Phoenix Flame - Sara Holland Page 0,48

“Nate …”

My brother goes still. Still as me. For maybe fifteen seconds that seem to last a lifetime, we stand still and stare at each other.

Then Nate breaks the stillness to step back and pass a hand over his eyes, like he’s making sure they still work. He blinks, his eyes welling up with tears. “Maddie?”

His tears call mine to the surface. I nod, trying to blink them back. “Yeah.”

“Yeah?” It comes out almost like a soft laugh, incredulous. It’s been ten years, and this is what you say?

“How is it you’re here? What are you doing?”

I blink some more, trying to master the scattered storm of my thoughts. Forget Myr, all the words I know in English have flown out of my head. “I … I have phoenix flame.”

Questions, things I want to say fight in my throat to be first out my lips. “You’re a Solarian.”

Nate blinks, taken aback. “Yes.”

He looks down at himself, as if double-checking, and I look too. He’s changed so much. He’s way taller than me, and lanky; his skin is pallid, made paler by the startling contrast of his dark hair. Way different from me, with my compact build, sort-of-tan skin, and brown hair.

Duh. We’re not related by blood. But the difference still startles me. More, he’s transformed from the little boy I knew, with the quick smile and mischievous eyes. There are still hints of that, but I get the feeling that Nate has seen some shit this past decade. There are bags under his eyes, a hard set to his mouth that looks like it doesn’t smile often.

Ever since Taya floated the possibility that he could be alive, the fear had snuck in the back of my mind that if he was alive, we’d find him crumpled in some trader’s basement, chained up and stripped of his soul. But he’s here. Now. He looks good. He looks strong, and most of all, he’s alive.

“I …” Nate speaks, swallows, and presses the heels of his hands against his eyes. He starts again. “It’s not safe here.”

He looks around Cadius’s office, and I wonder why he’s here, but that’s too complex a thought to put into words right now.

Nate moves to the door and puts a slender hand on the doorknob. Then he looks back at me, his eyes wide, like he can’t believe this is real. “Come with me?”

Anywhere, I want to say, but my voice has flickered out again. He gives me one more short, disbelieving look before leading me out into the hallway.

The trip seems to take forever and no time at all. We pass people in the hall, Fiordens, but I don’t really see them except as shapes, passing ghosts. I don’t dare take my eyes off Nate’s back as he walks in front of me; I have to remind myself to blink. Part of me is convinced that he’s a dream, a hallucination, a wish, and as soon as I let him out of my sight he’ll dissipate like a wisp of smoke. A dream or a delusion.

But he doesn’t dissipate. He lets himself into a room in a quiet hallway, shutting the door behind us. I find myself in a bedroom, luxuriously appointed with Winterkill’s same gaudy touches as on the first floor, but lacking any personal effects except for the mess.

Nate’s bedroom is just as messy as I remember his childhood room being. Except now instead of Hot Wheels and Tinkertoys, Lincoln Logs and LEGOs, it’s a tornado of clothes, a green leather satchel lying open on the bed after apparently having exploded all over the room. Nate mumbles some apology and sweeps an arm over a stuffed chair, catching the clothes piled onto it and flinging them into a corner.

Then he sits on the bed, not bothering to move the clothes. He just sits on top of them and props his elbows on his knees. My brother stares at me as I sit down, like he still isn’t sure if I’m real. I know the feeling. There’s so much to say—too much.

It’s paralyzing; it stops me from saying anything at all except for “Nate …”

He clears his throat. “I, uh. I go by Nahteran now, mostly.”

I fall quiet for a moment, considering this. “Nahteran.”

I expect it to hurt, using this new name—no, his first name. But it actually doesn’t. It suits him better, this older, haunted version of my brother.

“What are you doing here?” he asks me. “And how are you here?”

“It’s a long story.”