ELARA'S POV
"We don't have time for this!" Kai slams his fist against the tower wall. "Every minute we waste planning is another minute Isabella suffers!"
"And rushing in blind gets us all killed," Vincent shoots back. "We need strategy, not suicide."
They've been arguing for twenty minutes while the Phoenix Resistance fighters spread maps across the floor. Everyone has opinions. Nobody agrees.
I sit in the corner, watching them debate rescue plans, feeling useless.
A hand touches my shoulder. Raven.
"Walk with me," she says quietly.
I follow her up the tower stairs to a small room at the top. It's filled with strange objects—crystals hanging from strings, mirrors positioned at odd angles, bundles of dried herbs smoking in bowls. The air smells sharp and bitter.
"What is this place?" I ask.
"My mobile memory workshop." Raven closes the door, muffling the argument below. "I keep it hidden in abandoned buildings across the city. Lucky for you, I stocked this one last week."
"Why are we here? We should be planning—"
"You can't save anyone like this." Raven's cracked mask tilts toward me. "You're powerless, memory-less, and making decisions based on guilt instead of knowledge. You want to rescue your sister? First, remember who you actually are."
"But the resistance needs—"
"The resistance needs a queen who knows what she's doing, not a confused girl pretending to be brave." Raven's voice softens. "I know you're scared. I know this seems like the wrong time. But there will never be a right time. And if you walk into that palace without your memories, without understanding your full power, you'll die. And so will everyone who follows you."
The words hit hard because they're true.
"How long will it take?" I ask.
"The first memory recovery? Thirty minutes. Maybe less." Raven begins arranging crystals in a circle on the floor. "I'll unlock one memory—just one—so you can handle it. We'll do more later if you survive."
"If I survive," I repeat.
"Sixty percent chance, remember?" Raven sounds almost amused. "Though your odds improve if you stop being terrified. Fear makes the mind fight back harder."
"How am I supposed to not be terrified?"
"Think about something worth living for." Raven points at my stomach. "You've got a pretty good reason right there."
My hand moves to my belly automatically. The tiny life growing inside me. Half Phoenix fire, half Ironhart shadow. A child the world will either worship or destroy.
I have to survive for them.
"What do I need to do?" I ask.
"Drink this." Raven hands me a vial of dark purple liquid. "It'll lower your mental defenses so I can access the locked memories."
I take the vial. The liquid inside looks thick and moves like oil. "What's in it?"
"You don't want to know."
"That's not reassuring."
"It's not meant to be." Raven gestures to the crystal circle. "Drink, then sit in the center. Try to relax."
I uncork the vial and sniff. It smells like rotting flowers and copper. My stomach turns.
"Bottoms up," I mutter, and swallow it all at once.
It tastes worse than it smells—bitter and sour and wrong. I nearly vomit it back up but force myself to keep it down.
"Good girl." Raven guides me to sit cross-legged in the circle. "Now close your eyes and breathe. I'm going to place my hands on your temples. Don't fight me when I enter your mind. Let me in."
"Will it hurt?"
"Yes." No comfort in that word. "But pain means it's working."
I close my eyes and try to breathe steadily. My heart races. The potion makes my head feel fuzzy, like I'm underwater.
Raven's hands touch my temples. Her fingers are cold even through her gloves.
"Relax," she whispers. "This will hurt."
Then she's inside my head.
It feels like someone driving nails into my skull. I scream but no sound comes out. My body is frozen, trapped in the circle, while Raven tears through my mind like opening locked doors with explosives.
I see flashes—memories trying to surface:
A palace made of white stone.
A woman's laugh, warm and familiar.
Fire dancing between small child-hands.
A man's voice: "You're going to be a great queen someday, little phoenix."
But they're fragments, pieces that don't fit together yet.
"Found it," Raven's voice echoes inside my head. "Your seventh birthday. Let's start there."
She pulls, and suddenly—
—I'm seven years old again.
The memory hits me like jumping into cold water. I'm not watching it—I'm living it, feeling everything like it's happening right now.
I'm standing in a palace garden, wearing a red dress that itches. The sun is warm on my face. Flowers bloom everywhere—roses and lilies and some I don't have names for.
"Concentrate, little phoenix." My mother kneels in front of me.
My real mother.
She's beautiful. Dark hair like mine, silver-gold eyes like mine, a smile that makes me feel safe. She wears a golden crown with phoenix feathers worked into the design.
