Chapter 6

How Much Longer?

My skin is stiff and mostly immobile where Phoenix burned me. The malachite medallion works to heal me, but it’s a slow process. I focus on meditating as best as I can as we walk, counting out breaths with finger taps on my thighs, but I’m not very successful. I can’t focus, not how I know I need to for me to truly meditate.

Ky has apologized continuously, and Wyatt has barely left my side. They now lean over my shoulder to look at my neck. While they pull back when they see how I shrink in on myself even though I don’t say anything, if I was more relaxed, I don’t doubt they would have asked if they could have touched me.

“I don’t know what got into him,” Ky says as I tune back into listening to the world around me.

Myles walks a few paces ahead of the group, swinging his staff as he walks and scans. Ky swivels his ears, too, and I hadn’t bothered to listen before, instead just following and paying minimal attention.

“He was angry,” I murmur, voice still hoarse.

“It’s not an excuse.” Ky shakes his head. “Phoenix has been beyond furious and blinded by rage, but he has never hurt anyone he didn’t want to. I’m sorry. I thought I could keep him under control.”

“Phoenix is not your responsibility. He can control himself. You just said so.”

Ky sighs, pausing for a moment and watching a small bird hop across a patch of moss, pecking at the ground. “He can, but he’s never been very good at thinking things through. He can handle himself, but he gets so angry. I know he’d never hurt anyone, but now I don’t know.”

“I don’t believe he intended to hurt me, Ky,” I say, and I don’t.

Ky turns around quickly, brown eyes wide. He shakes his head. “No, Phoenix did not mean to hurt you. He might disagree with you on a lot, but he wasn’t angry with you.”

“He was angry with the King, wasn’t he?” It’s a rhetorical question, but I still ask.

“Yeah. He’s angry with the cream puff.”

“So he didn’t mean to hurt me,” I say. “It was an accident. Phoenix was worked up over something.”

Ky sits down, shoulders slumping as he pulls his lips back and his expression turns into something painful. He shakes out his fur, digging his claws into the ground, as he tries to slow his breathing. The red bandana shifts across his pelt, and when I catch a glimpse of the darkened patch along the edge, I wonder if Phoenix burned that part, too, like he did my skin.

I stop walking, as do Myles and Wyatt. We wait and give time for Ky to think over his words. He bites his lip, then licks his nose, shifting his whiskers as he draws his ears back.

“He’s angry, my brother,” Ky says, staring off at the ground a ways in the distance. His gaze is somewhere far away. It reminds me of how his eyes looked when he had summoned the Blood Demon before Arcane had brought him back, when he was in the place between life and death. “He’s so, so angry. We both are. I just don’t explode like he does. We’re angry in different ways.” Ky exhales. “The cream puff has to go. He has to die. He can’t stay on the Amethyst Throne any more. His Dragon is gone, but he has to die, too.”

“Why?” I ask softly. I know Phoenix almost certainly wouldn’t say, but if Ky is open to talking, maybe he will.

Myles leans on his staff, a curious expression on his face.

Ky’s face scrunches up, and he squeezes his eyes shut. He shakes his head. He curls his tail tight around him and draws his shoulders up.

“No. Phoenix wouldn’t want me to say. When we’re both ready, we’ll share, but not until then.”

“Of course,” Wyatt replies when I hesitate for a moment too long. “Take as long as you need. We’re all here for you, when or if you’d ever like to share.”

xxxx

There’s a stream that runs alongside Ragdon Volcano for a ways, then near the Badlands as it makes its way out to the oceans surrounding Ragdon. No one has ever named it; it’s very small and when it gets too hot it dries up. But it’s thankfully running now and we’re able to get water. We stop at the stream to rest.

Wyatt wanders off to find us something to eat, talking about how they know which plants will give us enough nutrients to sustain us and which ones will make us sick. Ky then adds that he knows which animals will keep him and Phoenix running and talks about needing meat and not just leaves, and he vanishes into the trees.

Myles and I look at each other, shrugging, before he sets down his staff and sits down, rubbing at his knee.

“Are you alright?” I ask, settling down on the rocks beside him.

“I’ll be ok,” he replies. “My knee’s just acting up.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. I just need a bit of rest and I’ll be fine. It’s an old injury. I was in Guard training and got my legs swiped out from beneath me. Landed on my knee and that was that.”

“You were in Guard training?”

“I’m a guy. Didn’t want to be a teacher or do anything like what Camden or Wyatt does. Got roped into Guard training before I really realized what was happening. Thankfully got out before anyone realized I didn't agree with what the Guard were fighting for.”

