I held onto Adara's eyes as I jumped over the table, as if I could keep her safe through will alone.

"Hold on!" I yelled to her, my heart lurching in my chest.

But it was already too late.

The blue flame engulfed her, a pretty, wavering halo of it surrounding her body, rippling and mesmerizing.

Blue.

The flame was blue. I knew what that meant.

No.

Within the span of a split second, the combination of the two phoenixes' flames reduced her to a pile of ash. It was an odd quirk of ours that we were able to resist heat and fire but were also the most susceptible to a hot flame after a certain temperature, as if the fire inside us helped us burn from the inside out.

I knew that. Intellectually, I knew what would happen as soon as I saw that blue halo around her. But that didn't prepare me for seeing it. Between one breath and the next, she was just...gone.

Her laugh.

The way she rolled her eyes.

Her sometimes sly asides that always made me laugh, even in the middle of a meeting.

Gone.

I watched her body freeze into a gray shell, a shell that formed cracks almost instantly, and then fall in pieces, disintegrate into a pile of fine gray ash directly in front of me.

I saw it happen.

I knew she was gone.

But my brain refused to absorb it.

No.

I took a beat just to stare at it, stare at what was left.

I couldn't... She was just...gone.

I didn't let out a sound, though I could feel myself screaming in rage on the inside.

They would pay. There was no other option. I turned to the phoenixes who had done the deed, feeling as if I was moving through quicksand, moving too slowly to be effective. But I knew I wasn't moving as slowly as I felt I was. The two phoenixes hadn't even reacted to me yet.

They needed to die. I saw Igna already closing in, already shouting orders as he made to change into his phoenix form, his guards also closing in.

But I didn't need to wait for them. That initial burst of the hottest flame was already fading. They weren't protected by it anymore.

I burst into my phoenix form as I attacked, feeling the well of rage and despair propelling me forward in a desperate lunge. There was nothing else in my mind in that moment as I felt my emotions fill me.

Just their death.

Easily avoiding their sputtering flames, I attacked, using my claws to clench down on one of their heads, feeling them crunch through his skull as I threw him into his partner. The other one did my work for me and burned him, his fire flaring in an unconscious reaction.

Leaving the burned phoenix to thrash along the floor in his death throes, I launched myself into the other one, and used my own fire to burn him to crisp, calling forth a rush of fire, hotter and more intense than I'd ever used previously.

Overkill.

But necessary overkill.

When I looked up, the two attackers dead at my feet, I saw Igna sliding to a stop, his eyes almost...fearful.

All around me, there was only silence. I saw the same expression when I glanced at the crowd around us. Perhaps that should have bothered me. I didn't want my people to look at me with that suppressed fear I'd often seen in their eyes when Emberich was around.

But I simply couldn't care right then. Perhaps some fear was necessary.

When I looked down from them, it was to see two neat piles of ash. There was an odd symmetry to it that gave me a sense of empty satisfaction. They died in the same manner Adara did.

I changed into my human form to give myself a voice.

"Gather their ashes and scatter them to the wind," I told Igna. "No ceremony. They do not deserve any more respect than that."

Burial would have been harsher. Placing them under the earth, where the sun would not shine upon them, where they could not be freed to the winds. But I would not waste anyone's time and energy on these people. Nor did I want there to be a physical place they could be visited. Such places could attract the wrong kind of people, give them a symbolic place to gather. Igna nodded once, stone faced, and gestured towards his guards.

The immediate taken care of, I turned and crouched down next to Adara.

What was left of her.

I reached out to touch the pile of ash, but pulled my hand back, bowing my head. I felt... I didn't know how I felt. It was like everything inside me had simply shut down. Leaving a hollow space in my chest.

Just like that...

She was gone.

It wasn't right.

None of this was right.

I heard Igna and the guards moving quickly, giving orders to the people to disperse. Good. There was no reason to continue this travesty of a feast.

Igna crouched down next to me.

"I want you to find everybody involved and bring them to me," I said softly.

"Of course," Igna agreed, his voice soft. "I am...sorry. I should have had a tighter perimeter—"

"I need something to gather her ashes," I interrupted, uninterested in his excuses. They didn't matter, not now. My voice sounded strange, even to my own ears.

"Yes, my king," Igna agreed, rising from his crouch.

I heard him moving off, talking softly to another guard, but I didn't look up. I trusted him to fulfill his duties. In short order, they brought me a clear box, built specifically for the ashes of the dead.

I carefully gathered what was left of Adara into it, not missing even a speck of the ash. She deserved full honors. No matter what she had to say about how important I was to the phoenixes, I firmly believed she was even more so. She managed to help people even under Emberich.

She should have let me burn. She was worth so much more than I.

I heard footsteps nearing.

"My king?" Igna broached softly.

"Yes?" I asked.

"I do not know if we have everybody, but these five were attempting to escape the city," he explained.

I finally looked up to see three men and two women standing in front of me. Nothing connected the five, not physically. They all looked frightened as they watched me, though two of them attempted to hide it, standing tall, looking down their noses at me.

I stood up and approached, taking them in.

"Were you involved in this plan?" I asked.

"The attackers took the place of these two palace staff members," Igna reported, pointing at a slender woman and an even more slender man. "And those other three were putting plans into place for after you were...gone."

A raised a brow, looking at each person's face.

"Is this true?" I asked. "Where you all involved?"

None of them responded. That was their prerogative. Though it would not save them.

"If you have something to say, now is the time to say it," I said in a grim tone. "I will not ask again."

"You should never have been king in the first place," one of the men finally broke, his voice defiant and loud as he looked around at the crowd gathered. "Because of you, too many died."

He quieted, with an air of expectation. Silence. Did he expect the crowd to applaud his impassioned speech? Stupid on top of selfish.

I nodded thoughtfully.

"Anyone else?" I asked.

Nobody else opened his or her mouth. Their silence was a clear admission of guilt. I didn't waste any time. Bursting into my phoenix form, I burned all of them between one moment and the next. Our human forms were not as resistant as our phoenix bodies. It did not take as much effort to take care of all five as it had to kill the original two. Their screams of shock and pain cut off abruptly. They died quickly, which was all the mercy I was willing to grant them.

Even if they hadn't been involved in a plot that ended with Adara's death, I could not allow an attack of this nature to stand. The decision to execute them quickly and in public was a strategic one, though some bystanders might have misconstrued it for an emotional one. It didn't matter. It would serve as a deterrent either way.

Stepping back from the smoldering corpses, I turned back to the box I had left behind myself. I picked it up carefully and turned to the palace. My people could deal with the rest of this. I had nothing else to give.

I walked inside and went straight to my bedroom. Somewhere I could ensure privacy. Closing myself inside, I went to the bed, gently placing the box next to me as I lay down.

I still felt...empty. The rage and despair drained out of me as if it never was, though I knew it lurked in dark corners, waiting to strike again. I placed my hand on the cool, impersonal glass of the box next to me. I didn't how I would recover. It felt as if my heart had been seared along with Adara.

I closed my eyes.

But then opened them again when images of Adara in her final moments appeared in the darkness behind my lids. My hand clenched on the box.

I kept my eyes open, staring at nothing in the near-black gray of the room.