Page 70 of Wings of Ash & Flame
A melodic laugh rang out from behind her.
The memory dissolved.
She gasped, eyes snapping open to the present.
The clearing spun around her, drenched in golden light. Heat pressed against her skin. The phoenix was watching her, cataloging her expressions, waiting.
Because it knew.
Tears welled as she remembered her parents. Remembered who she was. She clung tightly to that memory—the first from before the orphanage. Her mother’s smile. Her father’s wink. The warmth of beingloved.
The truth crushed her harder than any blow. Her mother had been the Queen of Aurelia, her father the king.
Alaire was the last remaining Vallorian. Not Alaire Aerendyl, but Alaire Vallorian.
Her hands rose to her ears—rounded, like her father’s. But her mother’s had been pointed…
Half-fae.
That’s why she had magic. Why the royal bloodlines Dawson had spoken of worked so hard to stay pure. They feared this.
Feared halflings likeher.
And yet her parents had chosen each other anyway—chosen love over everything.
The weight of that sacrifice slammed into her, splitting her heart wide open.
Alaire pressed her palms to her eyes, trying to hold herself together. Everything was unraveling and, at the same time, falling into place.
The magic. The pull that had led her here. Professor Ross’s offer. It all made sense now.
Footsteps approached from behind. Dawson. She wasn’t ready for his questions. Not yet.
Instead, she turned toward the phoenix. “Wait—you talked to me. In my head?”
With each beat of its wings, sparks rained around it, a fiery declaration of power.
“Indeed,I did.My name is Solflara,” the phoenix drawled.
Dawson had told her that when a celestial imprinted, it was for life, granting creature and bonded the ability to speak mind-to-mind.
She had imprinted with the phoenix. The same egg she’d seen in her memory.
Alaire’s eyes widened as Solflara’s gaze bore into hers. Amber eyes, fierce and bright, already filled with wisdom—and beneath it, the purity of devotion.
“Beautiful,” Alaire breathed.
Solflara gave a melodic cry that pierced the stillness of the forest.
“From ashes to flame, the phoenix will rise again,” Alaire murmured. The motto of House Ashfyre—her family.
The phoenix’s flames flared, bright as the heart of a forge.
Wonder splintered into dread. She knew the tales of Starfall’s fateful night. She might not remember it all yet, but she knew this much was true: Professor Elowen had said “impossible sacrifices were made that night,” and now the nightmares made sense—burning flesh, the stench of singed hair, the screaming.
Shame coiled in her gut. Somehow, beyond all reason, she survived. And what had she done with that precious life? Stolen food to survive. Lied, cheated, and bartered away pieces of herself in dark alleys to see another day.
She hadn’t honored their legacy. She’d squandered it. Alaire had become precisely what the world expected of a human orphan: broken, worthless, barely deserving of the life they’d died to give her.
