“Ro-may-o and Juliet?” Mystified, Devlin turned the yellowed book over in his hands, sparing a glance for the people around him in the food line.
“Romeo,” the librarian corrected him. “You'd do great in that role. I'm hoping Era will agree to be Juliet. That won't be weird for you two, will it? With all the time you've been spending together, I assumed you're more than friends.”
More than friends? He wasn't even supposed to be friends with a human, let alone something more than that. What was “more,” anyway? Surely he didn’t mean—
Devlin swallowed. No. Absolutely not. Ice phoenixes didn’t have petty emotions. They didn’t develop crushes. Hearts of ice weren’t made to warm to humans and their short-sighted whims.
But the librarian was right. Devlin had been spending a ridiculous amount of time with Era. Not that it felt ridiculous. No it felt—well, it almost felt nice.
His cheeks heated at once.
Devlin tried to give the book back to the librarian. Instead, he found it being pressed into his hands once more.
“You'll love it,” the librarian insisted. “People used to perform it all over the world, for hundreds of years. A play's the perfect way to help the winter go by. So what do you say?”
Devlin hunched his shoulders. “No, thanks.”
“Don't dismiss it so quickly. It's pretty great. You just have to get used to the way the language flows.”
Frowning, Devlin cracked open the book. It didn't even look like English. Not that he'd admit he couldn't understand it. When the librarian approached him, his first question had been, “Did they teach you to read where you came from?”
Devlin knew that wasn't a given. But being asked that directly, as if a phoenix couldn't learn this simple human language, had hurt his pride a little. He didn't want this Mason guy to think he couldn't handle a little pre-collapse English.
Yet when he scanned the sticky pages of this book, Devlin's throat bobbed. This was gibberish. The words looked familiar, but the way they were strung together—did people really talk like this? Did this even count as English?
“Give it a try,” the librarian encouraged, clapping him on the shoulder. Devlin fought the urge to recoil from the contact. “I'll be interested to see what you think of it.”
Before Devlin could object, the librarian just drifted away, back to his spot further ahead in the food line. A furrow in his brow, Devlin scanned the room for his father, then tucked the book under his jacket.
There was no way he could let Ciril see it. And no way he could explain that to Mason, either. He'd just have to read it in secret.
* * *
The night Devlin finished Romeo and Juliet, he felt it again: that uncomfortable heat that made him sweat. He went to sleep that night practically grinding his teeth, the book safely hidden within the discarded layers of his blankets.
The very moment his father left with the trade team that morning, Devlin burst out into the cold, searching for the right ropeway to reach the library.
He found the overly warm space just as Mason was bending over a shelf, replacing a book. The librarian's head snapped up in surprise. “Oh, hey, Devlin. Era's not here, if that's who you're looking for.”
It wasn't. Though, Devlin instantly wondered where she was. His mind was brimming with far too many wrong thoughts, and worse, far too many cares for these humans and what they did. Even the fictitious ones.
“Why did they die at the end?” Devlin demanded, yanking the book from beneath his jacket. “It was so stupid.”
“Didn't I warn you? That play's one of the Bard's tragedies.”
One of them? Did humans enjoy being sad on purpose? Not that Devlin felt sad reading it. That would be impossible. Ice phoenixes didn't feel such things. It must have been discomfort—that was it.
But his unhelpful mind was at it again. What if, it prompted him, you really did feel sadness? What if you once felt agony and grief?
Impossible. If he could feel such things, why hadn't he in this lifetime?
Didn't the play make you feel them? his wicked mind prodded him. Don't pretend you didn't understand.
Devlin shoved the questions down. Ice phoenixes had frozen hearts for a reason. He was spared sadness and anger—spared all the emotions of other phoenixes. So why was he so angry now?
“No one would choose to do what they did,” Devlin insisted, the fingers holding the book turning white.
Why was he getting so upset over a stupid human book?
Play, his traitor mind corrected him.
He wished he could shut it up.
“So why did they?” Mason asked him, his head tilting slightly. “What drove Romeo and Juliet to do what they did?”
