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Ripples Part Twenty One

Back beat, the word is on the street that the fire in your heart is out
I’m sure you’ve heard it all before but you never really had a doubt
I don’t believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now...

Celia hadn’t gone far. It was mere moments before the soft, human scent of her drifted across the air, tainted with salt.

His sister’s husky prophecy echoed in his mind. She will break, you know, one way or another – and you’ll have only yourself to blame.

Riose had thought her fatalistic. Now he was very afraid that she was right.

Celia was sat on a wall, shoulders hunched, folded in on herself like a withered flower. Her face was in deep shadow, but her maimed hand was all too visible.

He paused, hesitant. “Cee?”

Her eyes were pure liquid under the streetlight, her lips parted. Then she gave a ragged laugh, the tears yet held back, her control formidable as she herself was formidable.

“I thought you’d come to rescue me,” she said in a hopeless, shaky voice.

He flinched. The words drove deep into his heart. “You don’t know how much I wish I had. I’m sorry.”

“It was so easy,” she said dreamily. “I didn’t know it could be so easy. He just reached out, and I felt my bones break. And he enjoyed it.”

“He’ll pay for that,” he swore.

For a moment, he was a creature of the Furies again and their will possessed him as surely as it ever had, rising up with whispers of bloodlust and reprisal.

“I don’t need revenge, Ri.” How dreadfully tired she sounded, how different she looked without her innocence. “It won’t help.”

Confusion made him hesitate. “What will?”

Silence, her eyes bright reflections of the long-set sun. A shiver wracked her – sunlight spilled out onto her cheeks like gold rays, and for a moment, she was strange and beautiful until he realised that it was not sunlight at all but tears.

He could stay still no longer. The space between them vanished, unimportant, unnecessary as he scooped her up into his arms and held her to him as if he could ward away all that happened. She was light as a fallen leaf, and terribly brittle, terribly cold. Her tears were the warmest thing about her, damp on his neck.

She didn’t wail or rage, didn’t do anything except weep with so little fuss that he could only marvel at her dignity. Her broken hand was limp in her lap, she curled across his body. As the tears left her, she stilled, and lay in the cradle of his arms, her breath a soft wash on his throat.

“I need to be safe again,” she mumbled, “But that won’t happen - no, it never happened, did it? I was never safe. The monsters were always there, waiting. I just didn’t see them before because they looked like people. It was an illusion.”

He closed his lips over a confirmation.

“And what about you, Ri?” Her voice was unexpectedly bitter and angry. She reached out and turned his face down to her so she could see his expression. “Are you just a monster who looks like a person?”

“Sometimes,” he answered honestly. The distance between them was so slight, so intense.

“As long as I know you, I’ll never be safe.” The measured pace of her words did not lessen their impact: hammer-blows, he shaken by them.

“I - I know.”

“I could walk away,” she threw at him, words like stones. “I could leave tonight and pretend I didn’t know you, I could make other friends. I could forget all about the Nightworld, and eventually, it’d all just be a bizarre memory of some people I knew once.”

“Yes.”

One word. It hurt.

You could forget, you could turn away; maybe you could leave me behind, but I don’t think I could leave you. I think you would haunt me – and lost, alone, perhaps I in turn would come to haunt you, trailing alongside your human life like seaweed tangled in your hair.

She took a deep breath. “Would I be safe?”

“Probably,” he said, unwillingly. “Safer than if you stay.”

But you’ll never know what happens. You’ll never hear a mermaid sing again, and you’ll never see a witch juggling with fire. No one will ever show you the secret ways through the wood, or play hopscotch in the moon-shadows with you. All that is dark and subtle and dangerous will be kept from you, and the night will become nothing more than the absence of sunlight.

You’ll be safe, but you’ll never know what it means to be truly human, truly alive, because you’ll never seek out all the wonder and horror of the world again.

“I thought so,” she said. Her hair fell across her face like black bars, and for an elusive instant, she seemed caged. Fear and uncertainty mingled in her eyes. “I don’t know what to do, Ri. It would be smarter to go.”

He remembered a conversation in a gentler night than this, when he had been afraid and she offered solace.

If I do ever run...promise you'll come after me?

“Yes,” he said softly. “But please don’t.”

“I’m scared,” she said simply.

Riose met her eyes. “So am I. I don’t think there’s been a day when I haven’t been afraid that the Furies will come back for me – or worse, they’ll come for one of you. I’m afraid I’ll wake up one morning and be a monster again. I’m afraid I already am and I just don’t know it. And if you go...who’ll keep me from being a monster, Cee? Who’ll keep me human?”

She gazed at him solemnly. “You don’t me need for that.”

“Yes I do.” He touched her hair, lightly, timid. “You taught me how to be human.”

Her eyes were puzzled, still wet and gleaming. “What could I teach you?”

“Fun,” he said, the word less strange than it had been when he was a child and had first heard it. “Games where winning didn’t matter. Sunshine and mud and cookies. Hugs. Jokes. Truth or dare and catch and I Spy. Super special triple chocolate sundaes. Caring about someone for no reason at all. How to be friends.”

The last, he left unsaid, but it lingered in his mouth as fresh and sharp as mint.

Love.

“You didn’t get all that from me,” she said, sounding astonished, gentle.

“I did.” He took a deep breath. “But I’m still never sure that it’s enough – that I won’t wake up and it’ll all be a dream, that I’ll be cruel and empty as the others. It doesn’t stop me being afraid.”

She touched his cheek, very gentle, a seed of the girl he knew. She was weighing her words, deciding, and the time while he waited seemed a taste of eternity.

“Then maybe we can be afraid together,” Celia offered. She tried a fragile smile. “And if you protect me from the monsters, I’ll make sure you don’t become one of them.”

“So...you’ll stay?”

Relief was so intense that he closed his eyes, forcing himself to be still. It seemed to him the merest movement might send her fleeing like a faun.

“Of course,” she sighed, and he dared to look at her tremulous smile. “Do you really think I could leave any of you?” She lifted her damaged hand ruefully. “It’s only a couple of fingers, right?”

Her flippancy didn’t disguise the flash of fear in her eyes.

“You need healing,” he said, all too aware that he had taken Phi to be healed only a couple of weeks before. And suddenly a thought clicked into his mind with unerring accuracy.

That injury had been caused by Don. And Don had had the waft of dragons about his newfound power. Riose didn’t think there were any running around Ryars Valley right now, but he knew there were two people who had stolen dragon powers, two people who had meddled in this whole tangled affair and who were inevitably found on opposite sides of any argument.

Out of Chatoya Irkil and Bane Malefici, he knew which would support Don Ivan. By default, a healer and a potential ally was waiting for them.

“And I know just the person to do it,” he said, and stood with her in his arms.

“I can walk,” Celia protested.

“We don’t have time for that,” he told her, and then added grimly, “This is going to hurt your hand, Cee, but I wouldn’t unless I had to. Hang on.”

With that, he was running – faster than any human, fast enough for her to gasp and wince against him. The wind streamed by, time streaming with it, and he prayed that he was right. It was Celia in his arms: yet it was Phi in danger now, Phi in desperate need of help.

~*~

They crashed through the woods. Sensations spun by like flashes of a nightmare: the spiky black shapes of branches, her feet scratching and dragging in the dirt, her hair clumped in her mouth and her eyes.

His arm was tight about her throat, squeezing until her vision was greyed and disintegrating. Barely conscious, Phi was reduced to soundless fear inside her body, which became no more than a percussion instrument: hollow, noisy, fragile.

Relentless, Don Ivan dragged into the shadows and the secret places of Ryars Valley. The worst of it was his scent– lake water and musk and sweat, all-pervasive. She inhaled his cruelty with every breath. Time was fluid, rolling between her fingers – she was sixteen, she was eight, she was six and ten and thirteen, she was breathing him in and trying to hide, she was sixteen, she was eight...

~*~

The woods were unfamiliar to her – a vast dappled world that seemed new and dreamlike. Phi was used to water, to crowds, to noise that was constant and public. Here, every sound seemed an intrusion on the subtlety of the silence – the rustle of leaves, the crackle of the ground underfoot. Voices were vulgar as a scream in a cathedral.

It was almost like being underwater – murky, green, full of shadows and half-hidden shapes, but without the press of water, she felt lonely. A little scared. She clung to her father’s hand as if it were a lifebelt.

Around them, Don ran and darted, chattering eagerly. Others of the pod elders drifted in and out of her memory – adults murmuring of adult things, but the fraught atmosphere was unmistakable.

Then the walk ended: new figures, strange-smelling, entered. There were discussions and long pauses and then her father sent her and Don to play in the woods.

She hadn’t known him well enough to dislike him then. Instead, she followed him and waited silently at his side while he talked to some of the Pack boys. She didn’t like their snarling voices, their swagger, but she answered when they spoke to her; she tried to be her father’s daughter.

“Is it true about the pit?” Don had said, his voice eager.

The wolves had been a little older – eleven, twelve, the age gap enough for them to be condescending. “Depends what you’ve heard,” one of them said with a smirk.

“I heard there’s spikes at the bottom,” Don said. “I hear you keep prisoners there, and you torture them, and I heard that someone died there.” The last rushed out with ghoulish enthusiasm.

They neither confirmed nor denied the rumours; one of them offered, “We could show you it.”

Don’s eyes lit up.

So she found herself tramping after them until the adults’ voices were a burr, then were swallowed up by the silence of the forest. They walked until her legs ached and she was sticky and hot and tired. Then one of the boys pulled aside a rotten wooden cover to reveal a long, narrow well.

“There it is,” he said proudly. “That’s the pit.”

Phi tottered as close to the edge as she dared, and peered into it. “It just looks like a big hole to me,” she said dubiously. “I can’t see any spikes.”

“Well, they’re all rusted from the blood on ‘em,” one of the boys said. He didn’t sound too pleased that she was doubting him.

“It smells disgusting,” she announced. It was just a silly story – probably it was an old well, and they’d made up the tales to sound cool. The reality, though, was disappointing.

“Well, it would!” a wolf said indignantly. “It’s the pit.”

“It’s a stinky old hole,” she retorted. “My dad’s got bigger holes in his yard.”

“Has not!”

“Has too!”

Throughout the exchange, Don was circling the pit, his eyes fixed on it. From every angle, he peered in, his fascination seemingly that of any small boy confronted with a gruesome story.

“Has not! It’s the pit.”

“It’s the pits,” she mocked. With unerring diplomatic skill, Phi continued this line of argument until the wolves stormed off in a rage.

“Now how are we going to get back?” Don demanded. He was squinting into the dark hole, face screwed up in thought.

“It’s not that hard,” she said defiantly. “If dumbos like them can manage it, it’ll be easy for us to get back. We’re pod, aren’t we?”

He didn’t answer her for a while. When he did speak, he sounded abstracted and remote.

“You’re right, I can’t see the spikes,” he said. “D’you think they were making it up?”

She shrugged. “We could throw in a rock or something. We’d hear if it hit them.” She was beginning to get bored of the Pack’s mighty pit. The woods, she decided, were kind of creepy.

“Not if it missed,” he muttered.

“Let’s go back,” she said. “It’s boring.”

He glanced up – and though she saw the strange glitter of his eyes, she didn’t understand what it meant. “Hey, I think I see a skull. Come look!”

