The Girl at Midnight (35 page)

The Ala ran a hand through her feathers and sighed. Echo had never seen her look so tired.

“When you were out, I meditated to try to make sense of all of this, and I had a vision. The firebird, I believe, is a transferable entity,” the Ala said. “And each person who comes into contact with it leaves a sort of psychic fingerprint. Since Rose was the most recent vessel before you, her voice is the loudest. I’m sure it helps that you’ve given her a reason to shout.” She looked pointedly at where Caius’s hand rested. “The firebird was within the both of you all along. It was your sacrifice that released it. For whatever reason, Rose decided to leave it alone. You chose to unleash it. If my understanding is correct, and the firebird is a being of pure
magic, of raw energy, then it needs something to contain it in order to exist in this world.”

“I don’t get it. Why send me on a scavenger hunt around the world? Why not just send me straight to the Oracle?”

Ivy broke her silence at last. “Maybe it wasn’t about the destination. Maybe it was about the journey.”

Echo blinked. “Come again?”

Ivy fiddled with the hem of her shirt, eyes downcast to watch her hands. “Maybe if things had been too easy, you wouldn’t have been the person you needed to be when the time came. You sacrificed yourself to save us.” She looked up, and Echo recognized the look in her eyes. She was holding back tears, the corners of her lips quivering slightly. “And you didn’t have proof that you’d come back, but you did it anyway. That was really brave.” She sniffled and brought her arm up to wipe her nose on her sleeve.

Echo reached out to take Ivy’s hand, bandages be damned. She hadn’t felt brave. She’d just been desperate. All this talk of vessels was making the dull ache in her head throb even harder. She rubbed at her temples, hoping it would help quell the pain. “But why me? I mean, I’m just a girl. I’m nothing special.”

The Ala laid a gentle hand on Echo’s cheek. “Oh, my little magpie, you’ve always been special. I don’t think it was a coincidence I found you in that library. I think we were meant to find each other, you and I. The same way you and Caius were meant to find one another. Without him, you never would have known about the Oracle.”

Echo raised her eyebrows. “So you’re saying this is like a destiny thing?”

The Ala shook her head, black feathers ruffling slightly before settling. “Your fate is your own, but I think everyone in
this world is given a role.” She looked at Echo with a weight in her eyes that Echo wasn’t sure she wanted to bear. “Your role is to be the firebird. How you choose to play it is up to you. The fire you called is proof of that.”

The fire.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit
. She hadn’t meant to hurt people indiscriminately; she’d just wanted the fighting to end.

“Rowan,” Echo whispered. “And the others … are they okay?” She’d only wanted to stop Tanith, to stop Altair, to stop everyone from ripping each other apart.

The Ala nodded. “The fire passed over them without burning, like you didn’t want to hurt them.”

“I didn’t,” Echo said. But it hadn’t been her choice. She hadn’t thought about it. There was power coursing through her veins, and she wasn’t sure she could even begin to make sense of it. She squeezed her eyes shut. The realization of how close she’d come to hurting the people she loved curdled inside her. Caius rubbed circles on her back, and his touch helped her push the thought away.

Echo shook her head, as if she could dislodge her fear. She couldn’t. What she could do was ignore it and focus on something else. “How did you know where to find us?”

The Ala smiled, and it was so lovely, so familiar, that Echo wanted to weep. “Tanith and her forces followed you. And we followed them.”

Caius ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “I guess none of us were nearly as subtle as we thought we were.”

He sounded vaguely ashamed, and Echo patted the hand that rested on her waist. That small smile graced his lips, and she wanted to smile back, but the weight of her next question was too heavy to allow for something so light.

“Okay, so if I’m the firebird, that means I’m supposed to
stop a war. How the hell do I do that?” said Echo. “I’m just one person.”

“One needs only a single match to start a fire, Echo,” the Ala replied. “It is a heavy burden you bear, but never forget that you do not bear it alone.”

The Ala placed a hand on Ivy’s arm and stood. Ivy looked like she wanted to protest, but she only blinked, too rapidly, in silence. The Ala nodded at Caius and added, “I’ll give the two of you some time. I’m sure you have much to discuss.”

