“He is very beautiful,” The Phoenix said then.

And she gestured to Logan, hanging in place, unmoving as if the world around he and Stray were a frozen image. A tableaux, a scene from an alter-piece- The sprawling chaos of battle sharpened to single, dagger-edged point. For a moment Stray couldn’t understand her words, didn’t want to process them even as she stared at the creature responsible for so much death, so much carnage and misery and hurt-

And then the Child-Phoenix smiled and leaned forward, holding the star in her palm towards Logan, his wounds healing neatly where the starlight touched him though he still seemed caught in time like a fly in ointment. The same happening to others around him, flesh and bone knitting back together, blood no longer spilling against linen-pale cloth and skin. Something, some tight-as-a-fist thing within Stray’s stomach loosened as she realised the nature of the Child Phoenix’s gift and without warning tears prickled her eyes, hope pounding new-feathered in her chest-

“As I said,” the little girl replied, her expression reddening shyly. “He is most beautiful- Your mate. All your companions are.”

A beat.

“But then you know that better than I, Mistress Stray.”

And the little one gestured to Illyenka’s hall, the light from the star in her palm broadening and brightening. Other pin-pricks of light appearing, reminding Stray of nothing so much as that night she’d slept with Logan in the Wolf Mother’s Cave. It seemed a lifetime ago now. But something warm and sweet-bitter as a hearth-tale’s ending stole through her at the sight and for the first time since she had entered the hollow Empress’ realm Stray realised that she truly wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t.

The pounding of her heart bespoke something other, something far more delicate and fragile than fear.

“Are you really the creature Illyenka and Gold are fighting over?” she asked then, because she had to say something. And if Logan were able to talk he’d want that something to be useful, the better to help protect her or to help her protect him… If she thought the question impertinent the Child Phoenix did not say however. She merely bobbed her head once- Yes- her eyes still on the werewolf. There was something in her gaze that was both strange and wonderful, that held the memory of agelessness and doubt.

“I am the being which has caused all this to come to pass,” she answered softly. “I am the one to blame.” And she sighed, her eyes still on Logan. The solemn words sounded strange, when spoken with a little girl’s voice. “I have been remiss in my duties- so very selfish, Mistress Stray- and now I must make reparation. But for the first time in all the ages of my living,” she continued, “I have no idea how to do it. It’s why I called you here.”

And the little one chewed on her lip, her face set in a grave, childish frown.

For a moment surprise robbed Stray of her voice.

It came back to her though, Trouble-Begot that she was. Her heart’s disquiet was too great for it not to. “Is healing my companions not enough?” she asked, eyes still fixed on Logan. It was such a relief to see him whole and well- if unmoving- that she couldn’t seem to look away.

“Would it be for you?” The Phoenix-Child asked sharply, her gaze narrowing as she walked around the frozen figures of Ororo, Azazel, Illyenka; She reminded Stray strongly of Lord David’s father when she came to inspect the stained glass windows he’d gifted to his son. “Would healing them be enough, knowing that your own self-indulgent passions had brought this battle to pass?” the little one was asking. “If your purpose, your entire reason for being was to create life and you had nearly allowed yourself to be the cause of a massacre? To become enthralled to a creature without charity or pity who was mistress of a realm such as this?”

And she gestured to Illyenka’s quarters, her youthful lip curling in disgust. The scent of brimstone and ashes was not as strong here as it had been but it still hung on the air, tainting it. The hollow Empress’ realm was bereft of comfort, after all. “Repairing the effects of my stupidity is not enough,” the Phoenix said tightly, “Not when I was the cause of so much loss-”

“But you weren’t. Not directly. I have it on good authority that Mistress Gold was a goblyn-born plague-bitch before e’er she met you-”

The child’s smile turned cutting. Cold. “Aye, that she was. She needed no lessons in cruelty from me, I’ll give the woman her due in that.” The smile became a frown. “But before our… dalliance, she was merely a powerful one of the Cursed, less dangerous even than her sister for she had so little control of her gift.” And suddenly fire flared in the child’s eyes, burned beneath her skin. For the first time since she had appeared she seemed the firebird spirit both Gold and Illyenka craved. “After me though- after I became ensnared by her- we both committed cruelties unimaginable,” she murmured. “Cruelties that have hurt so many people you cannot begin to count.”