She was stupid. She fell for a trick that Wile E Coyote would have snubbed: she went over, interest briefly reawakened and peered in-

Although later no one would believe her, she felt the hand on her back – she felt the shove. She woke from nightmares feeling it, toppling down, down, down into darkness and waking to tangled sheets and a thundering heart.

She fell, she flew – for a moment, she couldn’t tell, time dragged down with her by ruthless gravity, by the call of the pit. Smell of decay, death, ordure – a grey-white glint, air in her ears-

Pain broke into her leg like a wild animal, tearing, cruel. She managed only a thin wail, hands scrabbling to the source of her agony, shock black, swamping her...

Before she passed out, she knew one fact: there were spikes in the pit. One of them was in her leg.

~*~

It must have been moments before she came around again, sobbing. The pain was still there, big and overwhelming and harsh.

She gazed up into the circle of light. As long as she lived, the sight would haunt her: Don leaned over, and it was as if he had torn off a mask to reveal the Halloween monster beneath. His eyes were hot, hungry, drinking in the sight of her in the gloom.

“Get Daddy!” she pleaded between tears. “Don, please, get Daddy, I’m hurt.”

She didn’t understand him, even then. She thought it had all been some awful accident: that he would be sorry, run and fetch her father and it would all somehow be okay. But he didn’t.

He stood, watching her, that expression of glee and desire plastered on his face.

When he spoke, his voice was tremulous and excited. “Does it hurt?”

“Yes, please, get help!”

Her eyes were adjusting to the gloom. Her nose was full of the stench of old blood and mud and rot. In the corner, she saw a pale, long shape – another, clusters of them, and when she reached out for one in her daze of pain and confusion, she saw that they were bones. Bones with gnaw-marks – she flung it away, moaning.

Mud and blood and bone. People had died down here, and she was hurting so much, and the darkness seemed to be closing in, swallowing her...

She screamed, screaming until her throat felt like it was dangling in tatters. She begged to him, towering over her like a golden angel, knowing that she was alone except for him, that he was the only one who could help her.

She truly thought she would die, pinned upon the pit like a butterfly.

And he watched her. For what felt like hours he watched, drinking in her pain and fear, and when she heard his laughter as she flitted in and out of consciousness, she tried to scream again, but had no voice left.

There, in the dark, she learned his true nature. She never forgot the lesson, even when he grew bored of her and went to find adults. Even when she was lifted out by soft hands, when her father cuddled her as praises showered on Don for being so brave – coming back alone, making his ways through the woods like that.

Tears glistened in his eyes as she pointed at him through a haze of painkillers, accusing. Of course no one believed her in the face of his scraped hands, of how fast he had run, his own tears. It was a virtuoso performance.

And she never forgot what he had taught her in the pit.

She never stopped fearing him.

~*~

When Riose put her carefully on her feet, Celia was dizzy with pain. No matter how he had tried, the run had jolted her hand until she felt sick. For a moment, she clung to him as the only safety in a treacherous world, and he was warm, solid, folding around her like he could protect her from all the world.

If only, Ri. But you and I know better than that, don’t we?

Wearily, she drew away. He’d deposited them in front of someone’s door. “Where are we?”

In answer, he stepped up and rang the doorbell.

They waited in terse silence. She heard the sound of scuffling eventually, and the door was flung open by Chatoya Irkil. Celia knew her – she was one of Aspen’s friends, if one he treated with something close to wariness, and she’d seen the witch with Mr Jubatus too. She was dressed for bed, her hair falling in a dark cloud about her, her green eyes soft and curious.

“Can I...” Her eyes dropped to Celia’s hand, and she said in an entirely different tone, “Who did that?”

“Don Ivan,” Riose said, voice almost neutral. Almost. “He’s got Phi.”

The witch’s mouth drew tight. “I hope you haven’t come to try and guilt-trip me, Riose.”

“I came to see if you would heal Celia.” There was unexpected ice in the words. “I’m not stupid enough to expect anything more. You made your views on Phi’s predicament very clear.”

When? Confused, she looked from one to the other.

“Take care,” warned Chatoya. “Even I don’t have unlimited patience.”

She heard Riose draw a harsh breath, and she was expecting one of his cool put-downs, then he let it out and said, “My apologies. Please – I need your help.”

“The question is,” said a smooth voice, “what are you prepared to pay for it?”

She’d never seen Riose move so fast. Suddenly he was in front of her – protecting her, she realised, tense as a cat waiting to pounce.

“Not enough,” Riose snapped.

“It’s okay, Ri,” she said, nudging him aside. “I know him.”

Riose was looking at her as if she was mad. Blue Malefici, on the other hand, was wearing an amused smile that she’d seen a dozen times before. He was one of Aspen’s friends – one of the few people Aspen seemed genuinely easy with – and over the years, they’d run into one another often enough for her to know a few things about him.

“You’ve met me,” corrected Blue. “I’m not sure that counts as knowing.”

I know Aspen likes you, even though you scare him. I know Vaje hates you. And I know two secrets about you.

“Well,” she said softly, her heart hammering, “who really knows the Demon Fury?”

Now I know one secret about you.

The silence was vast as the sky. She dared meet his eyes and had to look away – something dark yawned there, opening out into emotions she had never seen and could not even qualify. She could not help but be aware that she was human, frail, infinitely breakable.

She had been afraid of Don. It was nothing to the terror that gripped her now.

“Don’t hurt her,” she heard Riose whisper. It was a plea, not a command.

“I had no idea you knew.” Blue sounded...thoughtful. “Martin’s carelessness, I suppose.”

“Someone’s carelessness,” she answered, cautious. See. I am learning. All those years I’ve known, and I never tried to break your mask. I played along, same as the rest of them, and no one ever guessed. But now we might need you – we might have to bargain. “You helped Phi.”

“If you want to call it that, yes.”

“Why?”

He shrugged, a languid, graceful gesture. So might a tiger shrug, settling before a wounded prey. “She was willing to pay.”

“And if we’re willing to pay again?” Her voice was husky, she realised, frightened. The pain was throbbing in her finger. She felt old, tired, as if she was dealing away her soul piece by piece.

“No.” The clipped word was spoken in unison – Chatoya and Riose stared at one another, then the witch said quietly, “I won’t let it happen.”

“I fail to see how you can stop any of this,” he said calmly. “They need help; I’m willing to provide it.”

“For a price.” The bitterness in Chatoya’s voice startled her. “All your help has a price.”

“A fair trade.” His smile was thin, serpentine. “Or do you really think they’ll let Don Ivan kill Delphine? That is how it will end. She defied him in front of the entire pod. He won’t let such humiliation pass. And mark me, he will want to shame her as badly as he feels she has shamed him.”

Chatoya was pale except for the two bars of scarlet on her cheeks, still as if his words had frozen her.

“He knows how to make her weak,” he continued softly. “After all, he has done it before. He knows the power of darkness and pain and despair – and love. He will use her love to make her docile, to break her piece by piece until all she knows of love is how deadly it can be. And when he tires of her, when she is his completely and nothing remains but shreds and madness, he will kill her.”

“As if you care,” Chatoya said, but her voice was tremulous.

“For her, no. For the gain I can make here?” He turned to Riose and his face was imperious, icy. “What will you give me for her life, Riose?”

Riose shook his head, but Celia could see him deciding.

“I have something to offer you,” she said quietly.

Riose grabbed her, holding her as easily as if she were made of feathers and string. “No.”

She ignored him, staring down Blue from the cage of her friend’s arms, the wind flicking her hair into knots and whirls. What she looked like to him, she couldn’t imagine – small, pathetic, insignificant.

“And what might that be?”

She avoided his eyes, but her voice was surprisingly steady. “My silence.”

“About what? My other identity? The silence isn’t for my safety.”

“Not that.”

“Then what?” He spoke idly, but his stillness was that of a predator lulling its prey.

I know one secret about you. Just one. And once it’s gone, nothing will keep me safe.

“Enough.” The strain was raw in Chatoya’s voice. “I’ll help you. No price. No debts. My help, this once.”

“Why?” Riose asked, unexpectedly suspicious.

“Because I’m tired of seeing people who should know better throw themselves at the Furies. Because if Don doesn’t kill you, he will later.” Her fists were clenched. “Give me your hand, Celia.”

“We need more help than that,” ventured Riose.

Chatoya’s grip wasn’t gentle: Celia gasped as magic rushed into her fingers, and her bones rearranged themselves in a blur of black pain.

“You’ll get it,” Chatoya said flatly. “I’ve called someone. She swore to protect Phi – she’s on her way.”

“Who?”

“Ask her when you see her.” She bit out the words as if every one was a curse. “Bandage that hand when you get home. If you get home. And don’t ask me for any more favours, Riose. I swore I’d keep the Furies out of Ryars Valley. You made me break that promise.”

“I didn’t make you,” he said curtly. “We would have paid Blue.”

“Then you’re an idiot,” she said, and slammed the door on them.

Celia let out a breath she hadn’t know she was holding. Her hand was now swollen and bruised around the knuckles, but the pain had subsided to a dull ache. It felt wrenched, no more.

“Why did you do that?” Riose asked, and she turned to see him staring at Blue with nothing short of astonishment. “You knew what was going to happen.”

“Don’t you have a friend to keep from a grisly death?” Blue said breezily. “I’d run if I were you. With a temper like hers, she’s liable to provoke Don Ivan beyond any hope of reprieve.”

Riose grimaced, then said, “But-”

“Ri,” she said. She could see it in his eyes – the hunger, the need to unravel a mystery, to dive back into the cryptic politics of the Furies. Some part of him still belonged to them, she was sure.

But it was her job to keep him human, wasn’t it?

He let out his breath. “It’ll be quicker if I carry you.”

It was only moments before they were gone. She didn’t glance back. Instead she huddled down into Riose’s grip, into all the safety remaining to her and didn’t dare to think how close they might have come to disaster if Chatoya hadn’t intervened, if...

But we didn’t, she told herself. Help is coming. That’s all that matters.

~*~

Chatoya leaned back against the door. There was no mistaking the tension in her body, born as much of despair as of anger. She closed her eyes; for a moment, only a moment, and he wondered what images taunted her in the darkness of her thoughts.

“You did what you had to,” Cougar said quietly from where he was sat on the couch. Common sense had kept him out of sight; now he got up, not sure if she would welcome comfort.

“I did what they made me do.” Her voice was ragged. “I did what he wanted.”

He eyed her, then said carefully, “You did the right thing, babe.”

Her eyes flew open: wild, turbulent, they belonged to a stranger. The girl he had always known had been so serene, able to find a pool of stillness in herself even when all the world was crumpling about her. No more. The years and the Furies had changed her.

“Then why has it all gone wrong?” she demanded. “I tried to keep Delphine Thetis away from us, and now she’s Blue’s, heart and soul, same as all the others. If I hadn’t meddled,” the word tripped off her tongue coated in acid, “he’d have Riose and Celia Slone to play with too.”

Heart and soul? No, he didn’t think that was right. Delphine Thetis, it seemed to him, had a lot of both, but she didn’t belong to Blue, no matter what his half-brother had tried to take from her. As for Riose, he’d wrested free of Nightfire long ago, and wasn’t so stupid as to fling away his freedom. And Celia – well, she was a Slone. He suspected that even Blue wouldn’t want to explain his darker deeds to her mother.

Whose heart and soul are you so afraid for, really?

