Phoenix (3 page)

"We're busy," Beck said before taking a bite from his apple. It wasn't unusual for Beck to speak for the both of us. At nine years old, I was shy and preferred to remain in his long shadow.

"I wasn't talking to you," my brother retorted. In the week since our arrival, Callum had spent much of each day tormenting Beck and me. We thought we had finally found a place away from him.

"Well, I'm talking to you," Beck sassed.
 

I placed my hand on his arm and shook my head. I hated when my brother and birth-mate fought.

"Little Lark bird, let's see how good you are at hiding. I'll count to one hundred, and you hide. If I find you first, Beck is my slave for the rest of the week. If he finds you first, I'll be his."

My gaze darted between the two boys, but it was Beck I looked to for an answer. He nodded slightly.

"Okay," I whispered.

Callum covered his eyes and began counting slowly. Beck swatted me on the arm. "Go, and don't let him find you."

I ran out from among the Cypress trees and through the morning mist toward the coast. Mother's home in Vancouver sat high above the ocean. The late snow had receded just weeks earlier, but the ground remained mushy under foot. Mud covered my shoes, but I kept running.

Unsure where to go, I envisioned where Beck would hide and knew instantly he'd scale down the sides of the steep cliff to the boulders closer to the shoreline.

Loose rocks gave way as I carefully plucked my way down the cliff. One wrong move, and I'd end up sprawled on the boulders below me.

When I finally reached the bottom, Beck's laugh filled my ears.

He sat on a rock, just a few feet from me. "What took you so long?"

I never questioned how he beat me.
 

#

Sometime in the night, I awake to the smell of burning sage stinging my nose.
 

My eyes flutter as cool hands press against my cheeks, and Eloise chants words foreign to me.

She kisses my forehead. "Sleep, Lark. Sleep and grow stronger."

"Where's Beck?" I whisper. My throat is dry and scratchy, but I manage to add, "And Kyra, Maz, and Lena?"

Eloise, my only friend from Summer Hill, straightens my blankets. "They're all here. Only Beck was attacked like you, the rest are unharmed." She helps me sit up and adjusts my pillows, making them nice and fluffy. "You need rest."

"What happened?"

Eloise places her finger to her lips and nods toward the window where Henry dozes on a make-shift cot.
 

"You died."

"What?"

"You died, and Beck brought you back to life. He used the part of him lodged inside you to keep you alive."

The pain starts slowly, like a pinprick, and spreads across my breasts and up to my throat. "He did what?" I mumble.

"He kept you alive. You shouldn't have survived the attack." Eloise brushes loose hair from my forehead.

My hands grab at my chest, near my heart, and touch my necklace. Its normal cool, smoothness has been replaced with a searing, burning heat. I yelp. Air rushes into my lungs, and I grab at the scorching necklace determined to rip it from my neck.
 

"It's okay, Lark. You're going to be okay," Eloise whispers. "You just need rest."
 

"Get it off me," I scream, thrashing against the bed. My legs tangle in the sheets, and pain invades every nerve of my body. Throbbing and stabbing, it radiates across my torso, matching the fieriness of the necklace in intensity.
 

I can't decide which hurts more – the necklace or my torso - and my sobs, which I've been choking back, become louder.
 

"Just make it stop," I scream.

"Shhh, Lark, calm down. You're going to split your stitches open." Eloise forces me back down against the bed, but I'm stronger, and my flaying sends her stumbling backward. "Henry!" she shouts. "Help me."

I press my hand against my stomach, only to yank it away when nausea overtakes me.

"Get this thing off me," I demand between gasps, yanking at the necklace.

Henry appears next to my bed and, using just his hands, restrains me.
 

The pain doesn't stop. In fact, my necklace burns stronger, seeping deeper into my core. I don't know how to make it stop.

Eloise reaches around me and untangles the necklace from my hair before slipping it off my neck. The pain doesn't end. It turns inward, toward my heart.

I'm being consumed from the inside out from pain.