Stop thinking about feelings and just answer the question, Devlin encouraged himself. “Because they were idiots,” he grumbled.
The way the librarian threw his head back, laughing, made Devlin want to run the other way. “They weren't idiots,” Mason said, still smiling, “though love makes people do stupid things all the time. They didn't stop to think, I'll give you that. But put yourself in their place.
“Romeo and Juliet came from rival merchant families. They'd been raised with the importance of money, class, and hating their rivals. But when they met each other, they finally got to experience something more to life. They experienced love, despite everything they'd been raised to believe. Maybe they didn't want to go back to the cold world they knew before.”
Devlin's lip curled. “Maybe they should've kept hating each other.”
Again, Mason chuckled. “Maybe. But it wouldn't have been much of a play.”
It doesn't make for much of a life, either, his mind prompted him.
Devlin gingerly set the book on the low shelving beside him. He should just go. Instead, he shifted his weight once or twice before saying, “Did it really end so badly? The families stopped feuding.”
Mason's brows hung low over his eyes. “The young couple died, and Juliet's cousin Thibault, too. Their families had to live with the guilt of what they'd driven Romeo and Juliet to long after. If they hadn't been so determined to carry on the feud, all those people would still be alive.”
All those people.
All those humans.
The thought settled in like a punch to Devlin's gut. Like he'd just peeled back a protective layer and found something rotten beneath. He nearly doubled over.
“What's wrong?” Mason asked, his amused expression flipping to one of concern.
“N-nothing.” Devlin gripped the edge of the bookshelf.
“You don't look fine. Devlin. Hey!”
Devlin was out the door at once. He felt as though he were on fire as he raced down to the creek that ran through the old zoo, skidding and dropping to his knees in the heavy snow. He needed to get cold, and fast.
Hand over hand, Devlin dragged himself to the edge of the frigid creek. When he was close enough to drag his fingertips through the instantly numbing flow of water, he paused, waiting for relief.
Instead, he felt sick. Sick of himself. Sick of his mission. Sick of the true immortals who weren't even here anymore, and he and Ciril still had to do what they said. And he was actually sick. His stomach began to heave.
Well. He'd dragged himself this far. Wild-eyed, he stared at the rush of water.
There was nothing left to do now but jump in.
* * *
Something was holding Devlin back. Literally. Water poured off him as his upper body flopped onto the rough stone he could barely feel.
Devlin heard a grunt—maybe his own—as the cold water of Lake Erie left his lungs. When someone freed his legs, it was as if they were disconnected from his body.
Devlin's lids fluttered open just as that someone rolled him on to his side, hitting his back as he coughed up more water. A piece of rebar jutted out from the broken concrete of a pier.
When the last of the water was out, Devlin wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. A useless gesture. Every bit of him was both wet and numb. Slowly, his vision panned to reveal the concerned face of his father.
Concern. Another emotion Devlin had been spared.
Until now. Images of humans frozen to death in their settlements, of children succumbing to the Nine Viruses, of supply teams forever lost in the snow—all things Devlin had contributed to, if not caused directly—flashed through his mind. Devlin gripped the sides of his head. Once the whir of images began, he could not get it to stop.
Ciril clucked his tongue at his son. “You said you would do better this time.”
“D-did I?” Devlin managed. “I d-don't remember.”
“For heaven's sake, your teeth are chattering.” Ciril offered him nothing. Not a dry coat. Not his phoenix fire. Not a warm, reassuring touch. “Look at yourself, son! If carrying out our mission was easy, the last immortals wouldn't have entrusted it to us phoenixes.”
“I c-can't. C-can't keep doing this.”
“Oh, Devlin.” Ciril let out a disgusted sigh, his lip curling into a sneer. “I can't believe you'd let yourself get to this state again. What was it this time?”
This time? Has this happened before?
“Was it a girl? It's usually a girl.” His father reached out at last, but not to offer him reassurance. He shook Devlin roughly. “Hey. Son. Answer me!”
“B-book.”
“What was that?”
“It was a b-book.”
Ciril's dismay flashed with anger as he eyed him. “What book?”