“It hasn’t gone wrong,” he said. “if anything, it sounds like it’s starting to go right. You’ve deprived that bastard of his pickings for tonight – you’ve helped Phi Thetis, you’ve helped Celia and Riose. Where’s the problem?”

“I’m trying to keep the Furies away from Ryars Valley!” she snapped, and shoved herself away from the wall as if she might fly at him. “I’ve spent so much time trying...and he’s won again.”

“Won?” he echoed softly, astounded. “When did this start being about winning? I thought this was about doing what was right.”

She stared at him, bewildered, silent. Then something fractured in her face, and she was trembling. “What’s happened to me, Cougar?” she whispered. “I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

Nearly a Fury, I think. Nearly lost.

“You’re not who you were, babe,” he said quietly.

She looked past him, eyes elsewhere. “I can’t be who I was. Do you think I could survive the Furies if I was?”

“Yes,” he answered, honest, needing her to see what the rest of them had seen so clearly and been unable to speak of. “I think you could. You’re so strong, babe, maybe stronger than anyone I’ve ever known. You used to care about what was right. You were going to change them – but somewhere along the way, they changed you. I’ve never seen you turn your back anyone – but you left Phi Thetis to that slimy son-of-a-bitch like you didn’t care. You sent her into Blue’s arms! Christ! She’s a kid, a scared kid and you sent her to him.”

“I...I...” She crumpled – she was falling, and he couldn’t see her face because it was lost in the mesh of black hair and white fingers. “I thought it was what was right.”

He knelt down, but didn’t dare touch her. Somewhere, she had become distant, separated by her secrets. “No, babe. It was what you wish someone had done for you.”

Her laugh was choked with tears. “That obvious, huh?”

“Little bit, yeah,” he muttered. “To people who know you.”

“What am I going to do?” Her voice was forlorn.

“Be yourself,” he said. “Kick some ass. Do some good. Stop regretting.” He brushed her arm; her eyes gazed at him like a trapped creature. “Come over to Jepar’s tonight and talk to some people who know damn well who you are.”

Her smile was flickering and unsure. “I could do that.”

“Good.” He blew her a kiss, and left her there. The rest was up to her. And he hoped, god, he hoped, that she would come back to them. “See you later, then.”

~*~

Finn had to stagger to a stop as a stitch bit into his side. Jo had streaked off ahead long ago and only her terse stream of directions kept him on her trail. They had to keep back to make sure Don didn’t notice them, but Jo knew Phi’s scent well enough to follow her through hell.

Riose burst into his head, radiating cold purpose. We’re coming back to you. Help’s on the way.

It had better be powerful help. We’ve just found out who’s behind all this.

Yeah, I thought it was the Furies, but looks like I was wrong. Who’s pulling the strings?

Finn still could hardly believe it himself. It seemed like a fairy tale. Avarice ap Sangager.

Well, the Furies have sent us some help. Someone who swore to protect Phi, apparently, Riose said.

Finn sincerely hoped they were someone big and bad enough to take on Avarice ap Sangager. He had only heard a few stories about her, but none of them had been pleasant. Anyone who’d managed to give their name to a personality trait like that wasn’t going to be.

Voracious, he remembered his mother saying. She hungered for everything, sinking her teeth into people’s hearts and minds and chewing them into nothing, into madness, into despair.

And then a new voice broke over them like a waterfall, feminine and ancient yet strangely gentle. That would be me.

He could sense Riose’s surprise. And you are…?

Finn recovered himself in time to say, Err, me. Are you really Ryar ap Sangager – didn’t you make the mer?

The contact broke: he and Riose were left in a puddle of stunned silence.

You know, Finn said thoughtfully, I think we might be okay after all.

Riose sounded more cheerful. Yep. If there’s one person you really don’t want crashing in on your grab for power, it’s got to be your incredibly powerful and pissed-off younger sister.

Barbecue at mine after? Dish of the day: tuna steaks.

He felt Riose’s amusement, grim but there. Let’s get Phi before we start planning the victory celebrations.

Pragmatist, Finn muttered sulkily.

He broke the contact – and started. A woman was waiting for him, a woman as willowy and graceful as a twist of smoke, as pale and translucent as if she threw back the moon’s gleaming light. He wondered if he should bow, but settled for gawping at her. How had she moved so fast?

He'd expected some kind of wild beauty. Once the shock of her was past him, he saw she was slight. Her face held no great wisdom, nothing but an uncertainty that he hadn't expected at all, despite the weight of power in her gaze.

"Um...hi," he said weakly. Not, perhaps, his most eloquent moment.

Ryar ap Sangager raised an eyebrow. Everything about her was soft as water, almost yielding. “Shall we go?”

“This way,” he muttered, picking up Jo’s trail again.

He was walking with a legend. Yet in the faded light, she looked frighteningly ordinary.

~*~

Phi could not say how long she floated amidst memories, besieged by her terror. Time and again she tried to master it, only to have it master her. She was beaten down by the bar of his arm across her throat, by her feet scuffing on the ground, by the silky threats he hissed in her ear.
It seemed that past, present and future met and meshed and he sat at their center, the only certainty left in her life: Don Ivan.

And suddenly, his grip was gone – she slammed into a stone floor, and only gazed at it stupidly for a moment. Free of the scent, the feel, the sight of him, some of her fear slackened. She could think again: she was somewhere cold, stinking of smoke.

Phi raised her head. What met her eyes made no sense. The vast cavern, lit by coughing torches, she could understand. Directly in front of her was a throne made of stone, that too made sense.

But what was in it...

It couldn’t be alive. Nothing that looked like that could be. It was so decayed that it took her long minutes to see the shapes of humanity – those blind white globs had been eyes, and the sloughing, grey-green matter was skin. The curled, brittle twigs were fingers, oozing blood where the knuckles divided; slowly she divined nose and lipless, sneering mouth, then she saw the hitch of the chest, and recoiled.

It was alive. Whatever this pathetic thing was, it lived.

Then she heard Don, his voice full of reverence. “I have brought her.”

The voice that spilled over her like poison was surprisingly strong, melodious. It shouldn’t have belonged to something like that. And Phi stopped pitying the creature, and began to fear it.

And she will be yours when I am done with her. How small she looks. I expected...more.

“Who are you?” she whispered, needing confirmation, even knowing the answer.

And the laughter that rolled from it was rich, sleek, satisfied. Surely you know that much by now. Or did my burning one truly keep his promise? How – unlikely.

Even the allusion to Zeke was excruciating. Phi fought for calm: she found only fear.

It leaned forward – no, she, she leaned forward. Tell me who I am, she demanded, and Phi heard a savage need in that voice. Say my name!

“Avarice,” she said helplessly. “Avarice ap Sangager.”

And all the roads we have to walk are winding
And all the lights that lead us there are blinding
There are many things that I would like to say to you
But I don’t know how

Ripples Part Twenty Two

Could I change the way you feel?
Could I make you see there’s more than holding o?
Could you ever let your heart believe again?

“No,” Zeke said flatly to Marie Thetis. “I wouldn’t hurt Phi. I couldn’t.”

Her laugh was bones cracking. “You wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t already done that. See, I know your life backwards. I know you’ve already broken her heart.”

He didn’t want to think of it. He couldn’t, or he would hear those words again as if they were scored into his flesh: I think I could have loved you.

As Avy’s curse continued its work, as his skin split, oozed, bubbled, it seemed only fit penance for what he had done to Phi. The slender chance that he could somehow help her was all that kept him from yielding to the pain, from crawling back to Avy and demanding she put him out of his misery at last.

“I didn’t want to,” he said.

“Do you think I care? You hurt my little girl. And I suppose I should thank you for helping me, but what does that matter if she’s lost? If she’s...”

A sob shattered her words, and Marie Thetis raised a shaking hand to brush away the tears.

“Her and Daniel,” she whispered. “I tried so hard to save them and I lost them both.”

She was an uncanny reflection of Ryar in the days before the war, when she had watched it loom ever nearer while all her hope drained away. Her eyes had been as dead and tired too.

But Ryar hadn’t known everything about prophecy. Fearing it, loathing it as she had, she had never questioned the mechanics or the limitations of her ability. It had taken Avy to make him understand that – Avy ploughing grimly through her own future with nothing to guide her but her need to survive.

“Maybe not,” he said.

“There is no hope,” she said leadenly. “The pod is broken.”

“No,” he said fiercely. “There’s still hope. And don’t tell me that you’ve seen every possible future – you haven’t. You can’t. Even Ryar couldn’t. She didn’t foresee that the witches could win the war. And do you know why?”

She gazed back, uncomprehending.

“If you can’t believe in it, you can’t see it. And Ryar never had any belief in herself. She still fought for them, but only because she thought it was right, not because she had any hope at all of victory.”

Bemusement made her face soft, an illusory youth. “What?”

“It’s the only limitation of your gift.”

“That and the gruesome death,” she said curtly. “I’ve never heard of this before.”

“You wouldn’t have. It’s not common knowledge. My owner studied prophecy. It was her...hobby.”

Yes, Avy had studied it in cruel, slow ways, stealing those with even a hint of prophecy from their homes and keeping them shut in the dark as she made them look into the future for her. She could dredge forth no future which showed her youth returned, but she did discover the limits of belief.

So many died for it. And it will almost be worth it if it can save Phi now.

“And who is this mighty owner, who knows what Ryar ap Sangager didn’t?” Marie said acidly.

“Avarice ap Sangager,” he said softly. “And she has Phi.”

Shock blanched her.

“So believe,” he said. “Believe that Phi is human, and that I can help her, and find me the future that I need to save her. Please."

I...I don’t know if I can,” she whispered. “My Daniel is gone. If Avarice ap Sangager is truly behind this, how can anyone hope to stand against her? Why does she even want Phi?”

“Avy wants to be young again – beautiful again. The war left her mutilated. Phi has some part to play in helping her, but I don’t know what. I do know that she won’t survive it. You have to believe – if you don’t...”

The door slammed downstairs. Both of them jumped, and Zeke grabbed for the rolling pin again, ignoring the fingers that swelled and broke. Feet thundered up the stairs – the door opened-

“Dan!”

Daniel Thetis gazed around the room in bewilderment, taking in Laurence Ivan’s slumped form, his wife pale in the bed, the stranger whose wounds bloomed like a grotesque garden at every changing moment. Then with three steps he was at the bed and clutching his wife, cupping her face and kissing her as if he had thought he’d never see her again.

“You’re wet...” she said dazedly, touching his hair. “They...he...”

“That little bastard tried to drown me,” Phi’s father said grimly. “He didn’t succeed.” He turned to Zeke. “I assume you’re the reason Marie is safe.”

“Yes,” he said huskily. “And the reason Phi is in danger.” His knee dislocated under him, and Zeke groaned, clinging to the furniture until it healed.

“Is that so?” her father said, ice in each word.

“But I want to, to try and make amends,” he said, and coughed up smoke again. “I-”

“I know who he is,” Marie interrutped. “I’ve seen him, Dan. And...and if what he says is true, maybe he can help us to save Phi.” Her eyes were liquid, shining. “I didn’t think you would come back to me. If you can, maybe she can.”

Daniel Thetis’s eyes gauged him, calm. “I trust my wife,” he said quietly. “What do you need?”

“I need her to look into the future and believe that Phi can be saved-”

“No!” Daniel turned to his wife, white as she was. “It will kill you, Marie.”

“I’m dying anyway,” she said quietly. “A few days, that’s all. You know it as well as I.”

