the King. He can’t get another chance to hurt someone, but death can never undo past actions.

I run my fingers through my hair, tugging on the strands until the point of pain. Why couldn’t we have just never gone to the Erebus Tree to find those stupid necklaces? I wish I had just paced and paced and paced until morning and then gone to teach for the day and continued that until I forgot I ever had that desire to seek out the Erebus Tree in the first place. However much I don’t want the King in power and however much Alex and I perhaps are supposed to take down the King… can removing the King from power be justified by Alex going missing? Can a number of lives lost become the price tag for taking down the King? How can someone say that it’s ok that others died because, in the end, we got what we wanted?

Myles leans on his staff as he lowers himself to his knees in front of me.

“I can’t make any promises and I won’t, but I’ll help you search for Alex in any way I can. We all will.”

I nod, body numb.

“We all will,” Brook echoes.

“I have to find her, but I can’t even come up with a plan.” I bury my face in my crossed arms. “I can’t stop thinking the worst.”

Myles places his hand on my shoulder. He waits until I’m able to lift my head and look at him before speaking.

“You’ve got all of us. Me and Wyatt. Brook and Astra and Jabez. Ky and Phoenix, too, I’m sure. We’re here to support you, and we will search for as long as it takes.”

“What if it takes years?” Panic sparks yet again in my gut.

As long as it takes could be years. All that time without Alex, when she’s who knows where. She could be waiting for me. She could be all alone. She could be trapped somewhere. She could be waiting for me for years, wondering where I am, wondering why I left her, wondering why I haven’t found her. She could be stuck with the King, Guard and Soldiers, Generals, all so cold and unfriendly.

Memories of the two of us kneeling at the foot of the Amethyst Throne barrage through my skull, hurtling flickers of the fear, the arrows tearing through my body, the mockery of a trial, the panic, the hurt, the pain as my body screamed in agony, the warmth of sticky blood coating my body.

What if that is Alex?

It can’t be years without Alex. I can’t let her be alone for so long. I have to make sure she’s safe. She’d do the same for me. I can’t leave someone behind.

And if something I can’t even think of… if… if Lucius has come for her, she still cannot be left all alone for years.

No. Alex wouldn’t leave me like that. Lucius can’t have taken her. She’s out there, and I have to find her.

“Grey,” Wyatt says, placing a soft hand on my back to guide me back to the present, “we will do what we must to find Alex.”

We’re all quiet for a moment. Astra shakes off, then hops up onto Brook’s back to lay down. Myles uses his staff to push himself back to his feet. He stretches out his legs and walks in a small circle, avoiding a fallen log that once supported a side of a tent.

“Alex has a friend named Camden, right?” Wyatt asks.

I look up at them, narrowing my eyes.

Wyatt shrugs. “You and Alex became a bit famous and I heard the name Camden alongside hers a handful of times.”

“Yes, he’s her friend. Alex and Camden were —are— close friends. Lovers. I don’t know. They never really figured out their relationship. The last time they saw each other Camden wanted to go on a date but Alex turned him down. I think Camden got cold feet and broke things off and left their relationship as friends.”

“Maybe he knows something?” Myles asks.

“It’s gotta be worth a shot, right?” Ky says with a hopeful smile.

Phoenix rolls his eyes. “Grey, either you go track down this Camden guy, or I’ll find him myself.”

“You… you’re gonna help?”

“The cream puff doesn’t get to hurt anyone else.” Flames burn on Phoenix’s inky pelt, and the low rumble of his voice coupled with the snarl on his face make for an unsettling sight. “If Camden knows something, we will find out what.”

“Thank you,” I whisper.

“I might be a monster,” Phoenix says, “but I’m not completely heartless.”

I don’t reply, unsure of what I could even say.

“What Phoenix is saying is that we can go and speak to Camden and see what he has to offer.”

Phoenix sneers. “That’s what I said. And so what if Camden decides to clam up and he needs some convincing? The cream puff doesn’t get to hurt anyone else.”

I find myself standing, and I stumble as blood flow returns to my legs and I lose my balance.

“No,” I say, pointing at Phoenix, who bristles. “You cannot hurt Camden. I understand that you may be angry at the King. While I do not agree that lethal force is needed against the King, you are entitled to your opinions. But you cannot hurt Camden. He is not the King.”

Phoenix takes several slow steps forward, tilting his head to the side as he narrows his eyes and holds my gaze. He flicks the tip of his tail, and I resist the urge to step back and retreat. “Even if he holds information on the whereabouts of Alex?”

“She wouldn’t want him hurt. Camden will tell us what he knows. He doesn’t want anything to happen to her. They’re friends.”

There’s no way. Camden wouldn’t do that, right? He and Alex, whether platonic friends or lovers, were close.

I hate the bead of doubt that twirls in my chest, a feather dancing on the wind. But Alex isn’t here. I dig my toes into the ground, kicking up a small cloud of dust.

“Whoah, whoah, whoah,” Myles says. He waves his hands and steps in between us, tucking his red staff beneath an arm His shirt bunches up around his elbows. “We haven’t even spoken to Camden yet. How do any of us even know what he may or may not be willing to tell us? Let’s first start by just finding this guy, ok?”

“We do need to find Camden,” Ky agrees. He springs to his paws, eyes sparkling. His fur fluffs up and he pricks his ears as his bandana falls over a shoulder. “However, we also need to find the new Midnight Wolf.”

“I thought Arcane was the Midnight Wolf. We just saw him.” Astra looks over the Sea.

Once a sprawling array of matching white tents, either housing two, four, or, occasionally, more, but now only a handful remain. The rest lay in heaps, crumbled, burned, reduced to rubble and ash by the Dragon.

I shove away the thought. Alex had helped hold down the Dragon as Arcane shed the Midnight Tear. It had thrashed and fought back hard. Fire broiled in its chest and throat as Phoenix roared in its face, daring it and egging it on as he used his own fire against it. Alex helped pin it to the ground, doing so right up until the world disappeared and we became separated.

Ky shakes his head. “Arcane was the Midnight Wolf, but not any more. He blinked. He shed the Midnight Tear. Arcane is dead. Someone is the new Midnight Wolf, and I bet they’d know where Alex is. Even if they don’t, I think they’d at least have some idea.”