Aria's POV
His hand touches my wrist and the world shatters.
Black fire explodes between us, throwing me backward. I slam into something hard—the altar—and slide down, gasping. My chest feels like it's being ripped open from the inside. The mark over my heart burns so hot I scream.
The man—the phoenix king—staggers back too, clutching his own chest. His golden eyes are wide with shock.
"What—" He stares at me like I just stabbed him. "What are you?"
"I don't know!" I sob, curling into myself. The pain is everywhere. In my bones. In my blood. Like my whole body is trying to become something else and doesn't know how.
He moves toward me again, slower this time. Cautious. "You shouldn't have this much power. You're human. Humans can't—" He stops, his eyes narrowing. "Unless..."
The ceiling cracks again. More stones fall. One crashes right where I was standing seconds ago.
"We need to leave," he says. "Now. This building won't survive what's coming."
"What's coming?" I try to stand but my legs won't hold me.
"Me." His smile is sharp and frightening. "The rest of me. My power has been imprisoned for three centuries. Now that the first seal is broken, the rest will follow. And when it does, this entire sanctum will be destroyed."
He reaches for me again.
I scramble backward on my hands. "Don't touch me!"
"Would you rather die in the rubble?" His voice is cold. "Because those are your options, little bride. Come with me, or stay and burn."
"I'm not your bride!"
"The phoenix fire disagrees." He gestures to the mark on my chest, still glowing through my dress. "We're bound. Soul to soul. Life to life. Whether you like it or not."
A roar shakes the building—not from him, but from outside. The freed phoenixes are circling the sanctum, their cries shaking loose more stones. They're celebrating their freedom, not caring who gets hurt.
Seraphine appears from behind a fallen pillar, her perfect hair now wild, her white robes torn. Blood runs down her temple. But her eyes... her eyes are filled with pure hatred as she looks at me.
"You," she hisses. "You broke everything."
"I didn't mean to—"
"GUARDS!" Her voice booms with unnatural power. "Capture the girl! Kill the fallen king!"
Men in silver armor pour in from every entrance, weapons drawn. But these aren't normal weapons—they glow with the same sick green light that was on the phoenix chains.
The phoenix king's wings spread wide, blocking me from their view. "How many times must I destroy your little soldiers, Seraphine? You'd think you'd learn."
"You're weak," Seraphine spits. "Three hundred years of torture broke you. You can barely hold human form."
His laugh is dark and terrifying. "Want to test that theory?"
The guards charge.
What happens next is too fast to follow. The phoenix king moves like lightning wrapped in black fire. He doesn't kill them—not exactly—but when his flames touch them, they collapse, screaming. Their weapons melt. Their armor turns red-hot.
He's holding back, I realize. He could kill them all in seconds, but he's not.
Why?
More guards pour in. Too many, even for him. I see him falter, see his wings flicker like a candle in wind. Seraphine was right—he's weak. The imprisonment damaged him.
And because we're bound, I can feel it. Feel his exhaustion. His pain. Three hundred years of agony compressed into this one body, barely held together.
He's going to fall.
They're going to capture him again.
And it's my fault because I touched the altar, because I freed him before he was ready, because I'm useless and stupid and—
The mark on my chest pulses.
Heat floods through me, but this time it doesn't hurt. It feels like... like something recognizing itself. Like coming home.
I look at my hands. Golden flames dance across my palms.
"Impossible," Seraphine breathes. "No human can channel pure phoenix fire without training—"
I don't think. I just push.
The flames explode from my hands in a wave of gold and crimson. They don't burn the guards—they freeze them. Every single soldier stops mid-step, encased in crystallized fire that doesn't hurt but won't let them move.
The sanctum falls silent.
Everyone is staring at me. The worthless orphan girl. The laundress's bastard. The nobody.
Holding enough power to stop an army.
The phoenix king turns to look at me, and for the first time, something besides anger crosses his face. Something like... wonder?
"Who is your mother?" he asks quietly.
"She died when I was born. She was just a laundress, they said—"
"No." He takes a step toward me. "No laundress could birth a child with this much power. Who. Was. She?"
Before I can answer, Celeste's voice rings out from somewhere in the crowd. "Her mother was nobody! A servant who died in disgrace!"
But the phoenix king isn't listening to her. He's staring at me like he's seeing a ghost.
"Your eyes," he whispers. "Amber with flecks of gold. And your hair—silver-blonde in certain light." His hand reaches toward my face, trembling. "How old are you?"
