Page 108 of Dance of the Phoenix
“Let’s go back to our room, then,” he said quietly. “It’s been a long day.”
More like a long month.
And so we went to Ragnor’s—no,ourroom, and lay together in bed, holding onto one another, terrified that if we let go, then we’d both simply disappear.
Tomorrow, we could talk about everything.
But tonight, we just needed to make sure we were alive.
Epilogue
Eliza
Doors rose from the misty, stony ground, encompassing the space and surrounding me from every direction. All doors were made of wood, and each had, or didn’t have, a certain appeal. I’d already learned the nature of four doors from many years of traversing Lonaria, the Realm of Dreams.
The door directly to my left, which had a serene yet somewhat tense feeling, would lead me to Aderra, the Realm of the Living—which were all big words that meant planet Earth.
To my two o’clock, a door wearing a faint smoke was bound to a certain person’s subconsciousness. I’d mentally bookmarked that door, knowing I would use it often in the near future.
Directly behind me, there was a door with a soft halo that was both gentle and blood-chillingly dangerous. That was a door that, unlike the other three I’d memorized, I only used once, when I was younger and much more reckless.
That was a mistake I wouldnotrepeat.
The fourth door, out of the dozens that had appeared around me, that I was intimately acquainted with was right in front of me. It wasthe simplest door, not giving off any sort of feeling, which had tricked me, once upon a time, into thinking its inhabitant was harmless.
I’d learned the hard way that, like everything in my life, anything that seems innocent never really is.
I steadied myself, preparing for what I was likely to find, before I pulled the door open and stepped through the threshold into searing brightness. Squinting, I kicked the door shut behind me and allowed my eyes to adjust. Once they did, I blinked and stared.
No matter how many times I came here, I could not get used to the sight. It wasn’t that the scenery was interesting; the place was like a large ballroom, with marble floors and walls and iridescent chandeliers dangling from the dome-shaped ceiling. It was that in the center of the ballroom, on a throne made of bronze leaves, was a sight no living being should behold.
At first glance, it looked like a human man. He had pearly white hair trickling like a waterfall into a pool on the floor. He was tall and slender, with unblemished skin the color of deep indigo, and he sat draped in a toga-like silk cloth almost as white as his hair.
If that wasn’t enough to make this manlike existence seem ethereal, then the eyes did the trick: The sclera was as black as the night, the irises the color of pure lavender, and its pupils entirely silver.
No matter how many times I saw the Spirit of Providence, I was always dumbstruck, needing to process what I was seeing, for no human had skin nor eyes like his.
“Hello, Eliza,” the Spirit now said, my name a song on his lips. He tapped on the floor with his bare feet. “Come sit.”
Obediently, I walked toward him and pulled myself down to my knees on the marble floor at his feet. With my arms resting at my sides, I bent my torso forward and said, “Greetings, Marduk.”
Marduk wriggled his toes, motioning for me to straighten. I did, and stared into his inhuman eyes, holding my hands near my belly. His unusually ethereally beautiful face split into a wide smile. “You mustwonder why I called for you,” he said in a deeply masculine voice that, had he been a real human man, would’ve made me think dirty thoughts.
But that was far from the case with Marduk, and with a being like him, one is advised to take caution. He was the most intelligent being I’d ever encountered. He didn’t alter his tone of voice just for the heck of it. Everything he did was a calculated move meant to bring him the advantage in every social setting.
Even though I’d known him my whole life, I had yet to figure out how to navigate the labyrinth of Marduk’s mind.
He crossed his legs and gave me a look that, on anyone else, I would’ve said seemed like urgent concern. But I’d learned that with Marduk, assumption wasn’t just the mother but the entire damned family of all fuckups.
“The Phoenix has appeared in the Realm of the Living,” Marduk now said, and even though I’d witnessed it myself, the shock of his words, of my own memories, stiffened my spine. “You must eliminate its host.”
I knew it was coming, and yet the words still came like a fucking wrecking ball. I’d told Aileen Henderson that once her threat progressed beyond two, she would be in danger. At first, I thought it would be because she would resurrect the Morrow Gods.
But Aileen Henderson went and did something even worse: She became a Spirit’s host, and not just any Spirit—the Phoenix, a being that, if it so wanted, could bring destruction to the Realm of the Living.
“We can’t let the Phoenix have free rein in Aderra, Eliza,” Marduk said, probably sensing my consternation. “I shouldn’t have to tell you how much is at stake here.”
He was right. The Phoenix was a literal catastrophe. Back at the Hecatomb arena, just seeing it made myotherself rise, putting a target on the Phoenix with the awful, terrifying label,enemy.