"Lark, listen to me. You've been seriously injured." Henry's holding my face between his hands, trying to get me to focus on him, but I can't. I squish my eyes shut, trying to block out the never-ending pain. "You were attacked in the garden, and then held captive. Don't you remember?"

"I remember lying on the ground," I pant, trying to breathe through mind-numbing agony that is attacking my body. "But not how I got there."
 

The pain slows slightly, and my breathing normalizes.

"Did someone hex my necklace?" I ask.

"Someone viciously attacked you." Eloise says. She inspects my necklace, touching it gingerly at first before balling it in her fist. "There's no magic other than Beck's token here." She drops it on the nightstand.

I wrack my brain trying to remember what happened to me, but all I come up with is walking in the garden. And Beck's red scarf. His laugh.
 

Love.

I remember feeling love.

And pain. So much pain.
 

My fingers hover over the deep gash on my torso.

The Splinter group attacked me. And somehow Mother..."Henry," I gasp. "Mother was there, she was talking to me, telling me what to do."

Henry and Eloise exchange glances. "That's impossible, Lark. Malin is dead. All reports indicate as much, even without her body."

"So I was hallucinating?"

"Most likely from the pain," Henry says.

"Could someone have masked and pretended to be her?" The burning in my torso ebbs enough for me to focus, and a chill creeps over my body.
 

Eyebrow raise. "You suspect Beck?" Henry asks.

I shake my head. "No, but is it possible to impersonate the dead?"

Henry strokes his chin. "I've never heard of it happening. I know I personally can't do it."

"So a hallucination," I state and relax back into the welcomed warmth of my pillows. Cold sweat runs between my breasts.

"Why did no one come to my aid? Surely there was time before I was taken for someone to respond. Where was Dawson?"

Eloise's lips press into two thin lines. "Your guard is missing. Only Annalise rushed to the garden, but you had already disappeared. Without your wristlet, we couldn't find you anywhere on the grid." She opens the curtains, letting daylight spill in.
 

Her words are a punch to my already torn gut. "Missing? But not harmed. He could be captured, correct? Like I was."

"Or complicit."

My burning heart whirls.
 

Lark?
Beck's voice echoes through my brain, and I startle. Bits and pieces of what's happened skip through my mind. The angry red slashes across Beck's face. The ravenous darkness.
Lark, I need you.
 

"Is everything okay?" Eloise asks. "Should we get more pain medication? I can call the healer."

Henry peers into my eyes. "What is it?"

"Beck is looking for me." I roll onto my side and excruciating pain tears through me, but it doesn't stop me from plucking the necklace from the night table. I ball it into my hand, savoring the white-hot pain it distributes.
 

Something tells me that this isn't my pain I'm feeling, but Beck's.

Eloise lays her hand on my clammy forehead. "He's resting. Let him be."

"No," I say, panic creeping into my voice. "Something's wrong."

"Beck is under constant surveillance. I'm sure he's fine." Eloise tucks the covers around me. "What you need is more rest."

No, what I need is to get up. Beck is calling to me. He needs me. I push myself more upright. The blankets slip down around my waist. My pain means nothing to me.
 

Beck
, I say in my head.
I'm coming.
 

"Lark," Henry says, as if he too can read my mind. "Don't do this. You're too weak. I'll send someone to check on Beck."

With great effort, I swing my legs off the edge of the bed and slide to the floor. I won't get far walking, but I'm not sure I'm strong enough to transport either.

I close my eyes and focus on Beck's presence. I lean on my bed as I inch closer to the door. I have to get to him.

"Do you need help?" Henry says over the shuffling of my feet.
 

I can't turn, and my midsection is stiff from the healer's work. "Is he nearby?"
 

Henry crosses the room and scoops me up in his arms. "The next room over."

My head rests on my uncle's shoulder. "Dim," he says as we enter the hallway, and the light grows softer.
 

"Open." Beck's bedroom door swings open. Once my eyes adjust to the darkness, I can see the vague outline of Beck's body under the heavy blankets.
 

