Page 148 of Queen of Legends and Lies
My grip on Rose tightens. It’d be better for her to die with me than continue this false life as a puppet of destruction and madness. Better a clean death than to feed her to this monster. Still, neither of those options are ideal.
With a scream of rage and defiance, I lash out again.
Fire explodes from inside me in a blistering wave, filling the cavern with lava and searing-hot air. The flames roar past my shield. Fiery blasts incinerate the drachen and the corrupted. The very rock around us sizzles…and explodes.
But it’s not enough.
Even amplified by the magical merge, my fire can’t touch Narc. He continues to regenerate, muscles and organs and skin flowing over his frame like wax.
And through all this, Rose struggles against me, shrieking like an otherworldly creature. Not like the sweet little girl I know and love.
I try to hold her angry little arms in place without causing her any pain.
“Please!” I beg, though I don’t know who in the hells I’m talking to. The gods? The universe? Anyone who might be listening? “Please, help me! Help me save her.”
But all I hear in response is the roar of the flames and the wet, squelching sounds of Narc as his skin crawls and stretches like rubber over bones and organs and bloody muscle.
I’ve failed. And now everyone—all of humanity—will pay the price.
My fire gutters, dimming to embers as hopelessness floods my veins. I can’t do this. I’m not strong enough, not powerful enough.
What was I thinking, challenging a god?
I’m nothing.
No one.
But then, deep inside me, something stirs.
A spark.
A glimmer.
Faint at first but growing brighter with each passing second…it’s my magic. My fire magic. The essence of who I am. But there’s something else, too, twined around it like a golden thread.
Another kind of fire, one I’ve never felt before.
My elemental magic resides in my blood. This new power is centered in my heart.
Phoenix fire.
Instinctively, I grasp for that shimmering ember buried within me. It flits away from my touch, elusive and stubborn. I grit my teeth and push harder, refusing to let it escape.
I need this. Rose needs this. The whole damn world needs this.
And suddenly, my mind is racing, and I remember the vision from the Hidden Valley. While holding a spelled feather, memories of the phoenix it came from rushed into me. That phoenix was the same one who granted my ancestors some of their powers.
I’ve felt this kind of intense energy only once before—while trapped within those visions.
My fire magic originated here. This is the root of the embers. Until this very moment, I’d always drawn on the reservoir of powers that lingered near the surface.
Why wouldn’t I?
But now, I dive even deeper.
With a final, wrenching effort, I seize hold of the strange new fire in my core and yank it to the surface. It replaces my red and yellow flames with a blaze of pure white light so bright my eyes burn and water.
Before, I used fire that destroyed. But now, what flows out of me, what weeps from my pores and covers my body and sweet Rose’s in a protective blanket as the drachen and the corrupted lash out beyond us, are the flames of consecration. Purifying flames.
