The Demon Queen Wants To Live.

I felt the crack through my hands. The warmth of the shell I was used to. The movement, I was not. The movement came as a pressure from the inside of the egg, pushing outward. A line split the gold from one side nearly to the other. I did not breathe. Whatever exhaustion I had felt cracked as soon as the egg had.

A second crack joined the first. This one branched upward, and where the two met, a small piece of shell shifted. It shifted just a fraction, just enough to let the thinnest sliver of light escape from within.

“Ash.” The word left me before I had decided to speak it. It came out as a rough whisper and I did not recognize my own voice. “Ash.”

There was movement from behind me. Frantic footsteps followed, and then Ash was beside me, kneeling on the floor next to the bed. “It’s happening?” she breathed.

“Yes.”

We watched the cracks spread in silence. They traced paths across the gold and black veined surface in patterns. Each new line let more light through, and the light that came from within shifted between gold and black. A piece of shell fell away, then another. The creature inside pushed, and the egg came apart in my hands.

It was small. That was the first thought. It fit in my cupped palms with room to spare. It was wet, its feathers slick against a body so fragile I was afraid to close my fingers.

It had four wings. Two of them were gold, bright even beneath the dampness. Two of them were black, so dark they seemed to drink the light. My heart sank, until I noticed the shape of them. They were perfectly aligned along its back, not arranged in the jagged angles I had feared. They looked as if they had always been meant to come in fours.

Its body was a soft gold, darkening to black at the wingtips and the ends of its small tail feathers. It had two eyes, round and enormous for its size, and they were open. They found me.

The creature looked up at me, and I looked down at it. Neither of us moved. Its eyes were gold, with dark pupils. One might almost think them cut from the same cloth as the mark on my right arm. Those big eyes held my gaze steadily. Very steadily.

I raised it to my face. Slowly. My hands were steady, I had to make them so. The creature’s head tilted. One of its tiny wings twitched, scattering a droplet of fluid onto my thumb. Something inside of me clicked, a foreign thing that seemed to have finally found its place. “Hello,” I said.

The baby phoenix opened its beak and chirped. It was a small, wet and thoroughly indignant sound, as if the bird was offended to have been kept waiting. “A commanding voice,” I said. “That will serve you well.”

Ash made a sound beside me. It might have been a laugh.

The creature dried quickly. Its feathers fluffed outward as the moisture left them, and within moments it had transformed from a wet, fragile thing into something absurdly soft. The gold feathers caught the moonlight from the window and held it. The black ones seemed to pull the shadows closer.

She sat in my palms and surveyed the room. Her head turned in quick, almost abrupt movements -left, right, up, down. Each movement was followed by a chirp. I believed she was cataloguing its surroundings and finding them wanting. “She surveys her domain,” I said. “As is proper. It is my shame as a Queen to have not prepared something better for her arrival.” She was a she, I felt that, somehow, through whatever mental prickling we now shared.

“She’s looking at the lantern,” Ash said.

“She is surveying her domain.” I corrected. The phoenix turned its attention to me. Specifically, to my left horn. She regarded my horn with intense focus. I brought her closer to my head, more out of curiosity than anything else.

Her small talons found purchase on the curve of the horn. Her tiny beak began to gnaw at the tip. There was no pain but the indignity was considerable. I permitted it. A queen must tolerate certain liberties from her subjects, and this one had only just arrived. This baby phoenix would learn her place in time.

Ash was watching with an expression I refused to look at directly. “Not a word,” I said.

“I wasn’t going to say anything.”

“Your face is saying things. Tell it to stop.” I lowered my hands.

The phoenix eventually released my horn and made its way down to my arm. She moved in short, uncertain hops, her four wings spreading for balance with each step. She reached my left forearm first. The Cradle’s fake green Line pulsed faintly beneath my skin, and the creature pressed itself against it immediately. It nuzzled into the warmth with a soft trill, settling its small body against the mark. I almost thought it might fall asleep there, which would be…inconvenient. Another liberty I might permit, for now.

I watched her for a moment. The small bird rose, and then moved on. She hopped along my arm toward the right. Toward the Requiem, and the red Line that hid it.

