Using scraps she’d found in the nearby mills and factories, Stef had constructed gloves and boot covers that would help us scale the Councilhouse. She’d wanted to attempt making copies of the key, in case one of us was held back, but Sam wouldn’t let her take it apart in case it wouldn’t work again. Anyway, it seemed to me the key was imbued with magic, and despite all of Stef’s talents, she’d never be able to replicate that.
Sylph trickled through the mill halls, moaning and singing anxiously.
-They don’t like waiting for Soul Night,- Cris said. -They’d rather attack now.-
“There’s nothing we can do now.” I spoke quietly to keep from waking Stef and Sarit; they’d stayed up longer than Sam and I had, going out a couple more times to check that the mill was secure, and to set remote-activated diversions. “If we release the poison now”—which we didn’t even have—“Janan would overcome it long before Soul Night started and we’d have wasted everything.”
-They don’t like trusting the dragons to bring the poison.-
It was a little late for us to worry about that. “We just have to trust that the dragons want Sam and his phoenix song destroyed. They’ll help.”
“That’s not reassuring,” Sam muttered.
-What if the dragons spot the phoenix and think we’ve betrayed them?-
I shook my head. “It’s still covered. Deborl is supposed to unveil it only when Janan allows, right? So the dragons won’t see it unless it wakes up and breaks free of its bonds.”
What did Janan even want the phoenix for, though?
-What if-
“Stop.” I held up my hands. “We’re not going to do this. We’re not going to second-guess everything at the last minute. We’re not going to wish ‘if only we had more time’ or ‘if only we had a better plan.’ This is what we have. We need to make the most of it.”
Cris started to drift away.
The last thing I wanted to do today was fight with my friends. I made my voice softer. “I know they’re all worried. They’re all counting on me to stop Janan so they can stop being sylph.”
-I am, too.-
“I know.” Again, I remembered Cris lying on the altar, the flash of silver as he raised the knife, the gold of the phoenix blood still marking the blade after five thousand years. It was my fault he was trapped like this. He’d chosen what he thought would be death. But this—as a sylph—no. For saving my life, he bore the same punishment as those who’d tortured a phoenix in their quest for immortality.
As much as I wanted to help them, free them from this existence, the idea of so many depending on me was staggering. I was only beginning to learn how to do things for myself. I’d done everything I could for newsouls, which hadn’t turned out like I’d hoped, and now sylph needed me, too.
Another hour passed talking with Sam and Cris, trying to comfort one another, and encourage. But the sylph were right: waiting was the worst.
We were sitting in the weaving room when Sam looked up and scowled. “Did you hear—”
The door flew open. Daylight flooded the room, and all the sylph swarmed toward the door, heat billowing off them.
Sylph songs turned to screeches a heartbeat later. Brass objects skittered into the room. Sylph eggs. Lids open. My sylph poured into the eggs like smoke through a flue.
Crashing sounded from the storage room, then footsteps.
Sam and I scrambled for our pistols as a dozen people in bright red burst into the room. Half of them dove toward the sylph eggs, flipping the lids shut before the sylph could escape. From the others, blue targeting lights shone across the room and turned on Sam and me.
A sylph peeled away from the shadows, burning through wool and skin and tissue. The stink of cooking flesh filled the room as another guard withdrew a sylph egg, twisted it, and flipped open the lid. Cris darted toward the hall where Stef and Sarit were coming, their weapons ready.
Everything was chaos. I fired my pistol, not thinking about a person there, only that they’d come to kill us. Trap the sylph. Take the key.
People screamed as lasers threaded the room. Wood burned and cracked. Machinery came crashing to the floor, and the reek of smoke permeated the room.
Sam dragged me behind one of the burning looms, then pushed me down so we were both crouching. “First chance you get, grab your bag and get out of here. Don’t wait for anyone.”
“But—”
“No. You have the key. You know the plan. It must succeed, no matter what.”
I clenched my jaw and peered through the flames, which licked across the old, polished wood of the fallen looms. The smoke caught in my throat, making me cough.
Stef and Sarit shot more guards, using a door in the hallway as a cover. Cris burned through people, struggling to open the eggs scattered across the floor, but he was incorporeal. He couldn’t touch anything.
“We need to get the eggs open,” I hissed.
Sam stood and shot the last guard before she could trap Cris.
The fire grew quickly, so we waited only a moment before the four of us crept from our hiding places and reached for the nearest eggs to free the sylph. Just as my hands closed around one of the brass devices, more guards poured into the room, targeting lights shining everywhere.
I flipped open the lid of my egg and let it go. Hot pain flared across my right arm as I grabbed for my pistol, but I ignored the sharp bloom of heat. My pistol was ready. I aimed at the door and shot. Someone dropped, clutching their burned leg. Around me, Sam, Stef, and Sarit were shooting too, though they had better aim.
A couple of sylph fluttered from their eggs, disoriented from being trapped for even a few minutes. But Cris rallied them and they dove in front of us, acting as shields, absorbing the laser blasts, as they had the acid from the dragons.
Smoke thickened in the room, searing my lungs. The fire licked the ceiling now, roaring as it grew. There was nowhere to hide.
With a sylph guarding me, I pushed forward and reached for another egg, but blue light—immediately followed by pain—shot across my fingers. I jumped back.
“Ana!” Sarit’s voice pierced the cacophony of fire and screams and sylph song. Red marked her bare arms, and her face was flushed with heat and pain. She shook back the black tendrils of her hair as she hefted her pistol and shot another guard. “Get your bag and go.”
Not without everyone else. I searched for Sam in the smoke-choked weaving room, but I couldn’t find him or Stef. “Sam!” Smoke burned my lungs and made my voice crack. “Stef!”
One of the guards near me dropped, pistol burns crisscrossing his face. My sylph shield stretched as I bent to open another egg, but the heat of sylph and fire and pain made my head swim. I fumbled for the lid. My fingers caught with one another, feeling disconnected as the metal bit into them. My thoughts felt thin and faraway as I staggered toward the door and my bag there.
But I couldn’t leave without my friends.
“Stef!” I couldn’t see her. “Sam!” The smoke was too thick, and the fire too bright as it ate through the old wood of the mill, consuming walls and support beams and crates of woven fabric. My vision swam, fogging at the edges. When I searched for Sarit, she was gone, too.
Guards still flooded through the building, coming in from the door at the other end of the mill. Blue speared the smoke, aiming right at me, but my sylph caught the blast, then shifted around me where fire burned a loom. Heat poured into the sylph, smothering the fire a fraction before the sylph had to guard me again.
“Cris! Sarit!” My foot bumped something soft, and I stumbled over a body, the blackened corpse of a guard. I screamed and scrambled over him, toward the bags piled by the door.