Stray blinked. “But if she was so weak, my lady, then however did she manage to enslave you?”

“She did not enslave me.” Platinum-white eyes, old and ageless, came to rest on the spring maid and despite herself Stray suppressed a shiver. Just for a second the creature before her looked nothing like a child. “I came to her willingly,” she-it- was saying. “Gold… seduced me, I think that’s the word you’d use. Or perhaps I seduced her. I’m not entirely sure what was the way of it, I know only how it felt-”

Stray shook her head impatiently. “But how though? How could she seduce you?” She gestured to her friends, to the Company of Miracles.“What could a being as powerful as you want from one of us?”

“Can you not guess?”

And the child smiled again, suddenly looking much older. Despite herself Stray’s mind flashed back to Ororo’s face, the night she’d explained how her T’Challa met his death. “You cannot imagine the…pitilessness of my life before I met her,” the Phoenix said softly. She was staring at the unmoving Gold now, her fingers sliding across the sorceress’ skin in a touch that was more like a caress. “You cannot comprehend the massive coldness of my heart for all I burned like the stars. I watched, always from afar. Never judging. Never choosing. Never desiring. It was not my place to become involved, I knew that as I knew all other creatures’ place within the Great Mother’s bones. I was implacable. Irreplaceable. Unstoppable. I was the Maker and Slayer of Stars. And then one day…”

Her gaze went to Gold, and thence, unaccountably, to Logan.

The next words did not, somehow, surprise Stray though she knew they should.

“One day,” the creature continued, so softly the words were barely audible, “I saw Gold and Logan by a riverbank. Saw what was between them, saw their… Hunger, the violence of their passion. The sheer, glorious, knife-blade want of it. It was unlike anything I had ever felt before, unlike anything I had ever thought to feel.” And the Phoenix’s expression became hungry. Greedy. This look was a crime when worn upon the face of a child; Fear began to knot in Stray’s chest. “Suddenly,” the creature was saying, “All my years of coldness seemed to matter not…Suddenly my meaning and purpose seemed written on the air. Suddenly it did not even matter that the woman who so bewitched me had used hex-craft to lure her lover and their dalliance to ignore a child’s abduction. Because I… wanted something. I wanted them. I wanted to, to… be them.”

And she shook her head to herself, even now staring at the pair in question as if they were a puzzle she would never, ever solve.

Stray felt her heart take another, more painful in her chest.

“You loved him,” she said softly. It was not a question.

She realised she couldn’t imagine anyone not loving Logan, even if that love meant her rival would take him away and there was nought she could do to intervene.

But the Phoenix turned her burning, feverous gaze upon her. Her expression clearly told the spring maid she did not understand her words. “I loved her, I loved him, I loved the way they made me feel when they were together,” she snapped, her voice impatient. “My heartscraving for their presence may have given Gold mastery over me but I did not care. I… couldn’t. Not when my heart had finally burst into flame after all its ages of being cold as starlight’s death. Not after I had experienced them.”

And molten eyes bored into Stray’s, setting a shivering across her bones.

There seemed a touch of madness in the depths of the creature, for all her child-like form.

“But that is not love as you feel it,” she continued after a moment, seeming to collect herself. “And it is not love as he-Logan- feels it for you. As he felt it for-” Her eyes glanced away, coming to rest on Illyenka. For a moment Stray swore the Hollow Empress’ image seemed to change, seemed to shiver and ripple until the child she’d once been stood there for all her demonic battle dress. It reminded Stray that this was the little girl who had been stolen away that first day when Logan and Gold dallied on the riverbank, this was the child who’d been failed so badly by the Company of Miracles, by everyone who should have cherished her and kept her safe. Stray wanted to hate her, wanted to want to cut her into a million pieces for all the hurt she had inflicted upon herself, her mate and her companions-

And yet, how could she hate a child who’d been abandoned?

