Author: Jodi Meadows

“There were humans before?” Whit asked.

“Lots of humans, it seems.”

“Then they’d have had their own society. Technological advancements. Ideas and dreams and culture. What happened to all of it? How could none of that have survived?”

“Surely a lot of that world did survive.” I couldn’t stop my pitying look. “But Janan wanted you to believe he created you. Why would he have allowed a previous society’s culture to stay? He erased it from your minds, just like he erased so many other things. But when you had flashes of inspiration or ideas for inventions, maybe some of what you’d learned in your very first lifetime leaked through the memory magic.”

“So our inventions.” Stef glanced at her SED, my flute, our lanterns. “None of what we thought was ours is ours.”

My throat tightened, but I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know if she was right or—Or what. The books didn’t tell me.

Sam touched my leg. “What happened next?”

I eyed my notes. “The cataclysm was before phoenixes began recording history, so whatever incited it is a mystery. We may never know. It’s not important, anyway. Only how people reacted to it.” I found my place again. “Humanity dwindled as the other dominant species carved out territories across the world. After a hundred or more years of living with the constant threat of extinction, a new leader was born.”

“You should probably mention that people weren’t reincarnated.” Stef glanced around the group. “People just lived and died, like everything else.”

“That’s how the population grew smaller.” I smiled at her. “Thanks.”

She ducked her head.

“Anyway, this new leader’s name was Janan. He was strong and had plans to lead his people not just beyond their current problem—always getting slaughtered by the various creatures living around their small territory—but into a greater way of living: never dying. He saw how phoenixes rose from their own ashes, and was jealous. So he took dozens of his best warriors, and they went hunting a phoenix to discover the method of its immortality.

“They caught one and demanded answers, but the phoenix couldn’t tell them.” My voice broke. “So they hurt it and demanded again, but still the phoenix told them nothing. As they tortured the phoenix, its blood began leaking onto them, changing them. They didn’t realize it, though.”

Stef and Whit stared at their hands, and Sam had his eyes closed, as though seeing everything in his head. Sylph songs quieted.

“Soon, other phoenixes arrived to save their comrade. They were furious, but they didn’t kill the attackers. If a phoenix takes a life, it would cost their cycle of birth and death. Instead, to punish the attackers, they conjured tower prisons in the most dangerous places in the world, like jungles or deserts or over immense volcanoes. Inside the towers, the attackers wouldn’t starve or die of thirst. They’d get what they wanted—immortality—and they’d be alone for the rest of their eternal lives. Because the phoenixes separated all the attackers so they couldn’t conspire again.

“The towers were empty. They had no doors. Only a special key could affect the stone.” I glanced at Sam, who pulled the temple key from his pocket. It glittered in the faint light of lanterns.

“That’s the key?” Whit asked.

I nodded.

“How did we get it?”

I turned back to my notebook. “Meuric stole it. He was there when Janan and the others attacked the phoenix, and when the phoenixes took everyone away. But he didn’t take part in the attack himself; he hung back in the forest, hidden. When he returned to everyone else, he told them only that Janan and the warriors had been captured and imprisoned by phoenixes—not what they’d done to deserve it. He sent a party to steal the key, and they brought back not only the key, but a pile of books, as well.”

“These?” Whit asked, touching the leather spine of the book nearest him, and I imagined he was wondering if he’d been the one to grab the books. Maybe he and Orrin had decided together to take the books. The beginnings of their library, later locked away for five thousand years.

“Those books,” I confirmed. “Many people were lost in the attempt to steal the key, but when the survivors brought it back to Meuric, they had what they needed to free Janan. They went after him, and found an enormous wall circling a seemingly infinitely high tower.

“But inside the tower, Janan had been learning about the magic leeched from the phoenix, and he realized there was a way to achieve immortality after all. Like Meuric, he didn’t tell everyone the truth about what he and his warriors had done. He said only that he’d learned the secret to immortality, and the phoenixes had grown jealous and locked him away for it.

“He wasn’t going to let the phoenixes stop him from becoming immortal. Now that he understood how it could be achieved, he’d do anything to get it. He would begin with himself, and when that worked, he swore he would do the same for everyone else. In the meantime, he would reincarnate everyone, exchanging their souls with new souls. Everyone would perpetually reincarnate; no one else would be born because he could only reincarnate you.”

Sam jerked his head up and stared at me. Stef shot me a warning look. But before anyone could ask, I pressed on.

“Janan said the key to the phoenixes’ immortality was a death of their own making. After everyone was secured in chains, tied to him forever, he took the knife he’d used to harm the phoenix, still with its golden blood on the blade, and plunged it into his own chest. He shed his mortal form and became part of the tower, which was already half-alive with phoenix magic. And everyone inside the tower was bound to Janan.

“They reappeared outside the prison wall as adults, with no memory of what had just happened. Only Meuric remembered. He was meant to encourage people to worship Janan and prepare for Janan’s return. When they went inside the prison wall again, there were houses everywhere. The prison had been transformed into a city.”

Whit frowned. “But I thought there was a big fight over who would live in the city. . . .”