"I'm trying, Mama," seven-year-old me says. "But it keeps going out."
I'm holding a small flame in my palm. It flickers and dances, barely staying lit.
"Fire responds to emotion," Mama explains gently. "When you're scared, it goes wild. When you're sad, it goes out. You must learn to control your feelings to control your gift."
"But my feelings are big," little me complains. "They don't want to be controlled."
Mama laughs—that warm, beautiful sound I'd forgotten. "I know, sweetling. You have your father's passion. That's why you'll be stronger than any Phoenix before you." She touches my cheek. "You're special, little phoenix. You must learn to control your gift, because one day you'll need it to protect the people you love."
"Like you and Papa?"
"Like everyone in the kingdom." Mama's smile turns sad for just a moment. "Your power is both a blessing and a burden. Never forget that."
Little me concentrates hard. The flame grows bigger, brighter, more stable.
"That's it!" Mama claps her hands. "You're doing it!"
I'm so happy I could burst. The flame explodes into a shower of sparks that make us both laugh.
"Again," Mama says. "From the beginning."
We practice for hours. Sometimes Papa joins us—a tall man with a beard who makes terrible jokes and throws me in the air until I shriek with laughter. Sometimes Isabella watches from the window, nine years old and already so serious.
This is my family. My real family.
They loved me. They taught me. They prepared me for something I didn't understand yet.
And they died trying to protect me.
The memory shatters like glass.
I gasp awake in the tower room, tears streaming down my face. My head feels like it's splitting in half. Every nerve in my body screams.
But I remember.
I remember Mama's face. Her voice. Her warmth.
"Elara!" Vincent bursts through the door. He must have heard me scream. "What did you do?"
"One memory," Raven says calmly, removing her hands from my temples. "She handled it better than expected."
I can't speak yet. I'm crying too hard. The grief is overwhelming—mourning a mother I'd forgotten I had, a childhood stolen from me, a life that should have been mine.
Vincent kneels beside me. "Elara, breathe. You need to breathe."
I try but I can't. My chest is too tight. My whole body shakes.
He pulls me against him, and I don't fight it. I bury my face in his shoulder and sob—ugly, gasping cries that hurt my throat.
"I've got you," Vincent murmurs. "Easy. I've got you."
His arms are strong and steady. His heartbeat is calm against my ear. Slowly, slowly, I start to breathe again.
When I can finally speak, my voice is hoarse. "She was teaching me to control my magic. My mother. She knew I'd need it someday."
"What else do you remember?" Raven asks.
"Happiness. Safety. Being loved." The tears won't stop. "And knowing it all got taken away."
Vincent's arms tighten around me. For the first time, I truly look at his face. Really look.
His storm-gray eyes. His dark hair that falls across his forehead. The sharp line of his jaw. The way he holds me like I'm something precious and breakable.
Something clicks in my mind.
I've seen this face before. Not just recently. Before.
"Have we met?" The question comes out confused. "Before the fire. Before everything. Have we met before that?"
Vincent goes very still. "What do you mean?"
"Your face." I touch his cheek without thinking. "It's familiar. Not from a few days ago. From... longer. From before I can remember."
His expression closes off like shutters slamming over windows. He sets me down carefully and stands up.
"You need rest," he says, not meeting my eyes. "The memory recovery took a lot out of you."
"Vincent, wait—"
"I'll check on the rescue plans downstairs." He's already moving toward the door. "Raven, make sure she recovers safely."
"Vincent!" I try to stand but my legs won't hold me. "Answer me! Why do I recognize you?"
He pauses at the door. For a moment I think he'll tell me the truth.
Instead he says, "Rest, Elara. We have a long night ahead."
Then he's gone.
I stare at the closed door, frustration and confusion warring inside me.
Raven makes a sound like a sigh behind her mask. "Men and their secrets."
"What secret? What's he hiding?"
"The same thing he's been hiding since he found you." Raven starts gathering her crystals. "The real reason he was at Cindergrace the night it burned. The reason he knew exactly where to find you in the ruins."
My heart pounds. "Tell me."
"Not my secret to tell." Raven looks at me with those invisible eyes behind her mask. "But if you want to know? Recover more memories. The truth is in there, locked away with everything else."
"I recognize him from before I was twelve. How is that possible? The coup happened when I was three. I barely remember anything from that age except what you just showed me."
