“Why did everything stop?” I ask after a while.
He follows me to the window and stands next to me. “Both sides agreed to take time to bury the dead.”
My chest heaves at the thought of so many dead. So many lives wasted.
“Lyra.” He takes my arm and turns me to face him. “I need your help.”
“My help?” I laugh hoarsely. “What help could I possibly be?”
He studies me for a breath or two before speaking. “You have powerful magic, or did you forget?”
Images of the man attacking me with the fiery rune flashes through my thoughts. The way the flames crashed into me. The way the heat tried to devour me, yet I walked away unscathed.
“My immunity to fire,” I say after a moment.
“Yes, but that’s not all.”
There’s more?
I grip the windowpane, staring out at the smoke. What does crimson magic feel like? Should I know it’s there? I never feel my silver magic. It’s more dormant than a sleeping volcano.
“Lyra.” Jasce shifts closer and turns me to face him. “Will you help me?”
“How?”
He lets out an exasperated exhale. “By using your magic. Join me. Fight next to me.”
Fight next to him?
I have never been close to a battleground, and I most certainly have never used magic before.
“I cannot help you.”
His expression shifts, turning harder, edgier. “My city is reeling, and if I don’t have your help, Hakan will break through on his next attack. Is that what you want? For him to break through?”
No.
If Grandfather breaks through, he will release his army like dermestid beetles into the city. They would devour everything and everyone until there is nothing left but bones.
The truth rips my heart in half—the reality that Grandfather is just as evil as Jerrod. I have always known that truth. At times, I’ve even tried to hide from it. But there has never been any escaping the rotting corpses of his enemies that he is in the habit of displaying outside the fortress walls.
“I don’t want either side to win,” I whisper, the words fragmenting inside me.
“What?” Jasce snaps.
“I don’t…” Sadness swells inside me as I stare down at my feet. “War destroys.”
“If Hakan’s army advances into this city, they will not just stop at the men,” Jasce says, his voice tight. “They will kill everyone.”
“I know…” I lift my gaze to his and speak plainly. “Your father does the same.”
Jasce’s jaw hardens like a slab of granite. “This isn’t about my father. This is about you helping your husband.”
My shoulders slump, and my arms hang limply at my side. “I cannot help you do something I know nothing about.”
"You summon a phoenix,” he says, his words laced with annoyance.
Lyra can summon a phoenix?