Echo watched them walk away. Caius’s hand fell from her back, but he scooted a few inches closer to her. It was strange to think of him doing anything that could be described as scooting.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

Laughing hurt, but Echo did it anyway. “Like I died and came back to life. So, you know, not bad.”

Caius’s mouth went soft at the edges. Sympathy made him dangerously pretty. She had to look away. He looked away, too.

“I still don’t understand what happened back there,” he said.

Echo looked at her hands. Fire had poured out from those palms. “I don’t think I do, either.”

Caius turned back to her. He opened his mouth. Closed it. He looked as if he was debating what to say. Lips pressed into a thin line, he shook his head. Whatever it was, he either wasn’t going to say it, or he couldn’t find the words. His hand rose to hover in front of Echo’s shirt. Someone—Ivy, she presumed—had torn it open about a third of the way so that the puckered skin of the scar on her chest was
visible. Caius curled his fingers into fists, as though he didn’t trust himself not to reach out and touch it.

“You healed.” He shook his head, astonishment in his eyes. “You’re the firebird. And you rose, from blood and ashes, just like Rose wrote.”

“Yup,” Echo said. She waited a beat before adding, just for good measure, “And you’re the Dragon Prince.”

“
Former
Dragon Prince,” Caius amended, though Echo detected a note of embarrassment in his voice. “Once Tanith usurped me, it wasn’t
technically
a lie.”

She fixed him with her best dubious stare.

He winced. “I’m sorry. I know that isn’t enough, but I don’t know what else—”

Echo held up a bandaged hand, silencing him. “I can only deal with so many revelations at a time, and this whole firebird thing kind of trumps your secret identity by a long shot. For now, consider yourself forgiven, but don’t think I’m going to forget it.”

“That’s more than I deserve,” he said softly.

“Oh, I don’t know, I think you’ve maybe suffered enough for one day. Your own sister did try to kill you.”

“She tried to stop me. If Tanith truly wanted me dead, I’d be dead. Or, at the very least, maimed. She’s my twin, and I’m still her brother. That means something to her.”

“And does it mean something to you?” she asked.

Caius sighed, long and weary. “I don’t know.”

Echo wanted to wrap her arms around herself, but that would have felt too much like cowering. From what, she wasn’t sure. From the people who would be hunting her now that they knew she and the firebird were one and the same. From Caius.
From the fact that she had risen from the dead. From herself. From her destiny.
Pick a door
, Echo thought,
any door
.

“What happened in that room?” Caius’s voice was barely above a whisper, but the sound of it snaked around Echo’s rib cage, squeezing. “Before Tanith. What did you see?”

“A mirror,” Echo said. “Just a mirror.”

Caius ducked his head, hair falling over his eyes and brushing his scales. She wanted to smooth his bangs back for him, to feel the silk of his hair between her fingers again. Now it was her untrustworthy hands curling into loose fists; the pain caused by the burns on her palms helped quell the urge. When he spoke, he kept his gaze lowered. “And them?”

He looked at her then, and Echo didn’t turn away.

“I remembered,” she said. “I remembered things I shouldn’t, because they’re not my memories. It’s weird. I remember it like I was there, like I was Rose. I remember
you
. I remember loving you because she loved you.”

Hope and sadness and something new, something just for her, warred in Caius’s eyes. Invisible hands wrapped around her heart and twisted, as if they were trying to wring it dry of blood. He looked like a man who wanted to hope but didn’t quite know how.

Echo didn’t know who moved first. All she knew was that she was kissing Caius, and Caius was kissing her. Something inside her that had been misaligned was slowly setting itself right, gears clicking into place one by one. It was thrilling and terrifying all at once.

Schwellenangst
, Echo thought.
The fear of starting something new
.

Caius kissed her as if he knew her already, as if pressing his lips against hers were an old habit, as easy as breathing.
He kissed her like he remembered her. And a small part of her, a part that Echo was beginning to realize was not her at all, remembered him. As Caius sank his fingers into the hair at the base of her neck, Echo could have sworn that she felt Rose sigh.

At the faint tickle of another person inside her head, she pulled away. Caius moved back, reluctantly. His fingers traced a path from the shell of her ear to the curve of her jaw and came to rest there. It was nice, but as soon as she had the thought, she wasn’t sure if it was hers. She shook her head, dislodging Caius’s hand.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just … how do I know where I end and Rose begins? How do I know what’s me and what’s her?”

