Ignite: The Phoenix Flame, #1

CHAPTER ONE

You shouldn’t be here.

My father’s voice cutting through my temples makes me jump. This sprawling, icy wasteland is silent except for the words reverberating in my mind.

I take a cautious step forward, worn boots crunching against the frigid snowfall as I wrap my arms around myself, fingers tucked into my ragged sleeves to ward off the nipping chill. My tangled, black-as-lava-rock hair whips against my nose, reddened by the wind.

I can help, Father.

I lick my lips and tug my heavy-knit coat closer around my shoulders. The worn animal fur brushes against my flushed cheeks as I search the bleak stretches around me. It’s eerie and still, as haunting as the dead buried deep beneath the ice. Little survives for long out here.

I shove one scuffed boot after another through the dredges of snow. He was headed this direction when he left to hunt.

Father? Where are you? The words are breathless and rough, but I force them out through cracked lips.

I narrow my eyes at the dimmest rays of light glinting off the muffled ridges. No one can hear me for miles out here. But I’m not expecting Father to hear my words spoken aloud.

I know he’ll be listening where he always lives. Deep in my thoughts.

My guardian. My mentor. My father.

The one who helps me sort through the volatile whispers to keep my inner inferno in check. To bank the raging phoenix fire in my veins that sometimes surges against my control and makes my joints throb with every movement. My body doesn’t know how to hold this blaze dormant. Not without him.

For several stretching seconds, Father doesn’t reply, leaving my thoughts empty. Sweat drips down my forehead and heat ripples in my bones. Water sizzles as the sheath of ice trying to form on my sleeve thaws.

Father?

My boots are already soaked as I tread a few more careful steps, trudging over the hard-packed snow and toward the pallid crests towering ahead. This stretch of wasteland isn’t fully shadowed yet by the angle of the mountains. With the faint whisper of heat from the dissolving sun overhead, I expected Father to have laid his trap here. But he left a quarter sunpass ago to set it, and there’s no sign of him. I glance over my shoulder. Fresh drifts cover any footsteps I could have retraced.

It’s empty as a tomb out here. No whisper of the phoenix who raised me.

Or the hunt he’s out to capture, bringing home one last meal for our tiny village.

I try to slow my breathing. He hasn’t left. Not yet. He wouldn’t do that to you.

He wouldn’t let me follow him out into the Forsaken Lands just to turn his back when I need him. He knows how long it would take for me to freeze out here.

Not a quick death.

If my own blood didn’t turn my skin to kindling first.

Mara, I told you to stay back at the temple.

Warmth floods my body, melting the ice underfoot. I pick up the pace. My senses reach out for the familiar tone of his heat signature.

I know, Father. But I wanted to help. I only have a few precious hours left with him. With any of them. And then I will be as forsaken as these lands.

You have been well prepared for what you must do, little one. You are not forsaken yet. Father’s voice, listening in on the chaos of my ero—my thoughts, is like a blanket of snow cooling the fire inside me and bringing clarity. If you want to help me hunt, then find me.

The chilled gust picks up again, trying to rip my face open, but I can’t fight back my smile.

I’m coming, Father.

I’m surprised he hasn’t chided me yet for speaking aloud. None of the others like it when I do. But something about using my voice, letting the words linger in the air—it makes the world feel more real.

When you’ve existed this long, reality starts to feel like a dream.

Hunching my shoulders against the cold, my eyes fall closed. Instead of using the light from the dull sun to guide me forward, I search for the ripple of warmth.

Let it swell from somewhere deep inside me. Let it bring that too-familiar heat along my shoulder blades and twin scars that always burn there. And as the fire inside rises—I can feel the warmth beneath my feet echoing in reflection. A whisper through the interconnecting tunnels buried below me in the snow. There’s someone else out here.

I hum quietly to myself, filling my own head with sound to numb how achingly silent my thoughts are.

My feet skim over the divots in the frost, used to deftly gauging the stability of the next step. I’ve found an echo of his warmth—the faintest whisper that something else breathes out here. Something else fights to exist against this frozen landscape.

The closer I get, the stronger I sense him. Like a beacon that flickers in my mind’s eye against a backdrop of grey nothingness. His heat signature is a dull, reddish hue that blurs and dances in contrast to the haunting stillness of the ice. But when I open my eyes, almost on top of where he should be—the world is still empty.

The ridges towering on either side have changed shape, indicating how far I’ve come. But the small hillocks and faint valleys are devoid of any other life. A large outcropping rises from the snow just ahead, frozen so solid it’s almost reflective.