"Is he going to be okay?" I ask.

Henry sets me down in a chair next to Beck's bed. "He gave more of himself than he should have to keep you alive. He's worn out."

I study Beck's sleeping face. The darkness disguises any signs of fatigue or illness. All I can see is his strong jaw, his riot of wavy hair, and his goodness. "Didn't I save him?" I ask, trying to piece what happened together.

"He, in return, nearly killed himself trying to keep you alive." Henry lays his hand on my shoulder.
 

The curse. One way or another, the infernal curse is determined to come true. If I don't kill Beck, he'll kill me. Or maybe we'll end up both dead.

Why can't I have a normal relationship like everyone else I know?

"Leave us." I say, and Henry doesn't question me.

When he's gone, I rise slowly. Breathing hurts. Thinking hurts. Moving definitely hurts. But I need to do this.

Carefully, so as not to twist my torso, I lie next to Beck, in the crook of his arm, where I belong.
 

After learning at Summer Hill that I was a Dark witch – more specifically that I was going to be the most powerful Dark witch ever - I've never given much thought to how much Beck and I are mixed up in each other. I rationally understood that we share bits of our magic locked in our hearts, but I don't think I fully got it.
 

He used that magic to keep me alive - the part of him locked inside me. I must have done the same without realizing it.
 

But even before magic played a role in my world, our lives were intertwined. Predetermined by a protection charm our mothers placed on us to keep us safe from others until our eighteenth birthday. Still, it goes deeper than that. So often, it's difficult to tell where I stop and Beck begins.
 

I see now how unhealthy it is. At Summer Hill, my emotions were able to influence his, and his mine; our decisions always take the other into consideration; and these past few months, when I couldn't be with him, I lost myself.
 

So how do you unwind yourself from someone who you are literally bound to? How do you learn to be strong on your own?

Beck's breath tickles my check. "Lark?"

"You're awake," I say.

"I was having terrible nightmares about--"

"Being in the box?"

"Losing you," he says. "But look, you're alive And here. With me." He gingerly holds his arms over my body as if afraid to touch me. "How do you feel?"

I pull his arm around me and tuck it under my cheek. "Stiff. Sore. Like I almost died."

"You did die."

"I fixed you," I counter. "I couldn't let you go. Not after I fought so hard to get you back."

Tears stream down my face. A glimmer of a memory in his jail cell flits through my brain. I remember life slipping from me. Disappearing, not into darkness this time, but into nothingness.

I died. And Beck brought me back. But at what cost?

He coughs, and the movement sends pain rippling through my body.
 

"Don't worry about me," he says. "I'm going to be okay."

"How did you do it?"

Beck sighs. His hand traces circles across the back of mine. He's calming me, once again using our mingled magic. Once again showing how interconnected we are.

"The piece of me lodged inside you didn't die. I guess, in a way, I willed life into you."

"You poured your magic into me, didn't you?"

"Not exactly. I kept you alive by staying alive myself. I think our mothers' protection will never wear off now that we are permanently bound."

"Meaning that we can't die as long as the other one lives?"

He nods his head. "It's my best guess."

" After everything I've done - to you and our friends - why would you trust me?"

His olive-colored eyes fill with tears. "Because you're you. And I love you."

CHAPTER FOUR

I awake in Beck's bed, his body cradling mine, my back to his front. Lying like this, his heart beats against me, strong and steady.

Somehow we're both still alive.
 

I gingerly roll over in his arms and plant a tiny kiss on the base of his throat. He moans in his sleep, and a smile slowly spreads across my face. Beck's body trembles, as if having a bad dream, and I lean back. His eyes are squished shut, and his breath changes from smooth and rhythmic to fast and gasping.

"Hey, Beck," I say, shaking him. "Wake up. It's only a dream."

His body convulses, and I throw my arm over him, pinning him to the bed. His eyes fly open, and he reaches for me. "Lark, Birdie." His warm hands grasp my upper arms and pull me closer. "I was only dreaming."