Phoenix Found (Brothers of Fire #5)

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Oliver ran his fingers over the metal cuff. It had been on his wrist for so long, suppressing his magic, that the idea of taking it off was as painful as the build-up of magic. Usually, a witch bled the excess off before it got this bad.

The beds of his fingernails throbbed, his teeth ached, and even his clothes touching his skin were too much.

“Can you not get a witch to take some magic?” His voice came out a little too raw and desperate.

“No. You need to learn how to control it,” Dalmon said.

Oliver scrubbed his hand over his face. They’d been having this conversation for three days. It didn’t matter who he spoke to. They all said the same thing. They wanted to remove the cuff and let him shift because he wasn’t a fire witch the way he’d been raised to believe. He was a phoenix.

They also claimed he wasn’t a killer.

But they weren’t there.

He’d been with his tutor, the man who was teaching him about magic, when Oliver had erupted and killed him. He didn’t remember that bit, though. All he remembered was the need to break out of his skin and then crouching naked and covered in soot on the floor as everything burned.

“I’m not a psychologist, so I can’t help you with the trauma. My fiancé had some negative experiences with his magic, so perhaps talking to him will help. But I can sense your need to shift, and I can help you with that.”

Oliver shook his head. The memory of the one they called Everest was burned into his brain. He’d looked like the devil, laughing as he killed, his skin and hair flickering with fire.

“There’s nothing you can damage down here. It’s all stone. It’s our emergency shifting space. It’s not as much fun as flying, but you can manage a few figure eights between columns, and it’s enough.” Dalmon smiled as if remembering previous visits to this cellar.

When Dalmon had brought him down here, Oliver thought he was being punished for not cooperating with the psychologist. It was worse. It was to shift.

Dalmon unbuttoned his shirt and hung it on a hook by the door. “I suggest you remove your clothes unless you want them to burn. Which is fine, except I didn’t bring a change of clothes.”

“You can’t make me shift.” He didn’t want to shift. He didn’t know how to shift.

His brother, which is how the other phoenixes referred to themselves even though they weren’t blood-related, continued undressing, putting his shoes on the floor beneath the hook. He hung his pants on the hook, then he plucked off his socks and stood there in his underwear.

Oliver was sure that if Dalmon had been alone, he would’ve taken them off too.

“I can’t make you shift, but I am going to remove those cuffs. Your shifting heat is high enough to make me want to shift. I suspect that when the cuffs are removed, you will shift.” He pulled a key out of his pants pocket but didn’t walk any closer. “As a phoenix, you will burn up. You will lose your physical body. We can’t eat when shifted, which is an issue as shifting requires energy, so we only have a limited time in our shifted form before we need to return to this form and eat.”

That all sounded terrible. Why couldn’t he be a fire witch? “What happens if we don’t?”

“You won’t be able to sustain the fire, so eventually, the phoenix will go out. You will die and become an egg. Then, we will need to hatch you and raise you. And all of this will leave a soul bruise that you will need to deal with in your next life.”

They’d talked about soul bruises before. Wounds that were carried through their different lives. For how many lives had he been locked up and drained of his magic? As much as he didn’t want to do this, the idea that his sole reason for living was to make others more powerful made him ill. “The bruise is why Everest needed to find me.”

“Yes, he has other issues as well.” Dalmon lifted his gaze to the ceiling. “We all have issues. It’s the problem of living as long as we do.”

“Do we ever die? Like, properly die?”

“Not that I know of. But eggs become lost…I guess that is a kind of death.”

Oliver stared at him. “What about an afterlife?”

He’d been told he would go to hell because he was a murderer.

“I don’t think we have one. We just live. Even other witches and shifters are born again.”

Only humans got the peace of death. That wasn’t fair.

Dalmon frowned. “Are you thinking of giving up and being egged?”

It was tempting because he wouldn’t remember anything of this life, but how was he supposed to deal with the bruises this life made if he couldn’t remember? “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

His brothers claimed to know him, but how could they when he didn’t know himself? They had diaries and records that he’d made in other lives, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to read them to find out.

All his life, he’d been told that his parents abandoned him as a baby and that he was a dangerous fire witch who’d turned on the people who’d taken him in, killing his tutor and then them, and that suppressing his magic was the best thing for everyone. That they were protecting him. And now that was all a lie.

He didn’t have parents.

And he wasn’t a witch.

“It’s okay not to know. But I think you should give yourself a chance before you make big decisions. It’s what I told Lucian. Ultimately, he decided he couldn’t live with his magic.”

“He had that choice. I don’t.” As a shifter, there was no getting rid of his magic.

“That’s true, and that’s why I’m here to teach you to shift.”

Oliver traced the metal cuff again. “Why you?”

“You don’t want to be near Everest, which I understand.” Something close to pain flickered across Dalmon’s face. “Gerrit is busy as the king. So it was between me and Kaine. Kaine offered, but because of Lucian, I have some understanding of what it’s like to have unwanted magic and how difficult these choices are.”

“How could you understand? It wasn’t your magic,” Oliver snapped. The beds of his nails were a pulsing dark red.

“He is my fated mate. Giving up his magic broke the bond between us. I felt that loss as if it were my own, but I can see how much happier he is without it. He was a finder, untrained and manipulated by an unscrupulous witch. You are not the first paranormal who has been used for their magic, nor will you be the last. I wish I could offer you the opportunity to not be a phoenix?—”

Oliver held out his hand. “Just bleed off the magic, like the others did.”

