Page 62 of Phoenix Chosen 3

Wake up.Daddy needs your help.

All I need is another glimmer.

And then I see it again—another flash of Kalistratos in my mind. He’s struggling to stay on his feet. Dark blood flows from beneath his hand pressed firmly to his shoulder. His eyes burn with furious determination to keep moving.

The vision strikes me right in the heart. It hurts more than any arrow could.

I have to go to him, but where is he? I can see him, but I can’t find him. Here I am, powerless to help him.

Powerless to do anything at all.

A shrill sound pierces through the vision, pulling me back into the moment. Hot tears are flowing down my cheeks, and through the blur I see the archer blowing through a small pan flute, repeating three notes almost like a bird call. Am I going crazy? Did this cat bitch really just decide to start tooting away on a fucking pan flute?

Airos tenses up. His eyes wander, alert like he’s waiting for something to happen.

“You’re gonna blow out my damn eardrum!” Jackson shouts as the cat blows into the pan flute again.

“What’s happening?” I say to Airos. “What are they trying to do?”

“I think we’ve made an error,” he replies in a low voice only I can hear. “Get back. Back to the trees.”

I look over my shoulder to what looks like a wall of flames. “Must be one hell of an error,” I say.

“Go,” he urges. “You’ll be safer in the fire than out here. Get to Kalistratos!”

The cat is dragging Jackson further out into the clearing, blowing relentlessly into the pan flute. She watches me move away from Airos and retreat toward the oppressive heat. I’m forced to go laterally to find a way back into the woods. What kind of an idiot runs into a forest fire? Me, apparently.

I keep low and scramble beneath the blazing canopy. Just as I do, I hear a low sound pulsing around me, almost like a drum beat. It’s not my imagination. It’s growing louder, kicking right into the center of my chest and the ground. I realize the fire is responding to it too, wavering with each pulse like it's being hit with bursts of air from gigantic bellows. I throw my hands over my ears and am immediately knocked off my feet. Those bursts of air have turned into gusts, and the low thrumming is now enough to rattle my teeth and almost knock the wind from my lungs.

The fire goes out in an instant, blown away by the force. Looking up through the blackened branches, I’m awestruck by the appearance of a ship eclipsing the sky. It's close enough that I can see the wood planking of its flat-bottomed hull, painted orange and black with a patterned motif, and in the center is the profile of a wolf with bared vicious fangs.

The first thought in my head isPraxis Skotos.

The ship—a sky flier—booms over the clearing, shaking the trees and flattening the grass beneath it. Gray ash whirls around from the scorched forest. Airos has his neck craned back, and he turns and sees me still at the edge of the forest.

“Go!” he shouts at me.

A rope ladder swings down over the side of the ship and hits the ground close to where the cat has Jackson held hostage.

If I don’t leave now, I’m going to end up a prisoner on that ship too, or dead, and Jackson’s sacrifice would be for nothing.

I turn and run. The trees around me look like they’ve been dunked into a lake of black, charred and scorched from their branches down to their middle. Smoldering leaves and flecks of ash blow around me, choking my lungs.

I don’t know where I’m going. I’m just running. The only thought in my head right now is getting to Kalistratos, and somehow, I feel like I’m going the right way. It’s like I’m a cave diver following a guide line in silt-filled waters; I'm following a path I can't see, but I know it exists. No, it’s not that I’m following anything. I’m beingpulled. Pulled to him.

I hear Airos’s magic cracking like fireworks over the repeatingdum dum dumof the sky flier’s engines, or whatever power keeps the thing afloat. I pump my legs faster and pull a choking, smoky breath through my shredded throat. I’m racing across the uneven terrain, somehow managing to keep my feet over it all with Eggy slung tight against my side like an oblong bowling ball. I barely even feel their weight. They’re a part of me—they always have been.

I’m coming.

The sound of the flier is fading. Either I’ve gained distance or the thing has flown away. It doesn’t matter. Right now, Kalistratos is the only thing that matters.

I can feel you.

It’s like a compass in my chest, guiding me to magnetic north.

I’m at my limit now—my heart, my lungs, my legs, all of them about to explode, but I can’t stop until I find him.

And then I see him, sprawled on the ground beside an ancient olive tree. A bloody palm print is smeared across its gray, craggy bark. His head is turned to the side, his cheek pushed into the dirt, his face hidden by his dark hair.

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