The corners of Caius’s mouth turned up ever so slightly. “You’re you, Echo. You always have been and you always will be. Nothing will change that.”

He couldn’t have known how desperately she wanted to believe him, yet he looked so sure of himself, so sure of
her
that she didn’t have the heart to tell him she didn’t. But because her reality had become a smorgasbord of life-altering events, the problem of sharing head space with Caius’s dead girlfriend wasn’t the only serving of strange on her plate.
Time to compartmentalize
.

“So,” she said. “What are we going to do now?”

Caius’s hand traveled toward Echo’s, inching closer, giving her time to retract it. She didn’t. His fingers closed around hers. He turned her hand over in his and said, “Damned if I know.”

Her laugh was tired and quiet. She looked around the loft because she needed a minute to digest it all. Ivy and the Ala had retreated to the kitchenette, making tea, probably. It
was one thing Ivy had inherited from the Ala. Making warm beverages in a crisis. Jasper was still stretched out flat on the floor, with Dorian’s hands holding a bandage to his abdomen.

Echo’s fingers twitched with the urge to tighten her hold on Caius’s hand despite the pain. She glanced at where Dorian had his head bent over Jasper’s. They were so different. Dorian, with his fair skin and his silvery-gray hair. Jasper, all golden brown and a riot of color, ever the peacock. But as Jasper raised Dorian’s hand to his mouth, pressing a gentle kiss onto his fingers, they looked right together.

The sight of them made something ping inside Echo.

“Maybe this is how I do it,” she said.

“Do what?” Caius asked.

“End the war. Bring everyone together.”

Caius’s expression sailed past dubious to land squarely on shocked. “The Avicen and the Drakharin would never unite.”

“Wouldn’t they?” Echo flung out a hand, gesturing at the open expanse of Jasper’s nest. “Look at us. Ivy worked her healing magic on Dorian after that psycho chased us out of Wyvern’s Keep. Dorian’s busy holding Jasper’s guts in.” She shook her head, sighing. “You saw the Oracle’s arms. She had both scales
and
feathers. Maybe the Avicen and the Drakharin had a common ancestor. They share the mythology about the firebird, don’t they? Maybe it didn’t used to be this way, Caius. The Avicen and the Drakharin were one, once. Maybe they can be again.”

Caius’s smile was sad, but still lovely. Kind of like the rest of him. She was fairly certain that thought did not belong to her. “It’s a beautiful dream, Echo. But that’s all it’ll ever be. I’m too old to believe anything else.”

Once more, the hands around Echo’s heart clenched.
“Well, maybe it’s time the dreamers started calling the shots,” she said.

Caius brought their joined hands to his mouth and held them there, brushing his lips against her fingers, and Echo spied the telltale shine of tears in his eyes.

“They won’t like it,” he said, mouthing the words against her skin. “People like Altair. Like Tanith. They’ll fight until there’s no one left standing.”

“But does that mean we don’t try?”

Caius’s voice was soft with wonder. “You know, you sound just like her.”

Like Rose. Echo wasn’t sure how she felt about that. In that moment, he didn’t look like a two-hundred-fifty-year-old almost immortal. He didn’t look like a prince elected to bear the burdens of an entire nation’s hopes and failures. He simply looked like Caius. Serious green eyes, hair so brown it was almost black, the faintest hint of a smile he wore around the edges of his lips when he didn’t remember to frown. Echo wondered if this was the way Rose had seen him, if the amalgamation of these traits was the reason she’d fallen in love with Caius a century ago.

With a small sigh, he lowered her hand and gazed around the room. “So. Here we are. A flame-throwing thief, a deposed prince, an apprentice healer, an ex–royal guard, and a career scoundrel taking on a war on two fronts.” The sadness seeped out of Caius’s smile like a puddle drying up in the sun. He laughed, and Echo wanted to bottle the sound and save it forever. “What could possibly go wrong?”

“Honestly?” Echo replied. “Probably everything.”

“They’ll be looking for you,” the Ala said, watching Echo lay out her few belongings on Jasper’s bed so she could pack. Echo wanted to sit next to her, to lean her weary head on the Ala’s shoulder, as she had so many times before, to let herself be comforted by those strong arms. But that was something a child would have done, and the time for childish things had passed.