Raven tilts her head. "Maybe you met him during the coup itself. Maybe he's connected to your past more than he's admitted." She pauses. "Or maybe your seven-year-old self met a nine-year-old boy with gray eyes and dark hair, and some part of you never forgot him."
Nine years old during the coup. That would make Vincent...
Oh God.
"He was there," I whisper. "At the palace. During the attack. He wasn't seventeen like he said—he was nine. A child."
"Perhaps." Raven won't confirm or deny. "Or perhaps you're jumping to conclusions based on one recovered memory."
But I know I'm right. I can feel it.
Vincent was at the palace the night of the coup. And not as a teenage assassin following orders.
As a nine-year-old boy. A child like me.
What happened to him that night? What did he see? What did he do?
The door bursts open again. Kai rushes in, face pale.
"We have a problem," he pants. "A big one. The resistance fighters just intercepted a message from the palace."
"What kind of message?" Raven demands.
"The Queen isn't just torturing Isabella for information." Kai's voice shakes. "She's performing a blood ritual. She's trying to use Isabella's pain to create a magical tracking spell." He looks at me with horror. "In one hour, she'll be able to track you anywhere in the kingdom. There will be nowhere to hide."
The room spins.
"Can we block the spell?" Raven asks sharply.
"Only if we interrupt the ritual before it completes." Kai swallows hard. "Which means we have to rescue Isabella right now. Not in two hours. Not after planning. Right now."
"That's suicide," Raven says flatly. "We don't have a plan. We don't have enough fighters. It's exactly what the Queen wants."
"I know!" Kai's voice cracks. "But if we don't go, in one hour she'll find Elara no matter where she hides. And then we lose everything."
Everyone looks at me.
Still exhausted from the memory recovery. Still pregnant and barely holding together. Still learning who I even am.
But I'm the only one who can make this decision.
Save Isabella now and risk walking into a trap unprepared.
Or hide for one more hour and let the tracking spell complete, making me a target for the rest of my life.
"How many resistance fighters do we have?" I ask, proud that my voice doesn't shake.
"Twenty. Plus Sir Copperfield. Plus Vincent if he stops brooding." Kai kneels. "Your Majesty, I know it's not enough. But we're yours to command."
Twenty fighters against the entire royal guard. Against the Queen herself. Against a trap designed specifically to capture me.
We'll probably die.
But if we don't go, I'll spend the next seven months running until the Queen catches me anyway. Until she locks me in that prison and takes my baby and turns them into a weapon.
I think about my mother in the memory. Teaching me to control fire. Telling me I was special.
"You'll be stronger than any Phoenix before you," she said.
Time to find out if she was right.
"We go now," I say, standing on shaky legs. "We rescue Isabella. We stop the ritual. And we show the Queen that the Phoenix family isn't as dead as she thinks."
Kai's face breaks into a fierce grin. "That's our Queen."
But as everyone rushes downstairs to prepare, Raven catches my arm.
"You should know something," she says quietly. "The memory I unlocked? It's connected to others. Your mind is trying to remember more on its own now. You might have flashbacks, visions, moments where you're not sure what's real." Her masked face turns toward mine. "And if you see something about Vincent—about how you know him—you need to decide if you'll forgive him before you learn the whole truth."
"Why? What did he do?"
"Everything." Raven's voice holds layers of meaning I don't understand. "He did everything, Elara. He saved you and destroyed you and loved you and used you. And when you remember all of it, you'll have to choose whether the man he is now is worth forgiving for the boy he was then."
She leaves before I can ask more questions.
I stand alone in the room full of crystals and smoke, my head still aching from recovered memories, my body exhausted, my heart confused.
In one hour, we attack the palace.
In one hour, I either save my sister or die trying.
In one hour, I'll either prove I'm strong enough to be a queen or prove the Queen was right to hunt my family to extinction.
And somewhere in all of that, I need to figure out why Vincent's face is connected to my oldest, buried memories.
Why when I close my eyes, I see him not as he is now—but as a nine-year-old boy covered in blood, standing over my mother's body, whispering:
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to. Please don't die. Please."
The vision hits so hard I stumble.
That can't be real.
That can't be a memory.
Vincent wouldn't have—he couldn't have—
But my mind is screaming that it's true.
Vincent didn't just attack the palace.
He killed my mother.
With his own nine-year-old hands.