“L-library. About h-hate. Feuding f-families. L-loss.”
Ciril huffed, then stood, shucking lake water from his denim and wool coat. “I'll take care of that later. First, we have to do something about that ice around your heart.”
“H-hurts,” Devlin managed through his violently chattering teeth, realizing only as it said it that it did. His heart—or something even deeper inside of him—ached so fiercely, he couldn't imagine how it would ever end. “N-need to g-get warm.”
He spat out lake water.
“No, son. You need to be colder. Much, much colder.”
“W-what—?”
“Trust me, son. This is for your own good. This is going to protect you.”
What's going to protect me?
Slowly, the shattered pieces of Devlin's heart began to knit themselves back together. And it burned—burned like the touch of freezing water. Except he wasn't being reforged with his father's help. The ice around his heart was reforming, stealing the breath from his chest.
Somewhere, behind all the agony that darkened Devlin's vision, it dawned on him. He wasn't born with ice for a heart. He wasn't born without feelings. Ciril had done this to him. This wasn't his ice phoenix nature that hid his emotions, this was magic. His own father's magic.
Ciril's face hung close to his own, eyes narrowed.
“When you're yourself again,” his father murmured over the crash of waves on the pier, “return to the Habitats immediately. I should have everything taken care of by then.”
Devlin's body trembled as he fought the stricture of magic growing through his heart. “N-no,” he stammered.
“Hush.” At last, Ciril reached out, stroking Devlin's hair, who tried to jerk away. “That's not you talking. That's your weakness.”
My weakness.
As pain overwhelmed Devlin, Ciril's back receded along with it. Devlin had to fight his father's magic. He needed to regain his emotions, no matter how horrible it would be. No matter how his guilt would destroy him. He had to remember. Because he needed to stop his father before he—before they—killed anyone else.
And to do that, Devlin would need all his strength. He needed his phoenix form.
Frost crept over Devlin's skin, clawing inward toward his heart as he held onto the scraps of painful memories he'd already located. He doubled over, gritting his teeth as he forced a shift through the magic his father had placed upon him. He pictured his arm bones lengthening into powerful wings, the finger distending. His skin stretching and pocking with dimples as his ice-white feathers began to push through.
Sweat dampened his back, his brow. Nothing happened. Not a single downy feather emerged. The ice crept onward, his emotions and memories being slowly devoured by his father's wicked spell.
Think phoenix thoughts, a voice said, filtering through the pain of that spell taking hold. It was a memory. His memory of a woman who radiated something he almost could not identify.
It was love.
One glimpse of this memory and Devlin knew: He had belonged to her, and she to him. An ice phoenix. He must've been young at the time, and in a previous life. The memory tasted of metallic soot, of what the world had been in the early decades after the fall.
The woman had a smooth face, wrinkles appearing only as she smiled. But she was older. Too old, perhaps, to be his mother. Was she his grandmother?
“It's important to be able to change your form at will, so you can walk amongst the humans,” the woman continued in his memory. She stretched out his younger self's arms, positioning them like flapping wings. “That is the true mission of phoenixes, to stand between the immortals and mortals. It's why we're still here. Even after the true immortals have gone, that duty and freedom is why the phoenix still flies. Do you remember the old saying I told you?”
His cheeks reddening, Devlin lowered his head. His grandmother merely shifted his arms, as if they sailed on an updraft.
“'The world ends and begins with the phoenix,'” she repeated.
With a guttural scream, Devlin forced his arms outward, and with them, the first of his feathers tore free. The soft glow of transformation lit the center of his chest. As that icy light brightened, it shone outward through the layers of his clothing, twining around his arms, shifting his body and bones in a swirl of light. And as his inner magic strengthened, it burned away the power of his father's spell until it was no more than bitter ash.
Devlin stretched his wings, his elegant tail unfurling in a display of feathers as white as snow and as blue as a frozen lake. He beat his wings, his bones cracking as they settled into place. With a final cry, he ascended until he was part of the sky at last.
The ice phoenix pointed the graceful curve of his beak toward the Habitats.