“That makes you dependent on another. Once you learn how to shift, you will be free.”

Dalmon took a step toward him, and Oliver took a step back. Heat radiated off the other man, and his usually dark eyes were bright in the candlelight.

“We can stay here all night. But your need to shift will become more uncomfortable for both of us.” Dalmon held up the key, then he placed it on the ground and took several steps back.

“So I’m your prisoner until I shift?” There was a guard on the other side of the metal door. Dalmon had given what sounded like orders in rapid French. Oliver didn’t understand any French. He didn’t speak any language other than English. And while he’d been given plenty of books to read by his—they weren’t his protectors—they were his captors, he had over the last week realized his knowledge about the world was lacking.

He’d never watched TV or used a computer.

Kaine had supplied him with more information than he could take in on a tablet after teaching him how to use it. Then there was the library filled with the history of Mont de Leucoy and the secure library filled with the phoenixes’ history.

At least going through the tablet gave him an excuse to hide away in his room and avoid everyone. There were always people moving around the castle, and he didn’t want them looking at him with pity.

The lost phoenix, the one who knows nothing but the lies his captors told him. At least that life had been simple.

Everest had taken that from him .

And even though he logically understood that he’d been fed lies, they’d been easy to swallow. Now everything was jagged and painful, and he wanted to hide in his room with the fiction books he was used to reading. He’d lived through the books. It didn’t matter what they were—fantasy, sci-fi, thriller, or romance—there was always a new book and the chance to be someone else. Be somewhere else…

Had he always been seeking escape?

“What happens if I can’t shift back?” He shook his head. “What happens if I can’t shift and I cause an explosion?”

Dalmon’s forehead creased. “Is that what they claimed would happen?”

“That’s how I…that’s what they said happened the first time. The house was partially destroyed.” Dalmon was looking at him that way again. Not with pity, but like a problem to be solved. “That’s not possible, is it?”

“We can’t do that. Not even Everest. There is a fire witch staying with us at the moment, and while he can juggle with fireballs, I’m not sure even he can create an explosion. Uncontrolled magic is dangerous, yes, that was not a lie, but magic has limits. What Everest did almost killed him. He…he is still recovering.” Dalmon said softly, with real concern etched on his face.

“Will he survive?” Everest was terrifying, and he’d ripped up Oliver’s life, but that didn’t mean he wanted him dead.

“Yes, he is fragile, not dying. It takes a lot to kill us, and even then, it’s only temporary.” Dalmon smiled as if that were funny.

“So I can’t kill you by accident?”

“No. To shift, just allow the heat to ripple through you. It will hurt, and it will hurt more if you fight it. To return to human, it’s much the same, but you bring the heat in, as if curling up on yourself. Your body will reform. I recommend taking a couple of slow, shallow breaths before trying to do anything. Aim to return in a crouch.”

“You make it sound easy.”

“You are a shifter; it is what you are meant to do.”

“Why?”

Dalmon shrugged. “If I knew the answer to that, I’d be a god.”

“Are we demons?”

“No. Though you can see why in the past, some thought we were.” He kicked the key over the floor. “I’m prepared to stay here all night, though my fiancé will not be impressed.”

Oliver stared at the key shining in the golden candlelight. “What is it like? Having a fiancé?” He’d read about kissing and sex and relationships, but fiction wasn’t real.

“He’s my mate, the other part of me. We may not have the bond, but that doesn’t change the way I feel about him. I love him and would do anything for him. Everest loved you in a different life.”

“I caused the soul bruise.” He barely understood the concept, but he didn’t like it. Why did they have to deal with mistakes from a life they didn’t remember? What bruises did he have that he hadn’t discovered?

“You didn’t. Do not give yourself that burden to carry. He made his own choices in this life and the past, and…” Dalmon looked away. “You will need to talk to him.”

There was something about the way he stood, a rigid set in his shoulders and the set of his jaw. “You don’t approve.”

Did that mean Dalmon didn’t want him there?

Would it be better to start over?

Dalmon sighed. “My feelings on the matter are something I am working through. Your feelings on shifting are more pressing.”

Oliver shifted his weight. “I’m scared. ”

He hated admitting that. I’m not a killer. That was a lie.

“What if they were telling the truth and you are the liar?”

“A fair question.” Dalmon nodded. “But ask yourself why I’d lock myself in a cellar with a dangerous witch?”

Oliver raked his hands through his hair, gripped his head, and dropped into a crouch. “I don’t want any of this.”

Dalmon walked toward him.

“Stop.” Oliver held out his hand. He couldn’t deal with someone in his space. Everything hurt. His skin throbbed.

Dalmon stopped. “What do you want?”

To go back to his old life. The comfortable lie where people left him alone unless it was to bleed off the excess magic. The psychologist called it a prison, as he had no freedom and existed only because the witches allowed it…because they were using him.

“Make the pain stop,” he begged. “Please.”

“You need to shift. The pain will be different, but it will stop unless you are shifting between forms. You will only need to shift about once a month.”

That was how often they’d bled off the magic. Sometimes, they did it more frequently.

Oliver picked up the key. At least if he exploded, it would be over.