Phoenix (21 page)

Ram smiles half a smile and looks at Nia. “I could take you home to meet my parents.”

Oh, gag. They’re doing a mushy-faced eye-gazing thing that makes me think Ram should have at least gotten injured battling the yagi, or something.

Nia’s grinning, but her words are cautious. “Only if we’re sure the yagi won’t follow us. I don’t want to endanger your family.”

I clear my throat to remind the two of them that I’m still there, sharing the ledge with them. Hopefully they’ll take the hint and not start kissing each other until I’m safely elsewhere. I don’t mind that Ram got the girl. If Nia wants Ram—if being with him will make her happy—then that’s where she needs to be.

But at the same time, I really don’t want to watch them kiss.

“It’s going to be a long journey back to Azerbaijan,” I remind them. “If Eudora reverses her orders and the yagi come after us again, we can just turn around and find the nearest volcano.” I rise up on my tiptoes and look out to sea. The inky stain of yagi is already fading away into the northern horizon. “But I don’t think they’re going to do that. I think we finally conquered them.”

With a bit more discussion, we all agree that we should leave the island before the volcano decides to erupt. (It’s still bubbling, but not rumbling, so much. I think the yagi may have cooled its steam a bit). But we’re also hungry, so I retrieve my sword from where Ram flung it when we were fighting, and we all head to the nearest uninhabited island to forage among the tide pools for fish and shellfish.

After fitting a couple of my favorite rings onto my fingers, I’m tucking the gold coins and rest of the gold rings into my backpack when Nia looks up from her foraging. “What have you got there?”

I shrug as though I’m used to carrying around gold made from my own tears. After everything else that’s happened today, its significance has been overshadowed. “I think it’s gold.”

My brother, ever the expert, drops the oysters he was holding and comes over to investigate. “Where did you get it?”

“In the volcano,” I mumble, not overeager to reveal that I’d been crying.

Ram bites into one of the disks, leaving an imprint of his teeth.

“Thanks,” I tell him sarcastically as he hands it back.

“I think it is real gold,” Ram admits, a puzzled look on his face. “But gold has a fairly low melting point compared to molten lava and all that.” He shakes his head. “I’m confused.”

Realizing there’s no way around confessing, I admit, “When I first stepped off the ledge, I shed a few tears. They fell down onto the lava, sizzled, and popped back up. I caught them.” As I explain, I drop the coins and rings into a compartment of my backpack.

Nia looks at the collection of gold pieces. “Looks like more than a few tears to me.” Her tone is not accusational—it’s more like wonderment. Awe. “So, it’s real, then? Dragons can make gold from tears?”

“I guess it’s real.” I tug the zipper securely closed. “I know these were my tears, and they appear to have turned to gold, but how I did it, I don’t know.”

Ram looks confused. “What’s real? Tears?”

“A book I read in Eudora’s library,” Nia explains, and I recall that Ram was asleep when Nia confessed about the old handwritten book. He’d awakened shortly thereafter. “It was old, handwritten, in Russian. I couldn’t make out much of it, but the word for tears kept showing up. I didn’t understand enough of it to figure out why that word was there, or what it meant, but apparently…” her voice fades, and she gestures to the two rings still on my fingers.

“Dragon tears can be turned to gold.” I finish for her.

“I’ve cried before,” Ram argues. “My tears didn’t turn to gold.”

“I think the lava had something to do with it,” I theorize aloud. “I didn’t notice that they looked like gold until they hit the lava.”

“That would make sense.” Nia steps away from us to pry a large clam from a rock. “Have you ever cried into molten lava, Ram?”

“Never.” He crouches beside her and works to free a neighboring clam.

We all go back to foraging in silence until a bit later, when Nia’s beating the hard-shelled clam against a rock. She laments, “It’s too bad there wasn’t a dragon after all.”

I’m sucking the meat from crab legs, so I speak with one leg dangling from my lips like a cigar. “I wonder if there ever was, or if the legends were only stories. I didn’t see any sign of dragon habitation, recent or otherwise.”

Ram hoists another clam from the rocks and rises to his full height. “There’s always China.”