"Twenty-three."
He jerks back like I struck him. His face goes pale. "No. No, it can't be—"
"What?" Fear makes my voice shake. "What can't be?"
"Twenty-three years ago," he says slowly, "there was a woman. A Phoenix Keeper—one of the ancient order who could bond with our kind. She was pregnant when Seraphine had her killed." His golden eyes bore into mine. "She died protecting something. Protecting someone."
My heart stops.
"They said the baby died too," he continues. "That there were no survivors. That the Phoenix Keeper bloodline was extinct."
"Lies!" Seraphine shrieks. "All lies! The woman was nobody special!"
"Then why," the phoenix king snarls, "did you pay Celeste Valen to raise a hidden child? Why did you station guards to watch her grow? Why did you work so hard to keep her powerless?"
He turns back to me, and his expression is complex—rage and grief and something almost like hope.
"What was your mother's name?" he demands.
"I don't know. Celeste never told me. She said it didn't matter—"
"MERIDIAN!" Celeste suddenly screams, her face twisted with terror. "Her name was Meridian! Now kill them both before—"
The phoenix king's roar shakes the entire building.
His power explodes outward in a shockwave of black flames. Not attacking—grieving. The sound that comes from him is pure anguish, three hundred years of loss and rage and love compressed into one terrible cry.
The walls crack. The floor splinters. The sacred altar splits down the middle.
And through our bond, I feel everything he's feeling.
The woman he loved. The child he couldn't save. The centuries of torture thinking they were both dead.
"Meridian," he chokes out. "You're... you're hers."
"I don't understand—"
"She was mine." His voice breaks. "My bonded mate. My partner. The mother of my child." He falls to his knees in the rubble, looking up at me with eyes full of three centuries of pain. "You're my daughter. The daughter I couldn't protect. The daughter they told me died with her mother."
The world stops spinning.
No.
No, that's impossible.
I'm human. He's a phoenix. That's not—it can't—
But the bond between us sings with recognition. Blood calling to blood. Fire calling to fire.
"That's why the sacred fire chose you," he whispers. "It wasn't random. It was coming home. You're the last Phoenix Keeper, and you have my blood in your veins. You're the one thing Seraphine feared most—a child who could break every chain she's forged."
Seraphine screams something, but I can't hear her over the roaring in my ears.
I look at this broken, beautiful, terrifying man kneeling in the ruins.
My father.
The monster everyone said destroyed the kingdom.
The prisoner who suffered for three hundred years.
Because of me. Because he tried to save me and my mother.
"I'm sorry," I whisper. "I'm so sorry you had to wait so long—"
The sanctum's dome collapses.
He moves faster than thought, grabbing me, his wings wrapping around us both as tons of crystal and stone crash down.
Reality tears apart.
We fall through darkness and cold fire and something else—the space between places where phoenixes travel.
When we hit solid ground again, I'm gasping, shaking, my ears ringing.
We're on a mountain peak. The Sacred Sanctum is visible far below, half-destroyed, smoke rising from its ruins.
The phoenix king—my father—releases me and steps back. His face is cold again, the brief moment of emotion locked away.
"Don't mistake biology for affection," he says harshly. "You freed me, yes. But you're also the reason I was imprisoned. If your mother hadn't—" He cuts himself off. "We're bound. I can't leave you or the magic will kill us both. So you live, for now. But don't expect love, little bride. That died three hundred years ago along with everything else."
He turns away from me, wings folding tight.
But through the bond, I feel what he won't say.
I searched for you. Even in prison, I searched. I thought you were dead. I thought I lost everything. And now you're here, alive, and I don't know if I'm relieved or devastated because keeping you alive might destroy me all over again.
Below us, the Sacred Sanctum burns.
And Seraphine's voice carries on the wind, magically amplified:
"HEAR ME, ELDRATH! The false bride has destroyed your sacred temple! She has freed the fallen king! She is the prophesied destroyer—the Cinder Queen who will burn the world! Five thousand gold pieces to whoever brings me her head!"
My father doesn't turn around.
But his wings shudder once.
And in a voice too quiet for anyone but me to hear:
"They're going to hunt you now. Everyone you've ever known. Everyone you thought loved you. They'll all come for your blood."
He finally looks at me over his shoulder.
"Welcome to my world, daughter. Welcome to being a monster."