You’re walking too loudly. You’ll scare them away. His chiding blasts through my thoughts, and I’d swear he stands right beside me. I soften my steps, pressing my lashes together and searching for those heat signatures again.

This time, I don’t just see one. I see three.

Found them!

I drop to a crouch and inch forward, using the ledge of ice as cover. I peer over the frigid spire and can finally make out the small flock of furred birds. They’re quickly pecking and eating scattered iceplant in a shallow indentation of snow.

I still feel Father’s silhouetted warmth—but it seems dampened somehow. Distant. I’ll bring him my spoils when I find his hunting blind. I can practically see the look of pride that will cross his face—especially if I capture all three of the argots.

I dig the toes of my boots into the frigid curve of the outcropping of ice, giving myself a little more height, and reach inside my coat pocket for two curving blades. My daggers are made of pockmarked volcanic rock, sharpened to an obsidian point on one end and wrapped with a leather grip on the other.

I focus on the fluttering argots, watching their too-thin bodies fall and rise with breath and the way their fur fades into scaly wings.

They’ve fought so hard to live. Maybe I owe them that much.

No. No. You must prove to Father you can do this.

You can survive on your own. You can protect him.

So, I raise my right hand, perch the blade between my thumb and forefinger, set my sights on the largest bird—and flick the weapon with deadly accuracy.

Mara—no!

Father’s voice is so sudden and desperate that the second knife I’ve just unleashed from my other hand spirals to the side, missing the second bird.

What? I slide backward down the small shelf of ice. What’s wrong?

I approach the argots to find the first one I’d speared lying on its side. My dark weapon protrudes from its sallow little breast. The other two are long gone. Leaving nothing but a pair of crumbled holes where they burrowed away from their dead friend.

I’ll never find them again. Any creature that can still survive in this world has mastered the art of hiding from predators.

Mara! Father’s angry tone splits through my temples like a headache, and my knees give way. I sink to the ground, arms over my head.

I’m sorry! What did I do? Where are you?

When my eyes flutter closed, I can sense the pulsating source of heat just ahead that I’d thought was only the argots. But he was hiding behind their heat signature. Stalking them.

Oh, brimstone.

I destroyed his hunt.

Shame crashes over me like a tossed storm and makes my body tremble.

Idiot. Idiot!

Of course he knew where they were. He specifically told me not to scare them away.

I should have asked his permission. Should have waited for him to tell me to move.

I’m sorry, Father . . . I whisper, staring at my soggy boots. It was so foolish of me.

You are careless. His words boom inside my head. Tears prick at my eyes.

I’m a stupid child.

I run my gaze across the frigid ground in front of me, catching on the edge of something curved and dangerous sticking out of the snow. Something at the base of another sharp cliff of ice—pointed and flickering, almost crystalline.

My shoulders instinctively twinge, but I don’t move. I just wait for him to reveal himself.

I should have waited before. Should have listened better.

Why did I think I could go and do this on my own?

The curved edge sticking out from the snow quivers. Ice and slush slide away as a massive ripple of feathers arches out of the snow. A bruise-tinted wing, easily as long as I am tall, cuts upward, shaking off frozen clumps, and reveals a cloaked figure bent over. My father lifts his other buried wing, their full span stretching twelve feet from end to end.

The wings expand, crystallized feathers withered with just a flicker of blue flame within. His gaunt shoulders are bent, but even so, he stands several heads taller than me. Father already seems weary, but seeing those ashen wings arching on either side of him makes the scars along my shoulder blades twinge.

I’ll never have wings like his.

But he’s always said that was for the best.

I was waiting for the rest of the flock . . . Even though his crackling grey eyes meet mine, he still chooses to communicate telepathically. And now they will never resurface here.

My chin drops to my chest. I should never have acted on my own. I’m sorry. I only wanted to help.

He takes a limping step, letting his wings drag in the snow behind him, creating dual, scar-like indentations. His eyes are bloodshot, dark bags beneath them. His heavy, ragged coat hangs loosely around his too-thin limbs and shuddering chest, those wings sweeping out of slits in the material that wraps his spine. He looks even worse than yesterday. How can I trust you to guard us if you spoil a simple hunt?

My throat tightens. I don’t trust myself for what’s to come, either. I will protect you with my life.

He reaches out with a spindly hand and cups my chin. His skin is cold. Too cold.

You’re afraid, little one. His eyes narrow. Good. You ought to be terrified. I am.

My gut twists into a hundred knots. Y-you’re afraid, Father?

His hold on my chin tightens. Speak to me in your head.