“And if you see nothing that will help her?” he whispered. “I can’t lose you both.”

“Trust me,” she said. “You trusted me every other time. I’m not afraid. I have you here, and I have a beautiful daughter who won’t let herself die for the pod – a beautiful daughter that I won’t let die either.”

“Marie,” he pleaded, but Zeke could see that all the fight had gone from him.

“Hush,” she said gently, and then she closed her eyes.

Moments passed: she was still as a wax doll, except for sweat that beaded at her forehead. Slowly the colour drained from her until her skin seemed thin as a camellia petal, clinging to her skull. Breath barely stirred her; other than that, she might already have been dead, an effigy of herself.

Beside her, Daniel Thetis held her hand and waited with slumped shoulders.

Her body jolted violently. She took an almighty gasp - her eyes flung wide open, and she gazed up at her husband. She strained for breath. “One thing you must do for me...”

“Anything.”

“You must stay here. You mustn’t go to Phi. You’ll only be...used to hurt her.” Her hand fluttered feebly, beckoning Zeke.

He staggered over, leaning down to her greyed lips. Her voice was nearly gone, a thin thread of sound.

“You were right...” she said. “I had to believe. So do you. Be...be what you are, and you can save her. Dan...”

Zeke felt an intruder on the two of them, the intensity palpable. Her husband bent close, stroking her hair with hands that shook.

“I have always loved you, you know,” Marie said in a voice that was rough with pain. “And you loved me too...”

“I still love you, you stupid woman,” was his ragged reply, and tears streamed down his face. “Why couldn’t you stay?”

She took a great, ragged breath as if to answer: only air slid out in a soft, surprised way, and then she was still.

Daniel Thetis cried out; he touched her hands, her hair, her cheeks as if he could rekindle her life by sheer force of will, as if he could hold off the truth a little longer. But slowly he stilled and then lifted her into his arms, cradling her, forehead bent to hers in a last embrace.

When he raised his head, his eyes were red and terrible. “Go. You have killed my wife. Now save my daughter.”

Stumbling, Zeke went, not daring to say that her words had been a riddle and not an answer.

Behind him, harsh, broken sobs wracked the night. He could bear no more weeping – it had to end, even if he couldn’t see how. There was a way. Marie Thetis had seen it.

And if he didn’t know what she had meant, he knew where to go: back to the cold cavern where Avarice ap Sangager defied death on her stone throne.

~*~

Jo was waiting for them against a wall of rock, back in human form although her nails were still too long, her body a touch too fluid. Her eyes widened at the sight of Ryar ap Sangager; at Finn’s small nod of confirmation, she made a gruff bow.

“Don’t,” Ryar said with something close to horror. “Those days are long gone.”

“Tell that to your sister.”

Ryar’s face was set, determined. “I intend to.”

Jo gestured and Finn saw that the rocky wall funnelled into a narrow, black passage. “I think you’ll find her there. If you need help, just scream horribly, and we’ll know it’s not going well.” Her claws glimmered against the rock like seed pearls. “We might not be dragons, but I’ll bet we’ve got a trick or two that might come in handy.”

Power unfurled around Ryar – Finn gasped as it hit him, immense, squeezing the breath from his lungs before it was pulled under her control. It shook the air about her so that everything seemed in motion, so that she was the still point of a world in chaos.

“So I have I,” she said.

Then, finally, he believed that it could be all right.

When she vanished into the tunnel, he felt as if some of the light had gone from the world. And for a moment – just a moment – he wished he could have lived in the Burning Times and tasted that power and that awe every day.

Instead, he lit a fire from some twigs and crouched close to it, trying to ignore how feeble his own magic felt.

~*~

So you know me. Avarice ap Sangager’s voice was full of satisfaction. She was still, except for one hand, which caressed a little bag as if it held precious gems. Phi kept her eyes on it; better than looking up to see the rest of her, decaying but still alive.

“What do you want with me?” croaked Phi. “I don’t have any power. I’m not even mer.”

That brittle laughter rattled in her head for a long time. You don’t know, do you? Did your mother really shelter you so much?

“I don’t understand.”.

“I’m not a seer,” she said, baffled.

“No. There are no more seers. My mother is the last,” she insisted. A quick glance at Don showed equal bemusement on his face. “She wouldn’t...she wouldn’t lie...”

But the words withered in her mouth as she thought of all the lies her parents had told – the truths buried, the past they had striven to conceal from her.

“I can’t be,” she whispered, and the stone floor swallowed the words. “I’ve never had the d-dreams-”

Except for the dream of Zeke, burning up. Except for the vision of her friends trapped in mirrors. Except for that ancient memory of Ryar and Zeke.

No...

Deny it all you want, the thing upon the throne said, amused. The truth will make itself known soon enough.

She felt sick to her stomach. If it was true, there was only one way for her to become the next seer. Her mother would have to die.

And although she had lived in expectation of it for many years, although she had known it was inevitable, she felt tears clawing their way up her throat. All the cruel words she had said crowded in on her, the anger, the pain – and everything that her mother had said or done shone in a new, alien light.

She tried to protect me, in her way. She didn’t know how else to do it.

“Don’t kill her,” she pleaded.

Sweet, but stupid. She heard the scorn in its voice even though nothing changed upon the wrecked face. You will pick up her mantle. You will do what she could not. And you cannot do that while she lives.

To hear her mother’s words parroted so effortlessly back her was like a punch to the gut. Suddenly she understood that Avarice ap Sangager had seen everything – had watched over it all like a spider dangling above the sticky trap of her web.

It poured cold anger into her. Phi began to glimpse how they had been used and moved, mere pawns in this vast and elegant game that led to some conclusion she could not foresee.

Yet.

I am my father’s daughter, and I must be brave. And now I must be my mother’s daughter too, and be strong.

“But she does still live,” she said grimly.

Are you so sure? Avarice said, and her laughter began to spill over the air, triumphant, sinister.

And it spiralled into Phi’s head, until it seemed that all she could hear was the echo of laughter as if it came to her in a dream more potent than the reality about her: and then it faded, as all the world about her faded.

She was beside her mother’s bed, and every figure in the room was thin and shadowy, except for her mother who shone with a strange, pearly light. Those grey eyes looked straight at her, and it seemed that she heard something her mother had said to her long ago, when she had been a child wanting to know her own future.

“No,” she whispered in a world where no one could hear her.

It seemed her mother looked at her, saw her, knew her.

“I have always loved you, you know,” she said in a voice that was rough with pain. “And you loved me too...”

“Yes, always,” she whispered, not knowing if she would be heard. It didn’t matter about the arguments, the heated words; it only mattered that her mother was dying, that there was nothing beyond this but silence and grief and the love that limped on, bisected, bereft, unreciprocated.

She felt her mother’s life vanish as softly and lightly as a dandelion seed blown away by the wind. A wild, anguished cry rose up and she didn’t recognise it as her own before the world twisted again and she was thrown into the future.

Prophecy exploded in her veins like fireworks, overriding her grief with callous indifference. She saw...

A girl with blond hair and wolf-green eyes stood on the jetty at the lake, whistling a song that quivered on the air. Her successor. The same girl, older and wilder, slapping a boy in the street as passers-by tried not to stare; tripping down stairs with a terrible cry, diving into the lake, scribbling at school, dancing under flashing lights, doing handstands in a garden, shouting, screaming, laughing, crying.

The future whirled dizzily past her, flash after flash – her head thundered as if it might burst open. She screamed at the intensity of it, barely able to hear her own voice over the sounds and sights of a world as yet unborn, shouts and songs and traffic melding into one ceaseless roar...

It was gone.

She collapsed to the floor, her muscles water.

My mother is gone.

She felt hollow, terribly empty, only the future hovering ever close to fill her up.

Avarice was watching her with a red and gummed smile. So she is dead.

Phi hated her glee, her triumph. Hated her because it was true.

She had to think of her mother as angry, proud, determined. To think of her any other way was to quiver on the edge of grief, knowing she might crumble and be unable to fight.

So she raised her head and got to her feet, because she was her father’s daughter, and she looked her enemy in her blind eyes and swore to overthrow her, because she was her mother’s daughter. “What do you want from me?”

“The same as she always wants,” a new voice said that Phi recognised at once. “Everything.”

There, stood beneath the vast arch of the entrance, slight and pale as a snowdrop against the darkness, was Ryar ap Sangager.

~*~

“Riose! Cee!” Finn stood as they burst out of the woods. He felt jittery with worry, but some of that eased as he saw that Celia’s hand was healed and neither of them looked hurt. Riose put her on her feet with what seemed a reluctance to let go of her, which a new and interesting development that Finn would have to interrogate him about later. “You took your time.”

“I was getting us some supernatural help, in case you’ve forgotten,” the vampire retorted. He glanced at the tunnel. “In there?”

“Yeah.” Finn couldn’t help but notice his wary tone. “That a problem?”

“I think it might be,” Riose said grimly. “There’s a huge cave system under the valley. Fireblade built it – it’s where Nightfire was founded.”

“That’s creepy, darling, but I don’t see how it’s an issue,” Jo murmured.

“He built spells into it. It destroys dragon powers – they’re helpless. They’re as human as you or me. If Ryar’s in there...”

“Oh god,” Celia breathed.

“We have to go in after them,” said Jo. “Cee, you stay-”

“You need me along,” she interrupted firmly. For some reason, she looked at Riose, and her face was gentler. “As a reminder. Ri will look after me.”

He smiled rather shyly, and to Finn’s immense surprise, said, “Stay close.”

Jo’s raised eyebrows said she was just as taken aback, but she gave no other reaction. “Then let’s go.”

“This is mad,” Finn volunteered. He called up his strongest spells. It felt good: power hot and liquid in his veins, licking along his skin with the same fuzzy warmth as alcohol. For a moment, he believed himself invulnerable, invincible – a hero, if only in caves where dragons and mermaids had no power.

Then common sense reasserted itself.

“This is insane,” he muttered, but sent fire to light their way as they followed the path down to where the wicked witch was waiting.

~*~

It was like something from a story. Phi gazed at Ryar, hardly able to believe it was real.

Ryar said gently, “Did you think I would abandon one of my own?”

Phi gave her a tremulous smile in reply, then the question on her lips tumbled out. “My...my mother?”

Her expression dimmed, and gave the answer before she spoke. “I am sorry, Phi. It had gone too far.”

It had been such a small hope, but a persistent one. Perhaps she should have felt disappointed, but she knew how far her mother’s illness had gone: she had watched her wilt over the years, watched her sink into death in slow gradients. It would have been a miracle.

And somehow, she just couldn’t believe in miracles anymore.

Sister. Astonishment and something incomprehensible in Avarice’s voice. You live.

“As do you.” It was pity soft in Ryar’s eyes, in her outstretched hand. “Barely.”

There was a terrible sound – a wet, fleshy ripping noise. Phi glanced back and gagged on the waft of foul odour that came as Avarice ap Sangager rose from her throne, sores breaking on her paper-thin skin, pus rolling down her legs.

Vomit was acid in her throat as she saw maggots fall to the ground in white clumps.

I am not what I was, Avarice said bitterly. Are you?

“Oh, Avy,” Ryar said, fingers rising to cover her mouth. She came forward, fearless, able to look at this monstrosity and see – what? The sister she had known, perhaps.