I nodded. “There might have been. I imagine everything was chaotic and strange then. The book doesn’t go into detail about that.”

“What happened to the others?” Sam asked. “The people Janan took to find the phoenix.”

I glanced at Cris, at the other sylph hovering around the cave with us. Several of them moaned and curled in on themselves.

“No.” Whit shook his head. “That’s not possible. Because Cris—”

“It’s the truth.” I raised an eyebrow at the sylph, and several of them nodded, odd little twitches. “What happened with Cris was unprecedented, but the others were cursed by phoenixes. They repented. They wanted forgiveness. Phoenixes didn’t trust them exactly, but they’d seen what Janan was trying to do. They gave the prisoners a chance at redemption.

“They had every prisoner do as Janan had done. They drove their own weapons into their chests—the weapons still covered in phoenix blood. The prisoners shed their mortal forms, but they had no one bound to them, no physical ties to their towers. They soon emerged as sylph: bodiless souls of shadow and fire.”

“That doesn’t sound like a chance at redemption,” Whit muttered.

“Redemption comes when they stop Janan from ascending.”

“How were they expected to do that?” Stef sounded indignant. “They were just going along with what Janan ordered. It could have been any of us he’d dragged along. Any of us—” Her voice broke, and she balled in on herself. Sam leaned over to hug her, and everyone was quiet for a minute.

“What about Cris?” Whit’s voice was hoarse.

I couldn’t look at the sylph next to me. “He was trapped like this because he performed the same ritual the others had. None of us realized what would happen after.”

Cris murmured a song, as if reminding me his plight wasn’t my fault, but . . . I could have done something. I could have made him wait. I could have insisted.

I should have.

Sam’s tone was all caution. “Earlier, you said Janan talked about exchanging souls. Does that mean we knew?” He faced me, expression torn.

He wasn’t supposed to figure it out.

“Did we know, Ana?” Sam’s voice dipped low and dangerous. “How long have you known that we agreed to the exchange? How long have you known we agreed to let newsouls be eaten so we could live forever? How long have you been hiding it from me?” There, at the end, the words caught and grief showed through.

I whispered, “Since Stef, Cris, and I were in the temple.”

He turned to Stef, naked betrayal in his posture. “You knew, too?”

She gave a single nod.

Without another word, Sam got up and left.

14

BETRAYAL

I STARTED TO go after Sam, but Stef shook her head. “Give him some time.”

My knees hit my sleeping bag and I slumped over the notebook, pages still open and glaring with the truth. He wasn’t supposed to know. Not ever. “How long?”

Stef shrugged and seemed to struggle for words as Whit frowned and looked like he wanted to follow Sam outside.

“I didn’t want anyone to feel guilty.” It was the truth, but my words were hollow, because there was another, stronger truth: I hadn’t wanted to deal with their guilt and grief. Already, the stress of what we had to do was overwhelming. “Besides, I know why you made the decision. I understand.”

Whit scowled up at me. “Why?”

“You were scared.” I couldn’t raise my voice above a whisper. “You were in a strange and frightening land, and Janan offered you a way to come back if you died.”

“Many of us were more afraid of Janan than we were the rest of the world,” Stef added quietly. “He’d angered phoenixes. He’d done something so huge that phoenixes stepped in to punish him. Whether or not we knew the truth of what happened, we knew it had to be bigger than we were, and that meant Janan was, too. So we agreed because it seemed like he could protect us or destroy us. We made a decision based on fear.”

“And it seemed like newsouls would never even know what they missed.” I tried not to think about the non-voice I’d heard in the temple once, or the weepers: newsouls.

“It doesn’t matter if they didn’t know what they were missing,” Whit said. “We knew. We knew what Janan would do to them. We made that decision.”

Awkward silence filled the cave, and after a while, Whit went out after Sam, a spare coat slung over his arm.

Stef glared at me. “If you’re going to be so bad at keeping secrets, you need to figure out a more delicate way of revealing them.” She turned away and bent over her SED.

Now everyone was angry with me. Stef, because I’d told the others, and Sam and Whit because I hadn’t told them before. I probably deserved to be left alone.

But even as I leaned my forehead on my knees, Cris curled up next to me, a companionable warmth.

“Thanks,” I mumbled, and he gave a quiet hum. I hated Sam being mad at me, but what I had to do next would make it worse.

With a tired sigh, I grabbed my SED and shifted to the map, trying to work out time and distances.

After an hour, Sam and Whit returned to the cave. Stef and I both looked up expectantly.

“Ana,” Sam started, but I stood and shook my head.

“You might as well just sit and listen to what I have to say. None of you are going to like it.”

Sam’s dark eyes narrowed, but he leaned against the wall, next to Whit. Stef gave me a wary look, and Cris lingered in the corner, invisible among the shadows.

I begged my voice not to shake. “This is my plan. It’s going to sound rash, but unless any of you have better ideas, it’s the only plan we’ve got.” Dread coiled in my stomach as my friends’ expressions grew more and more skeptical. “We get the dragons to help us.”