I laugh. “You think I’ll have any better luck looking there? You already went and didn’t find anyone.”

“It’s a vast land with many people. I didn’t meet all of them.” Ram’s eyes are twinkling—whether it’s with affection for Nia as he crouches beside her to open his clam, or whether he actually feels hope there might be a dragon out there, somewhere, for me, I can’t tell.

“China,” I whisper, looking down at the crab legs in my hands. The sunlight glints off the gold on my fingers, and realization washes over me like a blast of superheated volcanic gases.

I made gold.

Okay, sure, it’s not like I have the golden touch like old King Midas. Not everything I touch turns to gold.

But not everything I touch has to break, either. It’s like I’ve reversed the curse, or overcome it in some small way.

At the same time, I can’t help but marvel at the gold itself. Every culture throughout history has treasured it. I’ve always assumed that was because it doesn’t rust or tarnish, and is always shiny and beautiful, besides being rare.

But if gold really does come from dragon tears, and even then only under certain, special, super-heated or ultra-pressurized conditions, then that makes it even more valuable.

Those ideas merge in my mind and it occurs to me that I could do this. I could go to China and find a bride. Things are possible that I hadn’t thought possible. I’m not cursed to forever break things. I can make things, too.

Valuable things.

One of the most valuable substances in the world.

We finish our meal and plot our course, and for the next week or so, make our way leisurely back to Azerbaijan. Ram is surprisingly decent to me now that he’s no longer fighting me for Nia’s affection. And the two of them are kind enough not to be too adorable together in my presence (although I take my time hunting in case they want some time alone together).

Speaking of hunting, I may have appointed myself our unofficial hunter, but Ram surprised me again by actually thanking me—on two distinct occasions—for catching us a good meal.

When we reach our home, my parents and everyone else is back from Siberia, and they’re in the midst of planning my sister Wren’s wedding to the water dragon Ed, and everyone, especially my mother, is relieved to see us. They immediately stop what they’re doing and everyone gathers in the dining room, and my mom pulls out snacks and we sit around catching up on what we’ve missed together.

They’re excited when we tell them our adventures—especially the part about how we killed off so many yagi that Eudora changed their orders and told them to retreat. I think there’s general disappointment that we didn’t find a dragon in the volcano after all, though of course, no one blames us. We did everything we could.

My father is particularly fascinated when I tell them about my gold. Of course I’m wearing the rings, and he’d glanced at them several times as I was talking, and finally there’s enough of a break in the story that he asks me about them.

While I’m reluctant to specify exactly what I was doing that caused the gold to form, there’s really no way around it. The tears are the crucial part of the equation.

So after everyone’s marveled about the gold and I’ve passed around the pieces from my backpack and my sister Rilla asks about the teeth marks in one and Ram admits he doubted what it really was and bit into it to be sure, my dad asks the question I’d hoped no one would think to ask.

“Why were you weeping?”

I suck in a breath but can’t seem to let it out. It’s like it’s frozen in my chest, and I glance at Nia.

She and Ram walked in all cozy together. He’s had his arm around her nearly every second we’ve been home. Seeing them like that, together, it’s hard to believe there was ever a time when I thought I might have a chance with her. So I feel a little foolish admitting the truth.

“Ram and I were both vying for Nia’s affection. We started to duel, but then I realized Nia should choose. She chose Ram.” My voice cuts out, then. I take a deep breath. No one else is talking, which is pretty weird for this group. Usually we talk over each other, but my confession seems to have sucked the conversation clean out of the room.

Then I shrug. “I realized if anyone was going to risk their life checking the volcano for dragons, it needed to be me, because those two had each other. So I went. And I wept. And my tears turned to gold.”

By this time the coins have all made it back to me from their journey around the table, and I tuck them back into my backpack. When I look up again, my sisters are looking at me with pitying expressions, and my mom gets up and hugs me in front of everybody, which sort of makes me feel like when I was six years old and lost at sword practice and she’d hug me to get me to stop crying.

For the record, I am not, at this moment, crying.

