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My father wants me dead, and I don’t know why, except I remind him of something that is scary.
A woman who is strong. My strength scared him before I even realized I was powerful.
That in and of itself is enough to make me burst into tears. I am more than I thought I was.
But I will not cry. Not here. Not in front of him.
“You will pay for what you did to my sister and my mother,” I tell him, aware that my voice is booming across the theater. “You will pay for what you tried to do to me.”
And then I push my arms out and I send a gust of wind toward him, channeling the wind as it moves, forcing it around the eagle. I send him down to the stage floor. I move toward him and I grab him, holding him in my hand. Ordinarily, a bird of this magnitude would scare me. But he doesn’t worry me in the least.
His talons can’t hurt me. I am a phoenix.
I put him in the birdcage, the cage large enough to fit me during the show.
He screams.
“You can’t do this. I am Zeus, God of Olympus. You will pay for this, child!”
His shouts don’t scare me. He doesn’t seem to realize I just came into my strength. This, poor father, has only just begun.
I use my strength to bind him there. Gathering my power, I find a surge of wind, which begins to rise, carrying the cage off the floor of the theater. Pushing it out and away, above the audi- ence, and through the ceiling. It cracks open the theater ceiling and the audience gasps, horrified, and now scared. Pieces of the structure fall and people run, terrified.
This power is strong enough to break through walls and bind a Greek god. I will not temper it to make the people here happy, to make them feel safe and secure. It isn’t my job.
Right now, my only task is to keep that monster from hurting anyone. I don’t trust him for a minute. He had one intention: to kill me.
I need that cage to hang in the sky, binding my father, keeping him far away from hurting me. From hurting anyone.
MY HAWKS CIRCLE ME, all of us magical, all of us a miracle. They come to the floor of the stage, meeting me in human form. Only I can’t seem to change back to what I once was.
Maybe Lark is gone forever.
“Everyone is freaking out, Lark,” Arrow says. “We have to go.” “Not Lark,” I say, shaking my head. “Phoenix.”
He smiles. “Phoenix, I mean it. Look.” He points behind us, and the audience is still running for exits. The orchestra has disbanded, and the house lights are on. There’s a massive hole in the center of this multi-million-dollar theater and half the stage has been burned to the ground. Remedy and her mates are running toward us, and behind them are security guards and police officers. I see Mark in the distance and I try to tell him with my eyes that I am sorry.
But really, I know we don’t have time for apologies. We need to go before we get arrested.
“Can they arrest birds?” Sawyer asks.
“I don’t know,” North says. “But we aren’t going to wait around to find out.”
“Let’s go find Tennyson,” I tell them. “Who?” Remedy asks.
“Our sister. Gaia put her somewhere safe, I know it.”
Her face breaks out into a smile. And I reach for her hand, clasping it tightly.
I’m ready to face whatever comes next.
“You’re amazing, you know that, right?” she says.
“We better be,” I say with a grin. “We’re the daughters of Olympus, right?”
Epilogue
Phoenix
It takes a bit of practice, but I learn that I can, in fact, still shift from a phoenix to human, it just takes more
focus, but I find that there is a strength inside me I never knew. Once I harness it, I can shift easily.
We’ve had to remain winged, not wanting to be seen while still in Vegas.
But now we can go.
Remedy and her mates are in wolf form at the tree line. The hawks and I sit perched high in a tree, watching as Mom, in her casket, is buried six feet deep.
Her friends and clients from over the years attend the funeral. It’s brief and solemn and everyone seems to be whispering about Lark, the daughter who ruined the theater at Spades Royale, who is missing and wanted for a police investigation.
The articles on the Internet the day after opening night were no exaggeration.
THE BIGGEST CATASTROPHE in Vegas history.
Looking for answers where there are none.
Were they birds or men?
Is the star of SOAR a robot gone wrong?
SOME QUOTES from guests in attendance that night make me smile, at least. The truth is, there is nothing I could have done to stop what went down. It was inevitable.