The phoenix slowed. Her head tilted again. The red Line sat against my skin, pulsing cold. Perhaps she could feel what the Lines truly were, beneath the bracers. The creature regarded the Line with both golden eyes and I felt its hesitation through whatever strange bond had formed between us. She was…wary.

I went very still. Of course she was afraid. The Requiem was destruction after all. This creature had been born from a beast this same power had destroyed. The chick must know what the Line meant. Something in my chest tightened. A feeling I had no name for, though it sat close to the place where sadness lived.

The phoenix looked at the Requiem and then it looked at me. Then she pressed her small body against the Line and closed its eyes. The warmth of her feathers met the cold of the mark. The creature let out a quiet sound. Something softer than a chirp. It settled against the Requiem the way it had settled against the Cradle.

“Foolish creature,” I said. My voice did not match the words. I did not try to make it. My eyes might have blurred, I used my left to wipe them dry.

From there, the naming began as a matter of necessity. I did not wish to call this thing beast, and minion was a poorer moniker still. “Pyratheon,” I said. “Pyratheon. It is a name befitting one born from divine fire. It carries weight, and-”

“No.”

“You did not even consider it.”

“I did not need to.” Ash sat cross-legged on the edge of our bed, watching me with an expression she was clearly enjoying far too much. “It’s the size of your hand. You are not naming that golden bread loaf Pyratheon.”

“It will grow!”

“Then name it when it does.”

I held the phoenix up. It chirped and pecked at my thumb. “Very well. I shall name it, Obsidian: Requiem of the Eternal Dawn.” Ash stared at me. “It captures both aspects of its nature,” I explained.

“That is six words, Lys…and why are you giving her a title?!”

“It is one word. I will not say her full name all the time.”

“Still no.”

I tried two more names, each of which Ash rejected with decreasing patience. Ashara Nox. Moltres Duskwing. Each one was perfectly serviceable and yet was dismissed by this insufferable woman who apparently believed she had authority over what I named my own familiar. For some stranger reason, I found myself reluctantly obliging. I did not want to pick a name she would not approve of.

“You should go with something simple,” Ash said. “Something simple enough that you can say it quickly.”

She wanted simple? I looked at the phoenix. It was an entity of gold and black, of light and dark. A hatchling bound to the strongest mortal that had ever lived. She did not deserve a simple name. Still…perhaps there was a certain elegance in simplicity, sometimes. There was just one problem. Simple names did not come easily to me.

I thought about it for a time. Ash just watched me. The baby phoenix watched me too, head tilted very far to one side. “Solara,” I finally said.

Ash considered it. Even the phoenix went still, as if listening. “Solara,” Ash repeated. “That works.”

“Solara,” I said again, testing the weight of it. The phoenix chirped when I said it. “Her full name. To be used at all times.”

“Sol,” Ash said.

My eye twitched. “That is not-” The phoenix chirped at ‘Sol’. Loudly and with great enthusiasm. “…Solara,” I insisted. Sol chirped again. My new subject was already a traitor.

At some point, Sol decided to settle on my right knee instead. Then, she attempted to fly.

She had spent the better part of five minutes perched on my knee, her four wings opening and closing in increasingly agitated bursts. I had been watching this display with an attention I had never given to military exercises. Each beat of its wings was stronger than the last. The gold pair and the black pair moved in harmony, which was mechanically impressive for a creature that was barely an hour old.

“She prepares for her first jump,” I observed. “She will be a formidable flier. One day, she might fly to all the heavens with just her wings.” Ash did not answer.

The bird chirped, met my gaze, and then launched herself from my knee with all four of her wings spread wide. She aimed for my head, I was certain of it. She made it approximately thirteen inches before gravity remembered she existed.

The phoenix hit my chest face first, and then fell onto my thigh. Her wings crumpled beneath her and a muffled chirp came from somewhere under the pile of feathers. My heart stopped.

I reached for her with both hands, already channeling the Cradle, already preparing to mend whatever damage the fall had-

Sol popped up. Her feathers were askew, one of her black wings was sticking out at an angle, and she was chirping furiously. She shook herself, spread her wings again, and launched. She made it two inches this time.

She faceplanted again, and marked this with another furious chirp. She got up and tried again. My hands were trembling, and not from the hum of my Ember Core.

