Sylvia’s entire body ached. Her skin felt too tight, cling-wrapped. Her eyes swam. With every pothole and bump the car hit, with every jostle against the top of the trunk she was bound in, her bones protested.

  The tall man, Bouchard, had received another call seconds after he’d furiously hung up, having been delivered some vague news about a knight and a pack of dead Apostles. The voice on the other end of the line had made him stiffen and go silent, and all he’d done was nod an assent and breathe “of course, Blessed,” before stowing his phone.

  “Change of plans,” he’d barked to the huge Apostle, still bleeding from a dozen gashes across his arms and head. “We’re taking them to Phoenix.”

  “Fuckin’, Bouchard, I need a boost. These two nearly sliced me open.”

  “Well tough shit, put in some training then. And stop her,” Bouchard had jutted his chin in Shiv’s direction. She’d been crawling to her feet, eyes shut against the residual effects of Bouchard's awful light. The Apostle had bounded over and crushed her to the ground with a foot. Sylvia had cried out at that, and Bouchard had yanked her from the ground, brought that terrible, nauseating golden light of his back.

  He’d forced her eyes open, made her look until her brain, driven to mutiny by the impossible color, had shut itself down.

  Now Sylvia was in the velvet dark of a car trunk, dried vomit crusted on her shirt. She had no energy left in her Aura. She’d tried to reach her Aura through the car’s body, had groped around for any entry into the car’s wiring, to find some electricity to drain, or an engine component to siphon heat from, but the trunk was thickly insulated, and she couldn’t reach. It was probably built specifically for transporting Sensitives, she figured.

  She could feel Sylvia, just barely, through the confusing murk of the world of vibrations around her. The jostling of the cars on the road made the image hazy, but she was maybe fifty yards ahead, sealed in her own trunk, breathing slowly.

  She couldn’t feel her heart. She was too far away.

  After a nauseating hour or so of travel, the cars skidded to a halt. They were in the woods, somewhere, parked on dirt. When the trunk opened and one of Phoenix’s glassy-eyed acolytes yanked Sylvia out and onto her feet, she felt momentarily blinded by the sun, bowled over by the smell of pine and exhaust.

  Standing in front of her, beatific smile hung under squinty, predatory eyes, was Phoenix.

  “Let’s make this quick, Bouchard,” he said, glancing over his shoulder. They were flanked on all sides in a clearing, surrounded by maybe a dozen acolytes and a single Apostle, all of them tense and wooden, twitchy statues. Shiv tumbled out of her car, each arm pinned by a different acolyte, and locked eyes with Sylvia. “We should be limiting our time in the open.”

  “Would’ve been quicker if you’d have just let me and Toby eat these two,” Bouchard groused.

  Phoenix’s lips tightened a degree at that, and Bouchard looked away, cowed. “That wouldn’t have been prudent. We need numbers, right now.”

  Phoenix waved a ring-spangled hand toward the Acolytes holding Shiv, and they began dragging her forward. She dug her feet in the dirt, snarled, but the Acolytes had full Auras, and they overpowered her effortlessly.

  Sylvia caught onto what was happening maybe three seconds after Sylvia did.

  “No!” she screamed. None of the massed army of acolytes so much as blinked to acknowledge her. Even Phoenix kept his eyes locked on Shiv. He clucked.

  “Oh, don’t be so dramatic.” He leaned down, loomed over Shiv, who spat at his feet. “I remember you.”

  “Keep your hands off her!” Sylvia yelled. She kicked, wrenched, felt her shoulder come close to popping out of its socket. The acolyte holding her didn’t flinch.

  “You of the failing heart and missing parents,” Phoenix continued. He squinted at her. “I see the ticker’s still in trouble. Would you like for me to fix that?”

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “Fuck you,” Shiv breathed.

  “Such a petulant tone to strike with the savior of your brother’s life,” Phoenix chided. “You know, he abandoned his post, not too long ago. Maybe ungratefulness runs in the family.”

  Shiv’s head flew up at this, her eyes wide. “He escaped?”

  Phoenix shrugged, but there was a suppressed violence to the gesture, a flare of genuine rage briefly visible, flitting across his face. “An anomaly. One you shouldn’t expect to replicate.”