I wince, looking away as my cheeks flush. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I was more surprised you were in Guard training at all. Didn’t think you would’ve. Glad you got out. I’m sorry you got roped into it.”

Myles waves his hand in a dismissive gesture, but I can tell it’s not aimed at me specifically. “It’s in the past. It’s not worth getting into again. I got out of the Guard before I was really in it, and I have Wyatt for when I can’t deal with my knee on my own.”

“I’m glad you have figured things out,” I say.

I pick my way through the rocks down to the bank of the stream, hoping in my heart that perhaps all of us will be able to figure everything out. If the King could be removed from the Amethyst Throne, we could make a better government for Ragdon, one that’s fair. What that might look like, I don’t know, but it wouldn’t be the King. Alex wouldn’t be missing, and we could figure out what our necklaces mean. Astra could have a home. Freedom and Jabez could be together again and figure out how to deal with being brought back to life.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

I kneel by the stream and stick my hand in the water, letting it run over the burn, then lean in enough so my forearm is submerged too. The coolness feels soothing, a balm as the malachite medallion continues to heal the wounds Phoenix dealt me. The burnt skin has begun to peel, and I can see bits of new, pink skin underneath.

I crouch close to the water and cup my hands, bringing as much as I can to my mouth to drink, then repeating the process. Water runs down my arm and drips from my elbow, landing on my shorts but I ignore it. When I’ve had my fill, I sit beside Myles again, who then puts down his staff and kneels by the stream to drink, too.

Wyatt and Ky return. Ky drags a deer by the throat, while Wyatt holds a large bundle of leaves and branches in their arms. Ky drops the deer on the rocks, and Wyatt sets down the various plants beside the deer.

“How are we going to eat the deer without a fire?” Myles asks.

“Make one,” Wyatt replies. “We don’t need Phoenix. I know how. I’ll go find sticks. You stay there, Myles. Rest your knee. I can tell it’s hurting you.”

True to their word, Wyatt does make a small fire, but not until after Ky has confirmed that he doesn’t hear any Guard or Soldiers around us. They gather a variety of sticks and branches, then clear a space in the rocks to arrange the wood in a triangle shape, leaving the rest off to the side. After walking out into the trees again, they come back with dry grass and two more sticks, one of which is more flat.

Turning around to face Wyatt, I watch as they kneel beside the fire pit and set the grass in the middle below the sticks with some poking out the side. They put the flatter stick on a rock, hold it down with a foot, and then place the other stick perpendicular on it, rotating it between their hands as fast as they can.

I recognize what they are doing almost immediately. The friction between the two pieces of wood moving will create a spark, thus starting a fire. Alex had mentioned it to me as a lesson she one taught early on to her students, thinking that if they might one day join the Guard and Soldiers that they might need to know how to make a fire. She got in trouble since they wouldn’t need to know that. The King would provide everything. How could she imply to such little children anything but that?

Alex had known the steps of how to start a fire how Wyatt is doing now, but she had never been able to put the steps together in practice and make a fire in real life.

I pause.

Alex.

Where is she?

I squeeze my hands into fists, ignoring how the movement pulls on my stiff skin. I want to scream. It doesn’t feel fair, how my sister is just gone. She was here, and then she wasn’t. I saw her during the Dragon’s assault on the Sea. I saw her, right up until the power of Arcane’s Midnight Tears pulled us both straight into the dark depths of the cosmos of Arcane’s magic where I lost her, and when I got spat back out by the black-turned-white power and flung back onto Ragdon, Alex was nowhere to be found.

I can’t get that moment out of my head. It replays over and over and over in my head in an unstoppable loop that’s right behind my eyelids, waiting for me every time I close my eyes, even to blink.

“How much longer?” I find myself asking.

Wyatt doesn’t stop spinning the stick between their hands. Smoke curls from the shallow indent in the flatter stick, but there’s no spark yet, not enough heat to start a fire.

“How much longer for the fire or to find Alex?” they clarify.

I exhale, deflating and falling into my arms. “I don’t know. Alex, I guess. I need to find her. I need to know that she’s ok. She never would’ve disappeared like this. She never would’ve. Where is she?”

“We’re going to find the Midnight Wolf. They oughta know something,” Myles says.

“Get some food,” Wyatt says. “All of the plants can be eaten as is, and all parts can be consumed. Nothing in that pile will make you sick. Hopefully I can get a fire started soon and we can cook some of the deer. Ky, help yourself to whatever you need.”