Don’t pity me. And then its mouth stretched open – yellowed teeth poked from shrivelled gums, and to Phi’s astonishment, Avarice ap Sangager spoke with the last of her voice. “Heal me.”

“I can’t.” Ryar’s face creased with regret. “Avy, nothing I can do can heal this. I can’t turn back time.”

Avy’s face twisted. Power blasted from her hands in a hot wind that flung Ryar to the tips of her toes, arms akimbo and a terrible scream torn from her throat. That beautiful gleaming hair streamed back, revealing her agonised face, all teeth and whites of her eyes, and the dark stubs of her horns laid bare.

Phi expected it to last seconds – that Ryar would fight back, but as time ticked by and still she hung there, shrieking and agonised, it became obvious that she couldn’t.

“Stop,” Phi cried, unable to bear it. “Please, stop. You’ll kill her.”

The blind eyes swivelled to her, and a thin smile stretched Avarice’s face. I suppose I might. And that would be a waste.

Avy clenched her fists and Ryar dropped to the ground, gasping.

“Heal me or die,” she commanded again.

“She’s a dragon,” came Riose’s voice, measured if croaky.

No...not you too.

She felt her heart sink as they came out from the shadows just as Ryar had; somehow smaller, a grim little knot. Finn had fire prickling between his palms, as lurid as his hair; Jo’s eyes were that feral, bright green that promised claws and speed, and she saw the stillness, the calm about Riose that was the unmoving centre of a storm.

And Celia...

You shouldn’t have come. Of all of them, you’ve already been hurt enough for me. None of you should have come.

And yet some small part of her could only feel glad that they had – that they were her friends more truly than she had ever guessed.

“Go,” she mouthed, and Celia just gave her a look as mulish as it was wry.

“If that’s really Ryar ap Sangager, she’s the last living Drax. I think you might have a tough time killing her.” Riose sounded as if he didn’t quite believe it; as if he was testing for something.

A rattling sound emitted from Avarice. It was a moment before it was apparent as laughter. “Not here, boy. This is Nightfire’s birthplace, and it was made to withstand the Soulless King himself. No living dragon can cast a harmful spell in here.” With the slowness of age, Avy raised the little bag to her lips and kissed them. “Good job these are all dead. Now heal me, sister, or I’ll have your horns for my collection.”

When Ryar lifted her face, it was tearstained, and full of a kind of ferocity. It shone out from her as if she was the pole star, lighting the heavens, and for the first time Phi believed that this fragile woman might have forsaken everything she loved to save everything she believed in. “Then take them, Avy, but it will change nothing. You’re old, my sister, and your beauty is gone forever.”

The spell lanced out with such force that Ryar’s entire body jackknifed, and she sprawled flat on the stone. Phi thought for a horrible moment that she was dead, but then she saw the slight twitch of her eyelids.

“Nothing is forever, is it, Ryar?” hissed Avarice. “Not even death. If you can walk back from that, then you can make me young.”

Nothing but a slurred moan came from her lips in answer.

“Please...” Phi whispered and this time Avarice did hear her. Those clouded eyes turned to her and she wanted to buckle under their potency.

“She’s telling the truth,” she said. “She couldn’t...she couldn’t heal my mother either.”

She pressed a hand to her mouth to hold back the grief. She couldn’t think of it, couldn’t let it be more than dry words. In her mind, the truth kept trying to surface: that body so still in the bed, her ash grey hair spread on the pillow and her father sitting grim, heartbroken vigil until his daughter returned to make them a family again.

Words, just words...

“There is nothing she could not heal!” Avarice declared. “She bought back our brother from death.”

“Death is not time,” Riose said coolly, and now Phi was grateful for his support. “There are a thousand spells that can look into the past, but none that can turn it into the present. Don’t you think it would have been done by now? Do you think you’re the only one to quest for eternal youth?”

“I was the first!”

“And you have failed.” He approached, slender and fearless. “Time flies, it crawls, it can be lost and it can be made and it can be stopped if you have power enough, but it cannot be turned or undone. Even humans know that.”

Suddenly Riose was flung backwards, sailing through the air like a doll. She heard Celia shriek, but there was nothing any of them could do except watch him hit the wall opposite and crumple into a boneless heap.

But Avy was not done – she flexed her hands as if she expected claws to spring forth, and deep gashes opened on his skin; he jerked, once, twice, and blood spattered the air.

No-

And Jo was moving after him, her body streamlining, blurring. Behind her, fire flew from Finn’s fingers in deadly darts.

Another twist of Avy’s fingers – the darts hit a shield and rebounded. Suddenly Finn was dodging his own spell. A choked sound, a strange symbol in the air, and just as easily Jo was caught mid-spring, frozen.

Avy tilted her head, sending skin sloughing down her neck. Do you really have nine lives?

Jo’s eyes were wide, black; her paws scratched uselessly at the air.

Let’s find out, Avy said, and Jo went cartwheeling across the cavern with terrifying speed. She hit the wall with a resounding, gristly thud. She pitched to the floor, her body shuddering back into human form, curled and motionless. A graze smeared with dirt covered her cheek, and Phi expected her to get up and dust herself off.

She didn’t.

Don Ivan strutted up to Finn - and strut it was, devoid of fear. He never flinched - and the fire between his hands streamed at Avy, as if that might do anything when it was Don stalking closer with cruelty in his eyes. She knew why - because she was next to Avy, because Finn put her first, as he always did.

She opened her mouth to scream at him not to be so stupid-

The flames slid around Avy; her chuckle was a feral, snarled sound – the fear in Finn’s face was dreadful, but he didn’t falter, didn’t look away as Don grbbed him and held the witch ready for whatever judgment Avy laid upon him-

Phi didn’t realise she had grabbed Avy’s arm until she was wrestling with her, until she was slammed to the ground with a force that sent her into brief, pained darkness.

~*~

And what was he? As he dragged himself through the woods, Zeke dwelled on the question, desperately seeking an answer. The closer he came to Avy, the more his panic grew. What use was the vision if he couldn’t bring it to life?

What am I? A slave. A fool. A liar. A toy.

No. She must have meant something else.

What am I?

Suddenly the answer came to him with terrible simplicity. What he was at his core, beyond his flesh.

Fire.

I am fire, and I devour all before me.

And at last he realised that he had always known it would come to this. He had known from the minute Avy laid the curse upon him. Already he had ceased to belong to her; his loyalty had lain with Phi. And because of that, in word and thought he had betrayed her and now, inevitably, in deed.

His bones creaked under the weight of the truth, the pain flaring with each movement. He forced his eyes open, half-blind by tears that turned to steam as they left him. The woods wavered before him, but everything else seemed terribly clear.

I should have seen it long before. I should never have let it come to this.

But...but if I had not waited, I would never have met Phi, I would never have known what it was to love and be loved, I would never met someone who outshone every star in the sky.

I can’t change the past: not for Aurora, or for Jess, or for Phi.

But I can change what happens tonight.

He stepped forward, grimacing against the pain. From tree to tree he staggered, fresh wounds opening on and under his skin with each instant. He stumbled when his shin broke; when it was healed enough, he hoisted himself up and on towards that place where he knew she was.

Aching, Zeke went to Delphine Thetis and so inexorably, to Avarice ap Sangager. There was just one thing left to do.

If he had to die, it would at least be for her. It was all he could give her now: all he owed.

Ripples Part Twenty Three

Well, here I go again
I see the crystal vision
Well, I keep my visions to myself
It’s only me that wants to be wrapped around your dreams
And have you any dreams you’d like to sell?

“Ri...”

That was...Celia...crying, why was she crying...?

Riose.

Groggy, Phi realised she couldn’t have been out for more than a few seconds. Her head was pounding and she could taste blood in her mouth, but if that was the worst of her injuries, she’d got away lightly.

“Are you all done with theatrics?” Avy said calmly. “Yes, of course you are.”

Unseen power hauled her up into the air, and Phi forced herself to stay limp. Her fingers scraped along the floor and the weight of her hair fell away as her head lolled back; she felt exposed, knowing that Avy could do anything she wanted. And knowing that her only safety lay in playing dead.

She opened her eyes a slit. It wasn’t a reassuring sight.

Ryar was slumped on the floor, bloody marks along her body. Small gasps escaped her as new marks appeared, as if fingers had gouged burrows in her flesh. Beyond her, Phi could make out a shock of red hair as Finn convulsed on the ground, hands clawing at empty air.

Don loomed over him, eyes dreamy and fascinated as he twirled one finger. A choked, wordless sound came from Finn; and slowly Phi saw the pattern of his seizures matched the lazy spin of Don’s finger.

The pleasure in Don’s face was frightening.

“Can I kill him?” he enquired, voice thick with desire.

“Not yet,” Avy said dismissively. “Never kill what you can use.”

“We have Ryar. We have Phi. We don’t need her friends.”

“I think you underestimate my sister. The suffering of others is the only thing that can move her to action. Get up, Ryar.”

“I can’t,” croaked Ryar.

Avarice laughed. It was raspy, rattling, the sound of something near to death. “Then I’ll help you.”

She lurched past Phi, the exposed sinews withered and wiry, pulling in horrible motion. Ryar was dragged to her knees with a strangled cry, her head forced back by Avarice’s gnarled fingers. Throat bared, she seemed vulnerable as a faun under those blind eyes.

“How times have changed, sister,” Avarice said quietly, sliding a yellowed nail down Ryar’s neck. “The world was at your feet once. Now you are at mine.”

“I didn’t want the world,” Ryar gasped, her voice scraped thin and high by Avy’s chokehold.

“More fool you.”

“I can’t heal you, Avy.”

Phi expected that to anger Avy, but a twist of a smile bared her shrunken gums. “You would believe that. How sweet it must be for you to see me like this, for you to be the only siren left. You were nothing in the Soulless Court, sister, and you are only something now because the rest of us are forgotten and decayed.”

“Do you think I want to see you like this?”

Avy yanked back her head further; Ryar groaned, the tendons on her neck taut. It seemed that they might snap at any moment.

Could Ryar die here? If her powers were useless, did that make her human? And what would happen to the rest of them – how could her friends possibly hope to survive…?

“I remember well when you were a mistake our father made,” Avy snarled, and the space was swollen with her rage; vast, more animal than human. “You were a shadow, nothing but a voice in darkness. And you would have been a shadow forever if Fireblade hadn’t raised you high and married you to hurt me!”

“Please...”

“He never loved you,” Avy hissed, and threw Ryar forward; unable to brace herself, she hit the floor hard, yet for a moment, Phi thought she had sprung to her feet - then she saw that Ryar was rising up and up...

Her feet left the ground, kicking furiously as Avy’s magic raised her high once more. She writhed like an eel, eyes bulging and afraid, and Phi realised that she had seen that frantic dance in movies. Her fingers fluttered at her neck like moths as Avy’s smile spread until her face seemed nothing but a grinning skull.

In front of her eyes, Ryar ap Sangager was being hanged.

And then somehow, words drifted between Ryar’s gasps. “I...know...”

The magic vanished; she hit the floor like a dropped puppet, a limp tangle of arms and legs.

“What?”

And Phi glimpsed something she had never expected to see on Avarice ap Sangager: hope.

Ryar’s body heaved as she drew in breath after breath. At last she said shakily, “He didn’t love me. He had only one great love...”

“Who?” Avy demanded breathlessly.

“I did envy you, my sister.” She coughed, a rickety broken sound. “I envied you him.”