There it is. The expected chiding.

I swallow against his palm brushing my throat. You’re afraid?

Something volatile flashes in his wan features. He lifts his free hand to gesture to the dead argot, whose body is already covered in a thin layer of frost. We are about to be as vulnerable as that creature. More, even.

And I’ll be the only one standing between Father and the others—the Hollow Ones who hunt us like animals. Cursed creatures who create no heat of their own, so they hunt us and carve the warmth out of our people.

They are ice-borne nightmares.

Exactly. Father’s voice growls through my thoughts. You know the Hollow are ruthless. He spits to the side, as we always do when speaking of them. We can hardly trust you to protect us when you bumble into a hunt. Maybe I should stay awake.

I don’t realize how much I’ve been hoping to hear him say those words until they thaw through the tightness in my chest. He lets his waxen hand fall from my face.

I whisper, Could you stay with me?

If Father stayed awake, he could help me protect the rest. As we have always done.

He could help me think the right way.

Help me push away the fear that shuts me down. Makes us vulnerable.

If Father stayed awake, his voice in my head would help me be safe.

He’d tell me when to move.

I trust my head if his voice is there.

From the way his silver eyes flicker over my face, I can tell he’s considering it. He knows how dangerous the pulsating heat inside of me can be. To anyone around me, even to myself.

Our people have grown more used to me. Tempered to my flame—he made sure of that. But it’s still unpredictable.

The fire in my blood doesn’t lead to the aethor sleep—a fact we discovered when I was just a child. That part of me still terrifies our people. But since I am the only phoenix who doesn’t need sleep, I am also the only one who can protect them.

I’ll think on it.

But even as he speaks, I can see the weariness in his eyes. The thin veins that carve through his pale, sagging skin. Father is sick. He has been awake too long.

The longer he stays with me, the sicker he gets. Can I let him choose to risk death for me?

CHAPTER TWO

Father brings his wings in, curling them around himself and tucking his razor-sharp feathers through an inner layer of his large coat. Wrapped snugly as an extra shield of insulation and protection. Plus, flying low enough to scout is dangerous these days. Too easy for a Hollow to spot us and send out a hunting party.

I’ll discuss it with the others. Not whether you are ready— After helping me tether the argot with a stretch of cord that makes it easier to carry, he limps away from me, in the opposite direction of our temple. But, whether we can trust you. Whether you can control your flame.

That is the question.

Burrowing deeper into my jacket, I quicken my pace, boots crunching over the snow. Where are we going?

He glances over his shoulder. To give you another chance to prove yourself. Our people still need their last full meal. And you’ll want to dry your own supplies.

If I let those words stand alone, let them drift in the chilled air, I can almost believe he does trust me. That they do have faith in me.

I squint up at the dull crimson fireball in the sky. We used to navigate using the sun, but every day it grows more dim. Like it, too, has been awake too long.

As if Sol itself struggles for breath.

Sol, the creator of our sun. A deity my father doesn’t even believe in anymore.

The sun’s slow death has made it nearly impossible to find enough food to keep our people alive. Some say Sol is to blame for the Hollow stalking our every movement. For the frozen rivers and starved wildlife. But anger at a mythic creator who abandoned the sun and our world doesn’t change anything. And, as Father says, all the old gods are dead now. Even their names lost to time—Sol, being the only echo of an ancient memory. But that name will fade as well, just as everything does out here.

Mara? Father’s voice is softer now, and I speed up to trot beside him.

Yes?

"Help me find the nearest haja. We’ll set our trap where we know prey will be."

This I can do. This I usually do.

Father used to be able to find these haja, gaps where warmth rose from the nemior tubes beneath, easily on his own. But as he and the rest of our people have been awake longer, and have grown more sickly, it is increasingly difficult for them to sense where the magma tubes carry a bit of warm air through to the surface.

So they let me help find haja. Sometimes when we’re hunting, and sometimes when we are searching for a place to hide our people away when they must sleep.

I am the youngest. The only young, actually. The first nora.

The first female child ever created. Ever found.

I’ve only existed for about two hundred years, still a youth on the cusp of full adulthood, while Father and the others were coaxed to life with the dawn of this world’s sun. In that time, I’ve aged at a slow, vulnerable pace all my own.

Father was born with the dawn of this world—but, from the looks of it, it won’t be long until he also sees the day the sun dies. When that day comes, it will only be a matter of time until we all freeze like the argot slung over my shoulder as we walk.

It’s cold and stiff as a rock, but I keep hold of the rope I’ve tied to the dead creature, now leading just ahead of Father.