With a smile, Ky settles down beside the deer and pushes it onto its side. When he drives his forepaws into the deer’s belly and then sinks his teeth into the soft flesh there to take his first bite, I look away with a thick swallow.

A short while later, Wyatt manages to start a fire. The grass they had set up catches first in smoldering little flames, then the sticks, and soon after a bigger fire is blazing, heat pouring off it and warming me up. Myles helps Wyatt peel meat off the haunches of the deer and impale them on long sticks that they then lean over the fire to cook. Blood drips and splatters on the rocks, hissing and bubbling as it evaporates.

I stare off into the river, watching the water gurgle by and absently rubbing my fingers over the burns on my left arm, the worst of the injuries that spans from the back of my hand up to halfway up my bicep.

Every second that ticks by is the longest I’ve ever been without my sister, and the thought makes me both paralyzed and also shake.

Myles brings me back to reality with a gentle touch to my shoulder.

“I thought you might like this,” he says, leaning over and handing me one of the pieces of meat on a stick, stick end toward me.

“Thanks,” I mumble, taking it.

Myles smiles. “Let me know if you’d like some of whatever Wyatt found and one of us can get you some.”

I grip the stick hard enough that my knuckles turn white. Back when Alex and I had first run into Ky and Phoenix, we’d eaten a deer together. Phoenix had made a fire and cooked the legs for us. I picked at the meat then, but Alex had cautiously consumed hers. Food was food.

My stomach twists. Alex should be here with us, eating venison again, and she’s not.

Alex would tell us to eat, Grey.

None of us will be able to find her on an empty stomach. I glance around. Wyatt and Myles are pulling meat off the stick, and Ky is working his way across the ribcage of the deer, muzzle bloodied and grimy.

xxxx

When we’re ready to leave, the fire has died down to just embers, and I have managed to finish the meat on the stick Myles handed me. Ky ate nearly the entire deer and left the rest for the scavengers.

Myles stands and grabs his walking stick, stretching for a moment before heading off toward the woods for a few paces, while I eye the embers. They’re still burning.

Before I can say anything, Ky jerks his head, and Wyatt and I move out of the way. He starts digging, sending up a spray of soil and rocks that bury and smother the fire. Within moments, the remnants of the fire are covered and Ky pushes himself out of the shallow hole he dug, shaking the loose dirt off his shaggy fur.

“That should be good. And if not,” Ky sighs. “Phoenix will know. He’ll make sure it doesn’t turn into anything.”

“He will?” I ask softly, careful in case it’s something Ky doesn’t want to answer.

“If, in the very unlikely event that this isn’t actually put out, Phoenix won’t let it turn into an actual fire that poses any risk.”

“How will he know?” Wyatt asks.

Ky scowls. “He will. He will know. He won’t not know. He’ll know.”

How? rings through my head, but I know Ky won’t answer.

As if seeing my question, Ky shakes his head. “Don’t ask, Grey. I won’t answer. Phoenix will tell you when or if he wants. Now is not the time for this conversation. Not when he just burned you, even if not intentionally. Not when all of us are stressed and still dealing with what just happened. Not when neither Phoenix nor I want to share yet. I am willing to talk, but not until my brother does, too, and not until we are all in a better headspace.”

I take a breath, then nod. “Ok.”

xxxx

When we find Phoenix again, we’re nearing the Badlands.

He pads out of the trees, looks our way, squints at me with a wrinkled nose, and then keeps walking. He stays ahead of us, head low as he makes his way toward the Badlands, leaving behind paw-prints as big around as my hand.

The trees thin out, turning from tall firs and oaks into short, scraggly things that look far more like bushes. Grass and moss beneath my feet begins to turn brown the further we go and eventually begins to crunch before disappearing altogether. The dirt mixes with sand before the whole landscape suddenly opens up. Foliage vanishes, there one moment and gone the next, leaving behind an expanse of virtual nothingness filled with sand and hills. I see a handful of dead bushes that could only come up to my calf -if that high- scattered far apart, but nothing else. It's just empty, and I shudder.

How are we going to get across this? How far does it go?

A breeze blows through, stirring up a whirling cloud of sand. I squint as it gets in my eyes and sneeze. I shift into my dove form and ignore the sharp pain in my arms and neck as the burns stretch and contort to allow for the new body shape, then hold up my wings to shield my face. I allow Myles and Wyatt to come into the small barrier.

“Welcome to the Badlands,” Phoenix mutters, throwing up a wall of fire to shield himself and Ky from the sand.