Page 82 of A Court of Ash and Midnight
With a jolt, the memory fades and I come back to the present moment. A hundred different emotions rage through me. Leastof all that I have somehow come back to life after having my throat slit.
Daemon is attempting to attack Julian. I run my hands tentatively down my chest. My clothes are gone. There’s no blood. And I’m covered in head to foot in golden…ash. As if I’d walked through a fire.
Shaking slightly, I sit up, and then push up onto my feet.
Daemon and Julian both spin in my direction. Daemon’s mouth pops open and his eyes widen, and his expression goes from fury to one of wonder in an instant. He steps toward me, arms wide to embrace me.
“Stayback!” I growl, holding up a hand. “Both of you!”
Daemon’s brow crinkles, but Julian is looking at me placidly. Too placidly.
“I—I don’t know what just happened,” I stammer. “But you—” I jab a finger toward Julian. “You stay the hell away from me. Youmurderedme… except…”
“Except you came back to life,” Julian says, making a gesture with his hands as if lecturing a class. “As I knew you would.”
“You couldn’t be completely sure,” Daemon growls. “You took a horrible, horrible risk…”
“I don’t know what either of you are talking about!” I snap. “Butyou…” This time my eyes fall on Daemon. My voice cracks. “I remember everything now. All of it. And you werethere. That night.”
Daemon takes a step toward me. “I…I told you that I could sense you,” he says quietly.
“I thought you meant since the night you brought me to Shadow’s Keep!” I shriek. “Not since the night… the night my…”
“I felt your distress, and I pulled you out of the fire,” Daemon says. “To my great surprise, since you seemed completely unharmed.” His face twists in torment. “Nothing like that hadever happened to me before… sensing someone like that. And I panicked, and I left you there.”
“Youknew,” I groan. “You knew this whole time, and you never saidanything.”
He tries to take another step forward, but I back away from him. “There were other times… over the years. I would sense you, and I’d intervene when you were being pursued. But I… I tried to stay away from you when you first came to Shadow’s Keep. I was an outcast, and I didn’t want you to be treated any worse than I knew you would be as a human. And then, later…” He closes his eyes and shakes his head. “I should have told you, but it never seemed the right time.”
“Because it never was, and it never should be,” Julian says, his voice carrying a rare sternness. “I told both of you to stay away from each other… and now that I know what I know…”
He looks back and forth between me and Daemon, looking almost stricken. “You cannot ever be together.Ever.Do you understand me?”
“No, I don’t understand.” A bubble of hysterical laughter threatens to burst out of me. My psyche feels as frayed as a burlap sack. “Neither of you are making any good sense at all.”
Julian’s eyes burn into me. “You cannot be together, because if you are, you will bring about, quite literally, the end of Aureon as we know it.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Istare at Julian,trying to make sense of the words he’d just spoken. “What do you mean the end of Aureon?”
Julian begins to pace back and forth in agitation. “I knew there was something special about you when you came to Shadow’s Keep. Why would you be hunted for eight years if there wasn’t? I could sense something, too, but was never able to put my finger on it until Professor Wyllora’s spirit summoning told me who your family was. Then I was able to trace your family tree, and discovered…”
“Discovered what?” Daemon prompts.
“Discovered that, once every couple of millennia, there is born a wielder of fire, who death cannot touch, because of their power of regeneration.” Julian stops moving and fixes me in an intense gaze. “The Phoenix, Embyr. You are a Phoenix in human form.”
My blood turns icy. “A Phoenix? How is that even possible?”
“It’s magic, not logic. It is exceptionally rare, but clearly possible. How else do you explain what happened?”
My brow furrows and my mouth opens and closes, but I can’t.
“But what does that have to do with us being together, and the end of Aureon?” Daemon asks. His voice holds a deadly tone, as if daring Julian to defend himself.
“Because, in the prophecy of the Phoenix, it says that the Phoenix can be used to bring about the end of the fae.” Julian clasps his hands behind his back as if he’s going to begin pacing again, but he remains still. “And it also says that when the Phoenix joins with the Night, the beginning of the end of the world will begin.”
“And I am the Night,” Daemon says, his tone dead, flat.
