Page 15 of Ignite the Infernos

“The bankers passed along intel about a Blood Crafter, just like they have dozens of times before. They sent a description that matched the Matron to a T,” she tells me, her hands punctuating each syllable. “What would you have done in my shoes? They had no idea who we were looking for, so I had no reason to question the information. I had to act on the intel. It could have been our only shot at the Conduit for all I knew. What was I supposed to do?”

“You weren’t supposed to do anything, Enslee . . . you were supposed to listen! We’d been ambushed once already. I warned you that we had a traitor. Not shutting things down until we’d caught them was a bad fucking call!”

Enslee extends her arms in exasperation and throws back her head. “I know that now, but at the time, the potential payoff of killing the Conduit outweighed the risks of sending a Flight to investigate. We’ve combated these odds on every hunt we’ve executed. There have always been hazards and risks. You know that better than anyone.”

I mirror her body language, indignantly throwing my own arms out as I start to pace.

“Exactly, Enslee. I know the risks better than anyone, including you,” I snap as I round on her, rage scalding me from the inside out.

How does she not understand? How is she missing the big picture? Yes, killing the Conduit was important, but not at any cost. We’re not The Horde, we don’t sacrifice one Flight for the greater good, it’s not worth it. There’s fifteen of us left, and all fifteen Syphons deserve to see things through to the end. I thought she understood that.

I wring my hands and try to stopper my mounting worry and hurt, but the tape and glue I’ve been using to hold myself together begin to unravel.

“You were supposed to trust me, Ens. How are we ever going to tackle what’s next if we don’t trust each other?” My voice gives under the weight of the enormity of what I’m asking, and I can’t help but feel our relationship teetering on the precipice of ruin.

Would she sacrifice me? The wyverns? More of the others? Where’s the line?

Enslee deflates and tears well in her eyes. We stare at each other, lost, hurt. I wish I could retrace our steps, figure out how we got here and prevent it somehow, but I know all too well that’s not how life works.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she tells me, shaking her head as though it will contradict what she sees blaring in my gaze. A tear breaks free and she hastily wipes it away. “I know I fucked up, Ever. I get it, I really do, and it will never happen again.”

Silence fills the space between us. I want to believe her. We all make mistakes, but this feels different. Maybe it’s the bombardment of betrayals that have been hitting us lately, or the fact that I’m not the same person I was the last time I sat in this room and talked something out with my sister. We’ve always been one half of a whole. There was no me without her. Then the last four months happened, and now I don’t know how I fit anymore. Not just with my sister, but with everything, because how do you fix the unfixable?

“We’re looking for them, Ev, I promise,” she vows, tears spilling down her face now. “We’ll bring them home, we’ll find them.”

Slowly I shake my head, a desolate huff slipping out of me. I sense her sincerity, but she doesn’t know what she’s saying. If Wistan has my Flight, if he’s doing to them what he did to me, they won’t be whole when we finally get them out of there. I know I’m not.

“I don’t want this,” Enslee declares quietly, and the pain in her voice feels like it’s hollowing me out with a dull spoon. “I know you’re mad, Ev, but I love you, and I don’t want to fight with you.”

My chest burns with emotion as I take my sister in. She clears tears from her cheeks and stares at me with an earnest need for us to find our way back to each other despite everything that’s happened. I blow out a resigned breath and run a hand down my face, my anger cracking under the significance of who Enslee is to me, who she’ll always be.

“I love you too, and I don’t want to fight with you either,” I confess. “And you’re right, I am mad . . . so fucking mad, but it’s not just at you, it’s at everything, because what was the point?” I ask angrily, blinking back the tears now stinging my eyes.

Enslee takes a step toward me and then stops, unsure if I want comfort or if I’ll allow it from her even if I do. That hesitation, that reluctance where there used to only be trust and support, cracks me wide open.

“It feels like everything I went through these last four months was for nothing. Getting back here to you and the others, it’s all I had to cling to. It was the only thing keeping me going after Ren . . .”

Pain fissures through her name and I’m forced to stop as the dam I’ve erected to hold back my grief starts to crumble. It was only a matter of time. The minute I opened the door to my past earlier, I knew what would come surging through. You can only bury things for so long before they start to take root, and at that point you can either tend to what’s burgeoning or lose yourself to it.

“What was the point?” I ask again, only this time it’s a desolate whisper.

I stare into my sister’s doleful gaze, the green of her eyes growing brighter with each tear that spills over.

“Our whole lives, Enslee. All the pain . . . all the death . . . for what?” I demand, knowing there’s no adequate answer, no explanation that could ever make any of it feel less devastating. “I survived, but now my Flight is gone, we’re fighting, and somehow . . .” I fight back a sob. “Somehow . . . I’m the only one with a dragon mark.”

And just like that, I finally shatter. There’s no holding back, no tempering it or diminishing the damage; the deluge is instant and all encompassing. I cry for Ren. I cry for myself. I cry for my Flight and my kindred, and I cry when Enslee finally wraps me in her arms and we break together.

We mourn. Grieve. Rage. Sometimes in turns. Sometimes collectively. We purge a lifetime’s worth of tears in what feels like hours. We sit in my room fracturing and piecing ourselves back together, and in the end, it changes everything, while also fixing nothing. Ren is still gone. The Tainted have our people. The Horde is breathing down our backs. But despite it all, we’re together again, and it does make everything feel a little less insurmountable.

My father’s voice suddenly comes to me loud and clear, and I remember something I heard him say to my mother once. “Anger and grief can hit you like a forest fire. It can blaze through everything you have, everything you are, until you’re nothing more than a crumbling husk. But when the embers fade and the ashes clear, something impossible sprouts and starts to grow. It’s then that you realize, the inferno was both the end and the beginning, and the forest will never allow one without the other.”

Slowly, our tears dry, our feelings settle, and the rift between me and my sister starts to mend. I stare out the window, the position of my favorite constellation telling me we only have a handful of hours before the sun slips over the horizon and greets a new day. The silence in my room goes from comfortable to abradant when I remember that time is our biggest enemy right now.

“Did you not feel the curse break?” I ask, leaning back against the dresser from the spot I’ve claimed on the floor.

“We felt it,” Enslee answers next to me, her head tilted back and her gaze tracing the grooves in the metal ceiling. “We knew instantly what it was, but then nothing happened. We waited, but we didn’t reveal, didn’t manifest affinities, couldn’t heal. No one knows why.”

I stare down at my hands as though the answer might be hiding within the lines and calluses found there, but none of it makes any sense.