  His hand flashed out and grabbed Shiv by the face. She screamed, and Sylvia screamed, and birds were spooked from the trees at the sound of it. Powerless to generate enough energy to escape the acolyte’s clutches, Sylvia stamped at the ground, sucked the meager kinetic energy from that into her Aura, turned it into sound, just to make her screams fractionally louder.

  Shiv bucked and kicked, her face obscured by Phoenix’s palm. Her Aura fizzled and jumped, peeled itself away, layer by layer, as a new, sickly-looking sheen consumed it from the inside out.

  Within a minute, she was unconscious on the ground, weak tendrils of Aura flickering off her body, billowing in the direction of Phoenix, much like the Aura of every acolyte and Apostle standing around them was.

  Shiv looked like she was sleeping. Her face was slack, now, her foglight green eyes obscured by heavy lids, her hair splayed out on the soil. Sylvia’s heart tore at the sight of her.

  Shiv’s heart, however, beat powerfully, rhythmically, healthily. Sylvia could hear it. Her failure was almost deafening.

  “You, on the other hand,” Phoenix continued, as if he hadn’t just swept the foundation of Sylvia’s life out from beneath her, “I don’t recall. What are you, her friend? A paramour?”

  “I’ll kill you,” Sylvia promised. Her voice fractured under the weight of her conviction. “I’ll see you fucking buried.”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Phoenix said. He padded over, raised his hand to her face. “I’m sure you will, darling.”

  “You’re a monster.”

  “Oh?” Phoenix smiled patiently, a doting old man tolerating a grandchild’s silliness. “I am? Would a monster do this?”

  Then his hand was on her cheek, his putrid Aura mingling with hers. The intrusion was impossibly agonizing, a spike of foreign energy that lanced right into her brain, set her system alight with panic.

  Her arms and legs began to shake, to revolt against the signals being carried by her nerves, rewrote their allegiances to a new source.

  Sylvia pictured Shiv. If this man was going to wipe her mind, reduce her to another of his mindless cretins, she wanted her last self-directed thoughts to be of her.

  Of the girl in the hospital gown. Of the girl at her side, next to her parents, when the machines failed her. Of the young woman who had helped her flee, had whisked her away, had attended her funeral and reported back. Of the woman who she’d learned to be an adult with, who she’d spent a thousand nights sleeping beside, who she’d crossed a dozen state boundaries with. The woman who had taught her to perform miracles.

  The intrusion stopped. The tendril snaking into her brain was retracted, almost as violently as it had gone in.

  She opened her eyes to see Phoenix staring, eyes wide with genuine alarm, at some indeterminate point in the distance, obscured by trees.

  “Bouchard,” he breathed. “To me.”

  “She’s coming?” Bouchard had his hand up, ready to shine that light of his again. His voice trembled. “Fucking- how?”

  “I don’t know. We need to leave.”

  “I’ll tell Toby to gather the rest, we can-”

  “No!” Phoenix boomed. He looked around, surveyed his men. “No. You and I make a separate escape, we leave the rest here as a reserve, as bait.”

  “Blessed, all due respect, but they can’t-” Bouchard was aghast. Distantly, the huge Apostle, Toby, looked like he desperately wanted to sprint away. “We’d just be feeding her more energy. I thought you said we needed numbers-”

  “She’ll fucking find me if we’re towing around two dozen men through the god damn woods,” Phoenix slapped Bouchard across the head before wheeling away. He held a hand out and the acolyte holding Sylvia dropped her to the floor. He and three other acolytes ran up to Phoenix, dumped their energy into his Aura.

  “We break six miles east, try and make it to the city before she can catch up,” Phoenix said. “We wait an hour, then you loop back around, look for survivors.”

  “Yes, Blessed,” Bouchard almost groaned.

  "Pick her up," Phoenix said, jabbing a finger at Sylvia, on the ground. "She's no use to us dead. Not yet."

  Bouchard slung Shiv's limp body from the ground and draped her over one shoulder. Then, with a flash of light and a snapping of branches, he, and Phoenix, and the love of Sylvia's life, were all gone.