Avy let out a wild whoop. It echoed eerily about the cavern.

“But I still can’t heal you,” Ryar said, her face hopeless.

“Belief,” Avy whispered. “That’s all you need.”

“I ca-”

She was cut off; Avy scrabbled in her little bag, and Ryar was dragged across the ground by unseen hands until she was at her sister’s bony feet, wheezing for air.

Avy reached out; she caught Ryar’s face in one hand while the other was still moving in the bag, still drawing magic from the dragon horns within it. Phi could barely comprehend how she had acquired such trophies – but she knew now where Don had found his new power.

“By the blood between us,” Avy said, and Phi seemed to hear her voice echoing underneath as if she had heard these words before, “by the past that binds us...”

By the bond between us, by the magic that binds us...

“You will do everything in your power to heal me and do nothing that will harm me.”

you will reveal nothing of our plans to Delphine Thetis or anyone else

“Not by word or thought or deed.”

Shock lanced through her. Not by word or thought or deed.

That was why those words had resounded so strongly in Zeke’s mind – he had broken the oath that had bound him, broken it for her.

And suddenly Avy’s words took on new and sinister meaning.

“And should you break this agreement, may your heart tear in its cage and your skin rip from your bones and your blood become thorns in your veins.”

What did you do? she thought frantically, scrabbling for the soulmate link. What did you do for me?

It was there – still a bright gleam at the back of mind like a distant star, and she reached for it with new urgency, with panic and guilt-

A blast of pain jolted from her head to her feet; so vast, so intense that she thought she might burn into nothing right then – her heart was bloody shreds in her chest, her skin peeling away like the skin of an orange, everything pain and the promise of pain...

It was gone. Phi was left hanging in the clutches of alien magic. For the first time, she began to glimpse what courage it must have taken to break the oath.

For me. He did it for me.

Tears burned at her eyes, unnoticed by anyone.

And look where it has brought us.

“So I heal you or I die,” Ryar said softly.

“You were a great visionary once,” Avy said, cool, scornful. “You can heal me, sister. There is a future that will show you how.”

“I gave up my gift.”

“To the mer. And their next seer is in front of you. Take back your gift.”

Ryar was ashen, shaking her head. “No...Avy, no...”

“Do you think you have a choice?” Avy hissed.

Choice...

From start to finish, it had always been about choice. Gripped by power far superior to her own, Phi saw suddenly that despite it all she had a choice left to her. The future lay open to her, ripe with possibility, ripe with change.

Zeke made the choice. How can I do any less? A piece of my life for them – for all of them, for Celia and Ri and Jo and Finn and Ryar. They would do the same for me, and perhaps they already have.

“I can do it,” she said into the potent silence. “It’s my gift.”

My choice.

Avy’s head snapped to her. Phi forced herself not flinch. “And why would you?”

“Because I want to live,” she said from a throat scoured by tears. “I want my friends to live. I don’t want to die here. Don’t give me to Don, and I’ll find you that future.”

“How honest.” Avarice ap Sangager considered her. “Very well.”

“What about my promise?” Don said sharply.

“I have no further use for you,” Avy informed him, calm.

A nasty smile curled his mouth. “And I have the same powers as you, you stupid old hag,” he said, and raised his hands-

Whatever he was expecting to happen clearly didn’t. Avy still stood before him, unharmed, and the dumbstruck look he wore was almost enough to warm Phi’s heart.

“You had the same powers as me,” Avy corrected. “But you were foolish enough to imbibe powdered dragon horn – which means the power that was previously dead is now contained in a living body again. The spells work for you too. And you should have thought twice before you insulted me.”

She crooked a finger. Don’s eyes opened wide; his mouth was a matching circle, his body arched as if against some tremendous pull. A gagging sound came from him – something stringy and pink flew from his lips and landed on the floor with a damp splat.

Phi stared at it, dumbstruck.

Don collapsed on his knees, gagging, hands clutching at his maimed throat.

“I think those around you may find you rather more pleasant without the ability to speak,” Avy remarked. Lacking even a hint of pity, she turned her attention back to Phi. “And you...”

Phi found herself being carefully set on her feet. When the magic supporting her vanished, she nearly fell, her legs weak, her entire body bloated with fear. In her mind, the future hovered like a vulture.

“Look,” Avy commanded. “Make me young.”

Obediently, she closed her eyes. And there her submission ended. She could feel the multitude of possibilities waiting at threshold between her and her gift. All she had to do was search for the one she wanted. And that was what she intended to do; look for the future she wanted.

A future that would show her how to defeat Avarice ap Sangager.

A breath. And Phi threw a piece of her own life to the winds as she plunged into a morass of futures, her purpose fixed firmly in her mind. Sounds and colours swum around her, flashing by in an array of flickering moments. Tens, hundreds, thousand passed her by...

And then she was stood in the very same cave as she saw now; but there was movement, motion – she saw Ryar grabbing for the bag of horns, she saw the sisters wrestling, and she saw the future begin split and divide like light from a prism.

Ryar lost; Ryar died; Ryar lived mad and gibbering. None of those were what she sought. Every time, Avy overwhelmed Ryar with sheer desperation.

And then Phi saw something new – as they fought, she glimpsed herself, moving from friend to friend. Riose was still. Jo was still. They died before her eyes, slipping away like the night before she had even realised. Celia died in a burst of rage, of nobility, of foolish sacrifice.

Avy still won.

Finn-

She saw herself and Finn walking- no, running towards the sisters as they struggled in their private family battle. Fire twisted from Finn – not enough to harm, but enough to distract-

And Phi saw herself grab the horns and scramble away. She saw Avy screeching, powerless, folding in on herself like a house of cards.

She saw a future where they won.

~*~

She opened her eyes onto a world that seemed dim and grey against the lush, colourful array of futures. Avarice ap Sangager was intent on her, and seeing hope in that ruined face was somehow worse than all her cruelty and indifference. It made Phi realise that there was still something living in there, something that still knew how to dream.

And she would see us all die for her dream. It is nothing to her.

“I found it,” she said. Her voice sounded oddly calm. “You need Ryar’s horns. If you take them, if you consume them, all her healing power will be yours.”

Ryar’s gasp was harsh.

“Yes...” Avy sighed. “Oh yes…of course. I should have seen it sooner.”

Phi forced herself to meet Ryar’s eyes. They were wounded, startled. “I helped you,” the Drax said in disbelief.

“I know,” she said. “But I remembered Atlantis. I remembered that we were mighty once, because of your power.”

I remember that we too were mad and monstrous once. Until they came to stop us, in mercy.

“I see,” the Drax said leadenly.

She didn’t know if Ryar had understood. She could only hope now.

Her shoulders slumped, Ryar tilted up her face as if in submission, and swept back her hair. It cascaded down her spine until it seemed a foaming white waterfall, the only shade of her power left to her here. But Avy was fixed upon the brown horns revealed at the peak of Ryar’s forehead.

“Take them then,” Ryar said dully. “I can’t stop you.”

Avy’s yellowed fingernails settled about one. Ryar winced as the nails dug into her skin; a grimace drew back her lips as Avy’s fingers squirmed tighter, deeper, and Phi realised that she meant to rip the horn clean from her sister’s head.

As magic flooded the cave, the air felt heavy and charged, storm-threatened. And Avy was distracted, lips moving, speaking in a language Phi did not understand.

Ryar cried out; her lips were a pink stain against skin pale as milk. Her eyes begged Phi for help – chained by Avy’s oath, she could only endure, only kneel and obey while the tears crawled down her cheeks.

And Phi wanted to go to her, but she knew that future ended in disaster. So instead, she turned away and she went to her friends.

Celia was crouched over Riose, sobbing even as she pushed her hands down onto his wounds, trying to stem the blood that slicked the ground. His chest hitched in sporadic motion, but there was no other sign that he lived.

Distorted by panic, Celia seemed a stranger. “I c-can’t stop the bleeding.”

“You can,” Phi said quietly. “You have to or he’ll bleed to death. Here.”

The vision flickered in her mind. She lifted Celia’s hands and replanted them inches away, over what she knew to be the deepest slash.

“Don’t move,” she said. “No matter what you see, you mustn’t move. You can’t help us. Ri needs you.”

If Riose dies, you die. You will need him to love you one day, you will need him to love you more than life itself. You will need him to die for you.

But not today.

“Phi...” Her eyes were so young, so frightened. “Will it be okay?”

“Maybe. If we’re lucky.”

She knew she could spare no more time here. She had to be ruthless, to give herself entirely to the future she had chosen.

I tried so hard not to be, but I am still my mother’s daughter.

And that’s no bad thing.

Across the room, grime smeared Jo’s arms, her hand fallen as if waiting for someone to take hold of it. Her hair was across her face, but one lime-green eye stared blankly. Phi limped over to her, and bent down, her knees shaky. This was one part of the future she had no certainty about.

“Be okay, be okay,” she whispered and nearly leapt from her skin when a mumble came back.

“M’ playing dead...sensible thing...don’t think I can get up, dar-dar-” A funny wheeze escaped her, faint as a leaf rustling. Alarmed, Phi felt for a pulse, but then the wildcat managed, “Get the bitch.”

“You and me then,” mumbled a familiar voice, and Finn put a trembling hand on her shoulder. “Told you this lot were flakes.”

Jo made a noise that might have been weary laughter or protest.

“You and me,” she said, and the rest of it hung unspoken.

To the end.

He was ashen, his skin yoghurt-white, obviously as wobbly as she herself felt. But of them all, he was the only one upright, the only one who could help her.

Despite the bleakness in his eyes, Finn never wavered. He raised a ghost of his cheeky grin and said, “This is what comes of saving yourself, Phi. Now you’re going to die a virgin.”

His misplaced levity brought a dour grin to her face. “No, I’m not.”

“What? You gave yourself to another man?” He feigned outrage. “Usually it’s death or glory. Trust you to want it all.”

And suddenly she was giggling: hysterical, inappropriate laughter, but he was clasping her hand, her best friend, and they were walking towards Avy and Ryar still laughing because it was only the spot of brightness in this insane, horrible night.

They were her friends and they had come with her to fight and to die. They were her family and her blood as truly as the mer had ever been.

“We have to get those horns,” she said. “I need you to distract her with magic. I’ll only have one chance.”

Avy was still focused on her grisly task. Blood oozed over her nails and down Ryar’s temples to dilute her tears.

Finn stopped. “Why only one?” he said softly.

“You know why.”

“Phi...”

“Don’t argue. It has to be me. You’re in no state to do anything except throw spells. Ryar can’t.” She clutched at his hands as if they were a lifebelt, as if she were drowning in the cold sea. “Don’t make this hard, Finn. I don’t want you to die here because of me.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to do a kamikaze run,” he hissed harshly.

They were wasting time.

“Help me, or don’t,” she said. “But remember which one of us can see the future.”

His eyes widened. “You can see the future? But your mom…”

There was no time to debate. There was no time to yield to the grief that waited, as much part of her future as her gift. “She died,” she said harshly.

“Phi...”

But she couldn’t bear the pity in his voice – she was turning, she was running as she had run down to the lake so many times, and the boy with fire in his eyes was all she could think of...

The world seemed to slow. Avy lifted her head – her fingers dipped and wriggled in the little bag, and her other hand was rising, nails clogged with blood, to point straight at her...

“Hey, ugly!” shouted Finn, and the blind gaze snapped to him, livid.

