That night, after she and Dante made a silent camp in the wastelands, after they sat wordlessly on opposite sides of a small fire neither of them needed for warmth, Selena finally allowed herself to sleep. She had been avoiding it for days, knowing what would come, knowing what waited for her in the space between consciousness and oblivion.
The dream, when it took her, was absolute.
She stood in a void of pure white, so bright it should have been blinding but somehow wasn't. Above her—if directions had meaning in this place—hung a sun that wasn't a sun. It was herself, rendered massive and terrible and beautiful, composed entirely of golden-crimson flames. The phoenix.