Every few steps, I let my eyes fall closed, reaching out. Letting that pulsating fire buried deep inside search for the pockets of warmth around me. But so far, everything is just—cold. Frigid. Lifeless.

I angle north. We skirt around a sprawling, dark ravine and keep heading into the incoming icy wind.

Are you sure you want to go this far, little one? Father’s spindly hand clamps onto my shoulder. He’s worried about the Hollow.

I glance back at him. "I think I sense something ahead. Something larger. Maybe a lyran?" Not shaped like a hunter.

He gives the slightest nod and we keep moving. I’d better not be wrong.

We walk for another dozen steps before I can really sense it. The air rising from below, warming a small, frigid section and letting a few stubborn weeds grow.

Where plant life manages to survive, there are always animals nearby.

Father gestures for me to be quiet. He inches ahead, slowly letting his wings unfurl again. Ready to fly, if that’s what it takes to win this fight.

Moving in tandem, booted feet whispering over the ice, we creep around the edge of a large boulder piled with snow—and we see her.

About sixty paces away stands a beautiful, slender creature on all fours. Her back reaches about as high as my chest. The beast’s thick coat is a shimmering, the pale blue shade all the females share, with soft spots for camouflage. A lyran. She’s already shed her antlers, but the silvery stubs are starting to grow back. Padded paws gently scrape at the ground as she lowers her snout to pull at rough patches of grass.

Stunning. It’s been over a hundred sunpasses since I’ve seen one up close.

And this one seems pregnant, from the gentle curve of her belly.

Father . . . I whisper, and he lets his wings slowly lower and settle back around him.

We won’t kill a pregnant creature. Young are too rare. We’re not that desperate.

Respect glimmers through his expression as he watches the lyran quietly graze.

I drift closer to Father, my shoulder bumping against his. Instead of pushing me away, he reaches out, pulling me in. He rubs my shoulders to keep me warm.

You did well, little one.

That single phrase comforts me more than any warm blanket or meal ever could. Letting my gaze fall back to the pregnant lyran, I whisper a prayer for the small ones in her womb. Someday, they will probably lose their mother like I did. Very little survives out here.

But if they do, I hope they find a safe pack to join.

Suddenly, as Father and I watch the regal creature—lightly camouflaged behind a slope of icy drift—something zings through the air. An arrow imbeds in the lyran’s chest. She shrieks, making a desperate gurgling noise that echoes my own silent scream.

No!

My body goes numb, the world blurring as I watch several forms descend upon her. Tall creatures wearing armor made of patches of animal skin and pounded metal. Their faces are covered in gaping metal masks with sharp prongs that spiral the outside of the helmet. Jagged and tipped with poison, just in case anyone tries to go for their heads.

Fear burns under my skin like frostbite.

But it’s not the warriors’ fearsome masks or raised spears that make bile rise in my throat—it’s the blood that coats their armor. The gleaming, cobalt blood that licks across the metal plating and pools in pockets stitched inside. There are a few hints of golden blood there too—like mine. Like Father’s once was, before the cold stole the warmth of color from even his liquid flame.

These creatures are dripping with our blood. The blood of my people.

Possibly even the blood of my mother.

Slathered across their bodies like a warning.

The Hollow Ones are soulless creatures clinging to this desolate wasteland by cutting apart the last glimpse of safety and beauty and life that exists in this world.

Just like they cut apart my mother.

Just like they’re attacking this innocent lyran now.

With raised spears and bloodcurdling shrieks, they set upon the gentle animal’s body. Unable to watch, I flinch away from the gruesome sight. Only then do I realize Father’s voice has been howling in my head, Mara! Run!

But I can’t. The numbness spreads over my body, my legs immobile. The panic is crippling. Those savage Hollow Ones would sooner get their hands on us than that lyran. I can only imagine how quickly they would cut us open.

Carve out our blood.

I try again to force my boots across the snow.

But something else resounds in my head. A memory I burn alive daily. A memory I’d tried to bury deep in my ero, under layers of pain hardened like volcanic rock. But it keeps coming back, bringing fresh terror, trying to consume me.

The memory of my tiny self hiding behind piles of furs and animal skins, frozen, as a hunting party of Hollow discovered my sleeping mother. Watching them unsheathe knives. My mother’s flickering, golden blood pouring into buckets.

She was deep in the aethor sleep—but I could hear her screams.

They echoed in my head.

Just like they echo now.

The Hollow Ones took my mother. Cut her apart like an animal.

And now they’ll slaughter us too.