And fire was in the air – great rippling wreaths of it, masking her, burning along her arms as it seared towards Avy.

She knew what to do – she reached, straining. Nothing mattered but the horns, nothing but this one chance-

Material brushed her fingertips - for a wild moment, she thought it was enough.

And then the magic hit her.

It flung her back – she caught a glimpse of stone and didn’t know whether it was ceiling or floor, and then she slammed into the ground, and knew one great, awful certainty.

She had failed.

~*~

Blue Malefici was nothing but an uneven shadow in the trees. He didn’t shift, as he hadn’t since Ryar had vanished into the caves. Patient, enduring, he was waiting.

The eleventh hour was almost here. And then, he supposed, he would have to go in and salvage something from this very intriguing affair. After all, those rocky walls contained several people who owed him favours. He wanted at least two of them alive.

But because he was patient, because he had troubled to eavesdrop on Delphine Thetis’s dreams, he waited.

Then he heard something. Heavy, uneven footsteps. Laboured breath. And wafting across the air, the faint scent of gasoline and incense.

He settled back, invisible in the gloom.

Love burned. He knew that – he just hadn’t expected to see the metaphor in action.

~*~

Hopelessness washed over her. It had been only the slimmest of chances, and it had gone wrong. Avy had won.

Everything felt sore, out of place. Burns from Finn’s magic streaked her arms, speckled with blisters. Something was cut on her neck, and warm liquid trickled along her collarbone. She wanted to weep. For herself, yes, but mostly for her friends. She had failed them. She had been unable to save them as they had saved her.

“Stupid child,” Avy hissed. “Don’t you know the future yet?”

“I do,” said a voice at the boundary of her hearing. It was low and rusty, but she knew its every nuance. “Shall I tell you?”

“No...” she whispered.

Zeke hung against the threshold as if he was a broken marionette.

Bleeding, his skin littered with sores, he moved with terrible slowness and each step brought new injuries, that burst on him like fireworks. Only his face was untouched, and she mapped it desperately, seeing in it myriad things: the boy with the fever-bright eyes, the stranger by the lake, devil, djinni, angel, her soulmate.

And as he reached the foot of the throne where Avy gawped at him, a bloody cross streaked over his face and Phi saw with sickening clarity the image of her dreams.

It was a future she had been unable to find, a future she did not want to believe. It drove into her like a knife.

“Don’t!”

She tried to stand. Her muscles screamed and liquid slewed down her arms, but she was half-up, she was nearly there…

“My beginning was fire,” he recited quietly. “My end shall be fire...”

Light exploded from him.

He was no longer flesh but flame. Avy flung spell after spell at him until the air groaned, but each was gradually absorbed into his burning body until the fire turned from orange to white, blazing so hot that Phi knew nothing could survive the heat and the power there.

No...don’t you leave me, not you too…

Phi’s legs buckled and she slid to her knees. “Not this.”

She saw his determination waver – heartbreak there, raw, sweet, true in his face. Then he squeezed shut his eyes as if it was too hard to see her, but she reached for him frightened and desperate through the soulmate link, where he could not blind himself to her.

She crashed into a jumble of emotion that might have been hers or his; fear and anger and sorrow and passion, and above it all, his voice so torn and husky saying I love you, I love you more than anything, all of it, everything…

Then she was back in her own body, gasping in lungfuls of warm air.

Stay, she wanted to scream, denying the truth she had seen there. He couldn’t be dying. He couldn’t.

Don’t leave me when I’ve only just found you. Stay, stay with me any way you can, in thought and word and deed...

Through the flames, his eyes shone a truer, sweeter gold, and his last words were for her and her alone.

“And the truest of all my loves will be fire.”

He caught hold of Avy and the flames erupted over them both in a column of white, blinding light that seared through the cavern and all the layers of earth above, but she saw none of it because she was doubled over, the link between them blazing every bit as fiercely.

She felt it snap in her heart like a wishbone as the light vanished, and she shrieked, curling around the emptiness he had left.

When at last, weeping, she could open her eyes, only a black scorch mark remained where the throne had been. She swept the cavern, roof to floor, and he was not there, oh god, he was not there.

Nothing remained of him but ashes, drifting through the beam of moonlight that stole into the cavern.

And Phi cried into her hands, because he had left her, the truest of all his loves; and because he had left her safe and free.

And listen carefully to the sound
Of your loneliness like a heartbeat, drives you mad,
In the stillness of remembering what you had
And what you lost.

The dress was beautiful. Midnight blue and patterned with lilies that burst on it like stars, it stopped at her calves and contrasted sharply against the long red fall of her hair. Lace framed her cleavage and the small silver pendant that hung there. In it, Phi looked strange and untouchable.

It was the last gift from her mother. Marie Thetis had even managed to determine what Phi wore for her funeral. The thought made her smile, and then made a lump rise in her throat until her smile fractured like glass.

“Baby…?” Her father sounded tired and hoarse, as he had for the past fortnight. “Are you ready?”

She composed herself. They had spent most of the night watching the pyre burning down, unable to drag themselves from her until there were only ashes and the last of the smoke wreathed against the dawn. Now it was time to bid her goodbye.

“Yes.”

He opened the door cautiously, and she glanced over. In his suit, a deep indigo also chosen by her mother, he looked almost austere, bar his rumpled hair and red-rimmed eyes.

“You should brush your hair,” she said.

“Does it really matter?”

“Mum would...she’d want you to. She’d tell you not to ruin her big day.”

That drew a ragged laugh from him. “All right. Wait outside. I’ll be down in a minute.”

She left the house gladly. There was a hollowness about it now. Visitors had come every night in the two weeks since her mother died, and her father greeted them with shadows of his smile and kind words, but he was not the same. Phi thought he might never be again, and often, she was tempted to look – and held back.

The beginning of the summer seemed an age away, a looking-glass world of illusions. How naïve she had been then, a child, fierce and selfish and unknowing.

She lived between past and future, her present pressed between the two until it seemed slight as a butterfly. She was caught in a welter of grief, knowing that all things must end and that too many already had.

Phi began to understand how her mother must have felt, the same dreadful need to try and squeeze all the happiness from the future that she could. It must have been so easy to keep looking, to whisper the great lie to the mirror every night: it’s for the best.

And so when those thoughts nestled in her skull, she went out to the lake, and thought of the boy with fire in his eyes.

Some nights that was too painful, and so she would wander until her feet took her back to one of them.

Finn always came thundering down the stairs, hauling her into a hug and a gabble of news. All his gossip drove away the ghosts, bringing her back to the real world.

In Celia’s house she let Jodie Slone mother her, because she missed it.

Celia would never again be so fearless – that memory was always there, crooking her little finger. And when make-up and magazines ran out, when words drifted into silence, Phi realised that Celia needed her. There was no one else who could understand what it meant to be human among the Nightworld, to know your own helplessness and yet hand yourself to them time and again.

Riose never cared what time she came to call, but he was invariably rumpled from sleep. It had taken nearly a week to heal his wounds, even with Chatoya Irkil’s help.

He understood her dilemma, the same hard choice he made every day. Neither of them spoke about it. It was okay to sit in silence with Riose until she felt calm enough to leave. He reminded her why she held back, what she might awaken if she meddled in the future.

Jo refused to let her mope indoors – they went out into the woods or to gigs or to the shops, the wildcat hopping along gamely on her crutches. In a dizzying swirl of entertainment and crowds, Phi could never forget that she was just one of a multitude, and her problems shrank into insignificance.

So if she could not shake her loneliness, at least she was not alone. They made sure of that, and she loved them for it.

She was unsurprised to find all of them waiting outside the house with their families, dressed in the blue of mourning. They would be the first outsiders to come to a pod funeral since Aurora’s death.

The world was changing for the pod – the future was ahead of them, and for the first time in years, they had no idea what it held.

She could have told them. But she held back, and every day, she chose. Every day, she refused to give up the gift that Zeke had sacrificed his life for.

Her freedom was all she had of him. Freedom, and the frail memory of the boy with fire in his eyes.

~*~

In his bedroom, Don Ivan lay in an endless maze of pain, addicted to a drug that no longer existed. In his mind, he was hunted endlessly by monsters; he was drowning, burning, stabbed, choked, tortured. In his mind, he screamed and screamed, but no sound came from his mutilated throat.

He could not recall Ryar leaning over him, declaring that she had no way to heal him. He would survive or he would die, and that was all. The drug would devour his flesh before it burned itself out, and perhaps he would be left with enough of his organs to live.

All his beauty was shrivelling, melted into pus that burst from the sores on his body, dropping out with clumps of golden hair. He cooked in his sheets, stewed in his addiction and his pain. Only his mother could bear to touch him, and her visits had become fewer and briefer as her possessions slowly emptied from the house, as the divorce papers dropped through the letterbox while her bruises faded one by one.

Alone in the dark, he was forgotten, erased, a dirty secret.

And downstairs, Laurence Ivan drank and drank, and his slurred words echoed in the empty house.

“All her gifts are poisoned.”

~*~

The lake was crowded in the sunset. The pod and the wolves stood uneasily apart, a barrier crossed only by Jess’s generation, who talked loudly about the thick-headedness of youth, who hugged old friends and insulted old rivals. The pyre had burnt down to ashes, the scent of smoke gone from the air.

They fell silent at the sight of Phi and her friends, but people moved aside to make space for them. If a few murmurs arose, no one seemed to want to meet the challenge snapping in Jodie Slone’s eyes, or question the little flames that Finn made dance casually along his knuckles until his father nudged him.

Then she heard a clamour, and Phi turned to see the pod in disarray.

Ryar had come.

She couldn’t feel Ryar’s power any more, but Phi remembered how immense it had been, how unmistakably the parent of her own. No matter how ordinary she appeared, Ryar couldn’t hide what she was from the pod.

Some knelt; some took off their hats, and one woman covered her eyes as if she shouldn’t look upon their creator. Awe was on every face.

She was curiously modern in a suit, her long hair held back in a loose knot. Her eyes were mild, sad, and she paused to pull people to their feet as she passed.

Then she reached Phi and her father – and she curtsied. Gasps arose.

“I came to pay my respects,” she said. “She was an extraordinary woman.”

“She was,” her father said, too low to be heard by the crowd. “I am lost without her.”

“Dad,” Phi whispered. She couldn’t bear the desperation in his voice.

“If I thought they could do without me, I would leave now,” Daniel Thetis continued. His grey eyes were fierce. “And if you lead them, I could.”

“No.”

“They’re your people.”

Ryar gestured to the crowd. “They aren’t my people. They came for you.”

“They came for her,” he corrected, husky.

“Today, perhaps. But tomorrow she will be gone, and the goodbyes will be over. And they will still come to you, because they love you, because they want to comfort you, because you are their hope. She was their prophet – their goddess. They respected her, they worshipped her, and they probably feared her if they had any sense. But Marie was as far beyond them as the stars. You are a part of them. You are their leader. Not me.”

He was silent, looking at her as if he saw more than a legend. Perhaps he did, just as he had seen her mother all those years ago when she was a lonely, caged idol and he a boy who dreamed.

“I can see why men fought for you,” he said at last.

“I can see why she died for you,” replied Ryar, very gentle. “But it wasn’t your fault.”

Surprise and guilt flashed on his face – and Phi realised that he had blamed himself, that her father somehow thought this whole inevitable end was his responsibility. “I...”

