“When were you ever pretty?” asked Latham, and laughter broke out.
Tristan clenched his fists. He knew they were only messing around, that they didn’t have any clue what he was dealing with—but their teasing didn’t help things.
Tristan squared his shoulders, staring at the expanse below, though his vision blurred and slipped out of focus.
It doesn’t even hurt, he told himself firmly, sensing as Rex swooped back around, leveling out his flight and building his heat to prepare for Tristan’s jump. Even when Rex was blisteringly hot, fire rippling across his feathers, it felt like nothing more than a tingling sensation—like pins and needles, strange and a bit uncomfortable at times, but not painful.
So what was Tristan afraid of?
Rex was making his final approach, his focus and determination helping to break up the building terror in Tristan’s mind. His bondmate knew he could do it, and so he knew it too.
Only, he didn’t.
It happened the way it did in his dreams sometimes, when he’d see himself in the middle of a battle. The fear would take hold of him, and he’d freeze, unable to move, even to save his own life. His muscles would lock, his heart would stutter, and he’d stand there, immobile, as the world burned around him.
Rex sensed Tristan’s faltering resolve, throwing his wings out wide to slow his pace, but it was no use. As if time itself had seized, Tristan watched in slow motion as his bondmate floated past while he remained still as a statue on the cliff above.
A gentle wind disrupted the stillness, ruffling Tristan’s hair and bringing with it the scent of smoke, ash, and defeat.
Heart heavy with disappointment, Tristan slowly faced the others, pretending not to notice as the other apprentices whispered and muttered behind their hands. Fallon clapped encouragingly, telling him he’d get it the next time—but Tristan barely noticed.
His father was there, standing next to Fallon, in the space that had been empty moments before. His arms were crossed over his chest, his expression utterly unreadable.
Tristan’s stomach dropped.
His father must have arrived while Tristan’s back had been turned; he had seen his son’s failure firsthand.
And failure—like fear—was something the Phoenix Riders simply couldn’t afford.
They had been struggling to rebuild for years. After the war, those who weren’t killed or captured had gone into hiding, and even after his father reunited with other survivors, they’d had to scout locations, find resources and funds, and recruit new Riders, all without drawing notice from the empire. It had taken more than a decade to get them where they were now—fewer than two dozen Riders hidden in the wilds of Pyrmont—and they still had so far to go.
Too far, Tristan thought desperately. Only with a strong Rider force could they hope to defend their lands and protect their people. Tristan had to do better.
As the next apprentice stepped up, Tristan walked to the back of the group. He tore off his armguard and threw it to the ground. Next came his other armguard and the straps across his chest. One piece after another, Tristan shed the fireproof armor he hadn’t needed because he hadn’t jumped.
He slouched onto the ground and stared at his clenched fists.
There wasn’t some devastating story, some horrible event that had led to Tristan’s phobia. It was a little thing, a memory from when he was a child. He’d been quite young—maybe five or six—and playing in his father’s library. He wasn’t allowed in there, of course; the room was like a museum, stuffed with rare art, draped in fine fabrics, and populated with expensive furniture. While playing with a carved onyx figurine of Damian, first King Consort of the Golden Empire—and Tristan’s distant ancestor—he’d accidentally knocked over a candle. It had landed on a rug, and in seconds the small flame had spread, tearing hungrily through the fabric.
He’d known a singular moment of terror as the flames leapt toward him—fear for himself, but also for the rug, for the books and scrolls stacked three deep in the fine wooden shelves. He wasn’t supposed to be in this room, and in the space of a few breaths, he’d imagined the whole place burning up with him still inside.
But it hadn’t. One of the servants had come running, lifted him out of danger, and easily stamped out the rug. It was rolled up, replaced, and never mentioned again.
Tristan and his father had left that house—a country cottage on the outskirts of Ferro—soon after, all their properties confiscated as they were banished from the empire following his mother’s death. That burning candle was Tristan’s last clear memory of his life before, when things still made sense. After that, his father had become even more distant, always locked away or gone on business, and Tristan had spent more and more time alone with the servants.
Somehow that moment in his father’s library had become embedded in his mind, laced with a terrible fear—of the burning rug beneath his feet, of his father’s wrath, and of that crawling, spreading, devouring flame.
He was fine with fireplaces and lanterns and candlesticks. He could even shoot flaming arrows—but there was always a breath of hesitation, a stutter where his body refused to obey his mind. And when that fire leapt free, skittering over dry brush in a forest fire or licking across the scarlet feathers of his bondmate? Something shook loose in him, something he’d not yet been able to fix.
Rex tried to comfort Tristan as he circled back around, coming to perch next to the rest of the apprentice mounts on an outcrop nearby, but Tristan was in no mood to be comforted. How could Rex possibly understand his struggle? Rex was a firebird. For him, heat and flames were a part of his personality. Whenever Rex was angry or excited, he would grow hot, the same way a human might flush or feel their pulse pounding in their veins. Fire was a phoenix’s lifeblood, and it was their greatest weapon.
And for Tristan? It was his greatest liability.
He glanced at his father, hoping for some encouragement or reassurance after his dismal performance, but his father seemed to have forgotten he was there.
Tristan sighed, watching from the back of the crowd as another apprentice started the exercise.
Maybe fear of fire wasn’t the problem. Maybe fear of his father was.
She had changed, but I had changed too. Bloody vengeance and righteous murder will do that to a person.
- CHAPTER 10 -
VERONYKA