CHAPTER THREE

Get out! Get out! Get out!

The words ricochet in my head, every heated pulse of my heartbeat telling me to run. But I’m frozen in place. Father is shaking my shoulders, trying to pull me out—but panic batters at my ribcage like an argot trying to fly away as my mind becomes a prison. Trapped in the memory. I can taste it. The same fear that has haunted me since I was a child.

The unwanted memory flays me open, surging up from that raw, boiling place deep inside.

Hold it back, Mara! Not even Father’s voice, slicing through the pounding in my head, is enough to dam the flood.

I’m a child again, barely old enough to form words, and certainly not old enough to lose my mother. But we had been on the run for a dozen years. Hiding. She never dared let herself sleep. Until the day she carried me over a frigid mountain range where we almost froze to death, into an abandoned camp—and allowed herself a single day of rest.

A single day where she made sure I stayed safely inside while she slept. While she healed. While she regenerated. A process that should have taken years—but she only planned one sunpass for. Her body haggard and spent, desperate for rest. As she slept there, sunk deep into sleep, I could still hear her voice in my head. Keeping me company. The flicker of her subconscious reaching for me.

Only, somehow, the Hollow Ones found us.

No! I scream internally, digging my fingers into the icy ground. Trying to escape reliving it. I refuse to release a scream and put Father in any more danger than I already have. He’s grabbing me, dragging me away from our hiding place.

I can still see the intruders in my mind’s eye, overwhelmed by the memory of them bursting through the door, ripping it off its hinges. Three Hollow warriors in those wretched masks, shrieking in victory and carrying curved spears. I crawled under the bed where Mama slept, curled into a ball, furs pulled around me, hands clamped over my ears—but I could still hear her screams consuming my thoughts.

I couldn’t move. Couldn’t protect her from the monsters. Only hide till it was too late.

Then my last shred of terror ignited. Lit the boiling heat trapped inside my chilled, shaking body.

I was barely old enough to walk the first time I razed a Hollow One’s house to the ground. Left it nothing but ashes.

The same day the hunters ruthlessly ripped my mother apart in front of me.

Aaagh! I bite out a gasp as Father drags my limp body over the bleak terrain. I force my legs under me to keep up. My hand strays to my shoulder blades—fingers burrowing into the scars there. The ones Father said were necessary. The scars he said ground me to this world. Remind me what it takes to survive. The numbness starts to recede, my vision sharpening. Legs growing stronger. I wipe away the dribble of warm blood leaking from my nose.

But even as I drown the memory in that well of fire in my chest, the heat churns deep in my gut. A raw, open wound. Volatile.

I try to focus on the sloping mountains in the distance as Father and I trudge across the snowbank, deathly quiet. Try to rivet my attention on the frigid wind crawling over my flushed nose and cheeks. Try to ground myself in the snow melting beneath my palms, cooling the heat pulsating in waves over my body. Boiling just under my skin.

Run! They’ve seen us!

Father fills my vision with his dark hood and fierce eyes. Grabbing my arm and picking up our pace. We race across the icy ground, even as the thudding feet of the Hollow hunting party pursue on our heels. We’re their new prey.

Focus, Mara! Father screams into my head. You can’t feel this. The sentence is a command. One that whiplashes through my ero and numbs the dangerous emotions bundled deep. But the force of it slices through my thoughts with a pain all its own.

Father is right. I led us into a trap.

I should have sensed them. I should have stayed away.

He tried to warn me.

I cannot let him down again.

If Mama hadn’t already been dead, my first explosion would have killed her. The fire that burns hotter than any other and scars even our own people. I sometimes wonder if—like Father—my mother was running to hide me from the world.

I won’t let my volatile body hurt anyone else.

My ero is mine. I can control it. I must.

Forcing my body to stay upright and my quivering legs to match Father’s pace, I ball my fists. Shut it down. My nails bite into my palms—and break skin.

Oh—oh, no.

I hadn’t meant to press that hard. To let it out.

But the release feels strangely good.

Thin streams of alia, blazing liquid lifeblood, run in rivulets down my shaking hands. The golden-red fire flickers and gleams as it traces thin paths, and then splashes against the icy ground below. It immediately sizzles, burning through the ice and showing bits of dark, volcanic rock underneath.

I focus on my breathing, on the nipping wind, focus on letting those shallow wounds close.

Father’s tense shoulders soften slightly, and he gestures for us to take a hard left. Toward the ravine we walked around earlier.

We only stop running when we come to the edge. I glance over my shoulder. We’re faster than the Hollow Ones on foot, but they’re still gaining on