Sol tried a fourth time and then a fifth. Each attempt ended the same way, and each time she rose immediately, angrier than before. Her chirps had grown louder. There was a queen’s indignity in her voice. I could not watch this any longer.

I reached down and lifted her. Gently, so gently, I raised her upward and set her on top of my head, between my horns. Sol’s talons found purchase on my hair. She settled immediately, puffing her feathers out with immense satisfaction. “You will be a proud steed one day,” I said. “For now, accept the assistance.”

Sol chirped from atop my head. This time, it sounded almost regal. “That,” I said to Ash, “was a roar.”

“Of course it was.” Ash had perhaps the widest grin I had ever seen on her.

Sol was very warm atop my head. I supposed there was no greater throne in all the world than atop my crown.

Sol pecked at the blanket, slowly. “She tests the defenses.” Sol yawned and her tiny beak opened wide enough that I could see a faint glow at the back of her throat. “Even the mightiest require rest. You are but a hatchling, so you might require more rest than most.”

Sol turned in three circles on the pillow and sat down heavily, her four wings tucked against her sides. “And now she establishes her throne. The pillow is a worthy seat of power.”

Ash watched all of this from the other side of the bed. She had pulled her knees up and rested her chin on them. The expression on her face was one I had seen before, a few times. I could guess what expression she wore. My retainer was…bemused. “You know,” Ash said, “You take to motherhood very naturally.”

“I am not her mother. She is my familiar and I am her…Queen.”

“You have checked on her nine times in the last four minutes.”

I had. Every now and then I would move my left hand over her, letting the Cradle reach inside. Sol seemed to enjoy the sensation a great deal, though I did not believe there was any damage for me to heal. “Vigilance is a virtue. I would have thought that a Hero would know that.”

Sol chose this moment to begin fussing. She squirmed on the pillow, chirping in short, sharp bursts. Her wings flapped uselessly and she pecked at the fabric, at the air, at my finger when I extended it.

I lifted her and examined her. She seemed healthy. Her wings were intact. I held her closer. She pecked at my collarbone, hard enough that I felt it through the uniform. “What is the matter with you?” I demanded, even as I raised her up enough to glare at her from eye level. Sol squawked. It was the loudest sound she had made, and it was entirely graceless.

“She’s hungry,” Ash said.

I looked towards her. “What?”

Ash was already on her feet, pulling on her boots. “She’s hungry, Lys. She just needs food. I’m dumb, why didn’t I think of that right away?”

“How do you-” Ash was already through the door and gone, her footsteps fading down the corridor at a pace that suggested she was running.

I was left sitting on the bed, holding a progressively louder bird, with no idea what a newborn phoenix ate, or how much, or how often. Did…did anyone know? “Please stop screaming,” I said. Sol did not stop screaming.

She quieted, eventually. She simply exhausted herself and her chirps grew softer and less frequent, and then she pressed her small body against my chest and went still. Her wings folded inward and her breathing slowed.

The room was quiet. The Ember Core hummed beneath my ribs, and Sol’s warmth hummed against it. The bead I wore under the clothing seemed to hum back. The three rhythms found each other and for a few breaths, they matched. I held her there. “I will learn,” I whispered. The words were only for her. “I will not be adequate at this at first, but I will learn.”

Sol shifted in her sleep. One of her golden wings twitched. I adjusted her against my chest. She weighed nothing and she was so very warm. That was when Sol sneezed.

I did not know phoenixes could sneeze. The sound was small, almost delicate, no more than a tiny huff of air. It should have been endearing. If only it had not been accompanied by a flare of light so bright it turned the room white.

The blast left Sol’s beak in a beam of coiling orange and yellow flame. It crossed the room in an instant, struck the door, and kept going. The wooden door burned in an instant. Where solid wood had been, there was now a smoking hole. I stared. That…was remarkably like a smaller version of [Great Fire Annihilation].

Sol blinked, looked around as if mildly confused by her own power. The smoke cleared.

On the other side of the hole, illuminated by the glow of the corridor’s lanterns, stood Ren. She had one hand raised, frozen mid-knock. Her mouth hung open. She looked through the hole at me, and at the tiny bird waking up on my chest.

“…Wasn’t me this time.”