My grandfather Elmir, who wasn’t here when we arrived but then my mom called him and he flew over and has been here for most of our conversation since, has been staring at me thoughtfully through my explanation about the gold.

Now he taps his chin. “You know, your grandmother Faye said something to me. I didn’t understand it at the time. I’m not sure she understood it. But Eudora held her prisoner for weeks before I learned she was there. Eudora tried to…run experiments. Something about gold.” He coughs, and the distant look in his eyes disappears, returning him to the present. “Eudora seemed to think it was possible to make gold.”

“She’s still trying to make it,” Nia announces. “She pestered me for information about it, and when she found out I didn’t know anything, she was quite upset.”

“Based on these nuggets, I think she may be right. It is possible to make gold from dragon tears.” I shake my bag and the contents clatter together, shouting proof of their existence. “But I also think she doesn’t know exactly how it’s done. To be honest, I don’t know, either. I was there, but I don’t know which parts of what happened were essential, and which coincidental—but I hope to find out.”

“That’s another adventure for another day.” My mother shoots me a look that says she’d like a break from worrying about my safety, if only for a little while.

I wink at her. “I’m in no hurry. The recipe for gold has been kept secret for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years. It can wait a little longer for me to decipher it.”

My father has been silent ever since I mentioned going into the volcano. “I’m proud of you, Son.” He places his hand over mine nearest him on the table, and gives it a squeeze. Then he looks over at Ram and laughs. “You know, Ram, you could learn a thing or two from your brother.”

*

It’s not until I’m in bed that night—in my own bed, in the room that still has a train track running around the walls near the ceiling—that I remember my dreams and the fire and what Nia said about being a Phoenix.

About choosing the fire, making a sacrifice so others can thrive. But most importantly, that a Phoenix emerges from the fire stronger than it was before.

Which I am. I didn’t get what I set out to get—either finding a wife or discovering a dragon inside the volcano. But I did something I never would have thought possible—killing thousands of yagi without swinging a single blade, and freeing Nia from being relentlessly pursued by the yagi.

And I made gold. I still don’t know how I did it, exactly, but I’ll figure that out eventually. I can do it.

I’m stronger than I thought I was.

I have been through fire.

I am a phoenix.

The End

DEAR READER,

I hope you’ve enjoyed the adventures of Felix, Ram, and Nia. The next book in the Dragon Eye series is Vixen, which tells the story of Zilpha’s adventures with her family’s arch-enemy, Ion. A sneak peek at the first five chapters of Vixen follows, right after another item of bonus material, so please, keep reading.

We’ll catch back up with Felix in the final book of the series, Basilisk, when we learn the truth about Eudora’s daughter. Basilisk is the sixth book in the Dragon Eye series. The fifth book, Dracul, follows Rilla Melikov and the Romanian count Constantine on their quest to keep an ancient book out of the hands of those who would kill for it.

For more information about release dates and upcoming titles, visit my website at
www.finleyaaron.com
. You can also find the most up-to-date information about new releases, sales, and giveaways, by following me on twitter at
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. The link to my twitter page, as well as links to my Facebook and Pinterest pages, can also be found by visiting my website and clicking on the icons for each.

I’m thrilled to have you join me and the Melikovs on this journey through the dragon world. I’d be delighted if you left a review of this book or any of the others you’ve read. (Hopefully you’ve read the ones that came before this one. Otherwise, awkward.)

Thanks again for joining us on this journey,

Finley

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you feels insufficient. On the journey of writing and producing these books, so many people have reached out a helping hand, lifting me up when I was down, keeping me going when I felt weary or overwhelmed, that simply saying thank you does little to adequately sum up the gratitude I feel.

First of all, and perhaps most of all, I am grateful to You, Readers, those who first took the dare of picking up that unknown book, Dragon, and reading it with no guarantee that it would be worth the time and effort of reading. And especially to those of you who went that extra mile and reviewed Dragon and Hydra. You did not just shine a light on the breadcrumbs in the forest, leaving a path for others to find it—though of course, you did do that. But you also lit that light for me, a candle in the window, reminding me of why I am on this writing journey, and guiding me in the direction of home.