“It was her choice,” Ryar said. “Respect it. Respect her, and say your goodbyes. I think she’d be – rather irate if you did anything else.”

He gave a long sigh, and said, “I don’t want to say goodbye.”

“You must,” the Drax said, and Phi knew fresh pain at the truth of it. It felt so final, as if she was severing whatever remained between her and her mother – as if it made her mother unreal, forgotten, nothing but dust and memory.

“I know,” her father said finally, and he held out his hand to Phi. She took it, clutching him as if she were a child again, and he led her to the end of the pier where the ashes were gathered in a little pot.

They stood together, seer and dreamer. The breeze plucked at her hair, drying her tears. She knew what had to come. Then her father turned and beckoned Ryar.

She joined them, face kind and puzzled.

“You were our beginning,” Daniel Thetis said. “It seems...only fitting that you should send her back to the water with us.”

She nodded, grave, and picked up the pot as carefully as if it held her heart.

“Your journey was long, and has seen its end,” her father began, and Phi joined him, faltering, as Ryar scattered the ashes onto the lake. “May the ocean take you to its deepest heart: fly in its storms, sleep in its tides. And may the waters bring you back to us on the crest of every wave, until we are one."

The ashes gleamed like silver before the water swallowed them. The scene blurred; she was so tired of crying, but every time she thought she was done, Phi found she missed her mother all over again.

“I wish we had something better to give her,” her father mumbled.

Ryar looked at him with such pity in her eyes. Then she said gently, “There was a people once who used to sing back the sun every morning.”

It seemed to Phi that she heard Zeke again, speaking of slavery and calling back the sun. The longing that struck her was so fierce it hurt.

“They sang their dead into the underworld too, so that they could take a last piece of life with them, even if it was only the memory of sunlight and fragile love.”

“Yes,” her father said. “I think she would like that. There was a song that was ours…”

His eyes were young then, pushing back the years. Phi saw in them the man who’d danced with her mother in the living room – who’d had that same soft, enchanted look, as if Marie Thetis was the center and the soul of his world.

“It’s still yours,” Phi whispered, squeezing his hand.

He gave her a sad smile, and they both turned to the waters where Marie Thetis was indistinguishable from the sunlight on the waves. So softly she had to strain to hear him, he sang that old, sweet requiem to the wife he had waited years to lose, and never ceased to love.

She was a child again, watching her parents dancing in the living room: her mother was gold in the firelight and forever bright and beautiful and laughing...

His voice cracked and the melody dwindled, dying with the sunlight…

But another voice had caught the song; her own, the words rising up with a potency and a truth that Phi hadn’t truly understood until now. It stung her throat like tears, that song; it broke her heart all over again, but she sang for her mother and hoped she was proud.

And she wasn’t alone – Ryar overlaid her, pure and thrilling and full of sorrow. Others, deep, mellow, folded into one another like the waters until the pod was one unearthly choir, their fragile, forbidden love chasing after her mother on the last of the sunlight.

Then it was not only her mother she serenaded, but a boy who had burned for her, who had loved her beyond all hope of his survival. It was he who stood on alien shores, waiting for her as he had waited every night beside the lake – surely turning to her once more full of delight.

She sang of love, she sang of loss, she sang out her heart and hoped that somehow it would be carried on the last of the sunlight to the places where impossible dreams came true: behind the stars, between the rain, at the centre of the earth, wherever it was that wonder began.

I love you, she thought. That will never change. I love you beyond doubt or despair, beyond death.

Oh, gods, but how I miss you.

~*~

Afterwards she did her duty. There were conversations that she barely remembered. Jess pulled her into a hug and they cried together for a while. The pod shared endless memories of her mother; laughter and tears filled the air.

Mrs Ivan came and offered tentative condolences, as if she expected to be slapped away. She spoke with Phi’s father for a long time; no one disturbed them.

Finally, it was late enough for most people to leave. The crowd dwindled and Phi slipped away from her friends. She knew they were trying to look after her, but she needed space. She felt hemmed in and on display, as if even her grief wasn’t her own but part of some public outpouring.

She sat on the edge of the pier and dabbled her feet in the water. In the fading light, it was the same dark grey as her mother’s eyes and oddly comforting.

Until he sat down beside her, she didn’t even know Blue Malefici was there. Cross-legged, he watched the water with a cynical gaze as if it concealed secrets he was hungry to use.

“What do you want?” she said flatly.

“Nothing, yet.” His voice was bored, his body relaxed.

“Then why are you here?”

“To remind you of the future,” he said. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten in all this emotional clamour, but an hour and a day of it belongs to me.”

Her throat was dry. “I haven’t forgotten.”

“Good. Your mother left me a prophecy.” He drew out a piece of paper, and with a pang, Phi recognised her mother’s writing. And then she frowned.

There was nothing on it but his name, a date, a time and a single line of description.

“Or rather,” he continued, “she left me the promise of a prophecy. From you, little mermaid.”

It seemed she couldn’t get enough air in her lungs; she was dazed, bewildered, wanting to weep and to laugh because even now her mother was looking after you.

“All I promised you was an hour and a day.”

In the gloom, his smile was a curl of shadow and light. “And I am prepared to bargain.”

There were a thousand questions crowding her mind.

Why are you so desperate to know the future? What matters so much that you will set aside my pain? That isn’t like you. That isn’t like the stories Riose tells.

And I know now that those stories are true.

She took the paper; rubbed it between her fingers to make sure it was real. “I want an hour and a day.”

“An hour or a day.” The words were whiplash-fast, suddenly cold. “Take care greed doesn’t make you unwise.”

Above his smile, as cold and dead as the moon, his eyes were unflinching. She remembered his hand arond her throat, the pleasure slick on his words when he spoke of pain and violence.

“Why shouldn’t I be greedy?” she demanded, ignoring how her hands shook on the paper.

“Why shouldn’t I take my day and my hour now and toss that scrap into the lake?”

She swallowed. No, it had been a mistake to think him desperate. Curious, ambitious, yes, but he would set both those aside if necessary. “A day for a day,” she said finally.

“Done.”

The pier creaked as he stood; he was only a slender silhouette, a dark space in the world, and then he was gone.

She was left with the paper and the words that had intrigued him enough to offer her some small escape.

His name. A time. A date. And a line of description.

She crumpled it into her bag, suddenly desperate to be rid of the future. In the summer night, the darkness seemed too close, too personal, merely another place where he waited for her, the last hour of her life mere dust in his fingers.

~*~

Her friends came and sat with her for a while, but she couldn’t dredge up anything more than automatic answers. She felt wrung out and emptied, as if she was only a shell whispering dreams of the ocean.

They left her with words or hugs, or awkward jokes in Finn’s case. When the water grew too cold, she left the pier but found herself unable to join the others around the fire that someone had started. The sight of Riose so close to Celia, smiling his little half-smile and pretending nothing had changed, made her ache for him. He didn't know what was to come. He didn't see the hairline fractures already a web across his heart, didn't know that he would break for love of Celia.

Call it fate. Call it chemistry. But whether science or superstition, it was an inevitability she was powerless to stop. She couldn't bear to look at them, to break their fleeting peace.

She went instead to the green slope that led onto the rushes, and stared at the flattened patch of grass. Zeke might just have left it, might be about to return. Phi sat there, watching the sky, and part of her wished that the stars would fall like tears, like jewels, so she could know that the world had been forever changed by his absence as she had.

The crunch of undergrowth alerted her: she looked up to see Ryar.

“The tide will turn soon,” the Drax remarked, in a tone that implied it was somehow significant. Maybe it was to her.

“I thought it had turned,” Phi said tiredly.

She didn’t know what Ryar had to smile about; a soft, faint smile. “The new moon is here tonight.”

“That’s nice,” she mumbled.

She didn’t see the Drax frown.

“You miss Zeke, don’t you?”

The question hurt; it made anger flare up in her chest. She wanted Ryar to leave her alone, to let her heal. “Of course I do. Do you miss Avy?”

Ryar didn’t flinch. If there was reproach in her face, it didn’t show in her voice. “Not really.”

“Hard to love the sister who stole your husband, right?” Phi said pointedly.

“Avy? I don’t think so.” She sounded...amused, and interested despite herself, Phi turned to look at her.

“But you said she was his great love-”

“I said he had only one great love.” She gave a slight shrug. “Believe me, no woman could compare with Fireblade’s love for himself.”

“Then why...”

“I trusted you,” Ryar said simply.

A broken laugh slipped from her. “You shouldn’t have. I nearly killed us all. If Zeke...” Her throat closed, and she could go no further.

“Did he tell you what he was called?” Ryar asked conversationally. She was so serene, so untroubled.

“Angel,” she said numbly. “Djinn. Devil.”

Ryar nodded. “He was called all of those things, but they were just guesses. He had another, truer name once.”

She stared into her earnest face, forever young, forever beautiful in a way that Avy could never have seen. “Does it matter?” she said quietly. “He’s gone. And he was never any of those things to me.”

Those violet eyes were puzzled. “What was he to you?”

She turned away, folding her arms as if to hold the warmth of the day close to her heart. She couldn’t bear the compassion in Ryar’s face, in any of their faces. “I loved him,” she said angrily. “Isn’t that obvious?”

“Yes,” Ryar said. “You loved him. Do you still?”

“Of course I do!”

Ryar scrutinsed her as if trying to fathom something – then her eyes widened, she took a breath and said, “You don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?” Phi cried out. “I know that I loved him. I know that he died for me, and you just stand there as if nothing happened, as if it doesn’t even matter! And...and everything is different – I want the sun to explode, I want the stars to fall so that I know that it isn’t just me, that everyone knows he’s gone and that the world is emptier because of it.”

There was something close to horror in Ryar’s face, in her wide eyes and her parted lips. Then she gathered herself and said, very softly, “I didn’t know that you...”

“Now you do.”

“And if I told you that a star might fall? That the sun might explode?”

Phi stared at her. “What do you mean?”

She gestured over the lake, to the patient stars and the hollow sky.

And there was a flare of light, a pinpoint that grew until it was something wild and fiery was tumbling through the air. A shooting star. A moment, a breath, a blink, it was gone.

“Make a wish,” Ryar said wryly.

Phi struggled with her anger, savage, wounded, because it seemed as if the Drax was making fun of her. “Do you think that makes it any better?” she demanded. “Because one stupid star fell?”

“You really don’t know, do you?” Ryar breathed.

Phi gazed at her, wondering if she had gone mad. “Stop saying that! Know what?”

“I told you he had a truer name,” Ryar said slowly. “But I thought you knew what it was.”

“I don’t! What does it matter what he was called?”

“It matters,” Ryar said, and suddenly she was hauling Phi to her feet, she was pointing at the horizon where something seemed to be glowing – as if the sun had risen again, as if something had called it back. “He had a thousand names, Phi, but only one that knew what he was and what he will be and what you love.”

And her heart was thundering in her chest – she was wild and trembling and turning to Ryar with her hair loose and red as fire, wracked by terrible hope and equally terrifying love.

“What?” she gasped.

Ryar leaned in close, and Phi heard the joy in her fierce whisper.

And Phi was gone – she was running past her father and her friends, her dress streaming in the wind, chasing a fallen star. Her discarded heels lay on the ground; calls followed her into the woods and out to the cave where he had blazed so brightly.

She forgot the past. She forgot the future. There was only now, and here, and a wish on a fallen star.

And him, the beginning of wonder.