Page 110 of Playing with Fire

That was right. I needed to reward the birds. I needed to convince them to help without burning my Quinn’s grandfather—without burning my Quinn. “Ambrosia, if you burn the dust.” Thinking hurt, as though I had run a marathon, sat down after the race, and waited for a few hours before trying to get up and run again.

I didn’t want to think about anything, but I did it anyway. “Burn only the dust.”

“No fun,” the children wailed. “Burn, burn, burn!”

“Only the dust. Twenty pills of ambrosia each, if you burn only the dust.”

The birds quieted, their chirps softening to pleased coos.

I followed the light.

“Twenty-five,” they demanded.

“Twenty-five,” I agreed.

“Playing with fire fun! Burn, burn, burn.”

I remembered playing with fire and dancing within the flames, and I envied them for what I could no longer have.

The light led me underground. The phoenixes I cradled squawked and shrieked their complaints. The shimmering pink ribbon weaved through twisting corridors of rough-carved stone. Every step I took, the temperature dropped until my breath emerged in white clouds and I shivered.

Not even the phoenixes’ glow warmed me.

“A minute and a half, Bailey.” Quinn’s grandfather sounded worried.

A minute and a half until what? I frowned and decided to ignore the interloping gorgon. Had I paid ambrosia to keep him alive? Whatever for? He wasn’t fire.

“Not fire,” the children agreed. “Burn?”

“No. Only the dust. For twenty-five pills of ambrosia each.” I remembered. Yes, that was important. My baby phoenixes needed their ambrosia. I also needed Quinn.

I couldn’t let my babies burn Quinn.

They snuggled against me, their beaks scraping my arm again so they could dip their soft little tongues into my blood.

The tunnel opened to a cavern with a steep staircase carved into the wall which descended to the ground far below. At its center, a vat filled with dark brown fluid bubbled.

“Look there.” The gorgon touched my arm and pointed at something beside the vat. “He is Ozmose, a middling prince of the Rockwell family. A strong enough line.”

What did I care for gorgon princes? I couldn’t burn them. The vat could burn, however. “If you burn the vat but nothing living here, thirty pills each. The rest of the bottle, all yours, if you purge this whole place of dust,” I murmured to the precious birds I cradled in my arms.

Yes, that was what I needed to do. Everything needed to burn so the dust would never bother me again.

“Yes,” they whispered, and the air shimmered with heat. “You live. He live. You all live. The rest burns!”

Flame burst to life around me, blinding me with its intensity. Heat enveloped me, but it didn’t sear my skin. Sharp beaks and talons pierced me, and my arm dropped limp to my side. The blankets fell, and the phoenixes went with them.

Sharp claws I couldn’t see tore at my hip, and as I blinked away the bright spots in my vision, living fire shaped like birds winged down into the cavern below, blankets clutched in their claws. One held the bottle of ambrosia in its beak.

A pillar of flame spiraled from them and engulfed the cavern. The phoenixes cried, their song shrill and piercing. Then, in a flare of blue-white light, they disappeared.

Chapter Twenty-Four

>Why was everyone so happy?

The phoenixes lurked in the flames, beyond the limitations of my human eyes, but they must have stolen their light from the heavens along with the voices of angels. When they weren’t crooning the notes of some melody only they knew, they shrieked, and their cries tore at my soul. I flinched at the sound, covered my ears, and squeezed my eyes shut.

I didn’t want to see heaven, and I didn’t want to hear it, either.