For that was all Illyenka was beneath her armour of ambition and hex-craft and bone.

The Phoenix-Child nodded. “So now you see my trouble,” she said quietly. “The harm I have permitted to come to pass in not easily undone.” She stared mulishly, at her bare, childish feet. “In fact, of all my deeds, this harm alone may be impossible to salve.”

“Could you not… Could you not save her too?” Stray asked gently. The image of the child Illyenka had once been burned behind her eyes. “Could you not… Undo what has been done to her, if you are truly the Maker and Slayer of Stars?”

“No.” The child shook her head and suddenly the illusion of the child Illyenka had been disappeared, replaced by the pestilent creature she’d become. Her sword was raised, slashing at Logan, the look on her face terrifying, completely inhuman and cold. “She is enmeshed within this place,” the Phoenix said quietly. “She has become a part of it, as much necessary to it as heat is to a star. I cannot create a vacuum, I cannot make a hole and not fill it in. That is not what I was wrought to do. All that I am concerns balance.” And she looked away, her childish cheeks burning with shame. The adult, frightened knowledge of her helplessness written all over her face. “Someone would have to agree to take her place, to… keep the Cloth of Living a-weaving,” she was saying. “To keep the Great Mother’s bones intact. I cannot do it: Even if I could discover a way to shed my immortality I am clearly not to be trusted with passion or power, as your own mate can attest-”

The glance she shot Logan was deeply ashamed.

Suddenly, for no reason she could fathom, the look in Logan’s eyes when he told her he was dangerous popped into Stray’s mind

“Then who?” she asked, her voice weary.

She suspected it was no accident that she and she alone had been asked to this exchange.

The Phoenix smiled. “It cannot be you, Mistress Stray,” she said, as if reading her thoughts- And mayhap she had. “Sacrificing one innocent to save another would just be compounding my failures.” Her golden gaze darkened. “And I could not countenance putting you in close contact with Mephisto, when it’s so clear what he wishes to do to you.”

A sudden fear tore at Stray’s heart. “You cannot mean to ask Logan-”

“No.” Again the Phoenix shook her head, more curtly this time. “I stole enough from him when I joined with Gold, I’ll take no more from him. He deserves his mate and his quietness, deserves to travel the moon-burnished sea.” And a wistful look flitted across her face, her eyebrow cocking as she took in Stray’s frankly unconvinced look. Suddenly she looked both very grownup and slightly amused.

Stray frowned, frustrated. “Then who?”

The Phoenix glowing gaze came to rest on Gold and the spring maid’s heart began to pound in her chest.

“No.”

“She would no longer be a danger to you or yours, Mistress Stray.” And the Child-Phoenix looked at her shrewdly, the callow eyes now narrowed. The little body tilted and eager as a snake poised to strike. “She would be confined in this place,” she continued silkily, “enthralled with it. Unable and unwilling ever to escape. Imagine it, realms upon realms to conquer, power beyond her imaginings. Demons to worship her, which is what she truly wants after all. And always, the veil between your world and hers would be policed. Secured, as it should have been. Our Empress Goldfeather would suffer no rivals, there would be one mistress and no masters here. And there would be no chance whatsoever that she could hurt you again- Or that she could tempt me-”

Which was what really drove the Phoenix, Stray thought caustically.

It set fear quivering in her belly to realise that a creature that powerful feared her enslavement to the sorceress still.

“So what do you want me to do?” Stray asked tartly after a moment. “Why are you bothering to have this conversation with me at all?”

The words since you’ve already made up your mind hung between them on the air though as a silk-merchant’s daughter Stray was far to well brought up to say them out loud.

The Phoenix-Child narrowed her eyes for all that she smiled. “Logan is a creature of transformation,” she said softly, the star she’d held in her hand breaking in two as she gestured to it, both lights hovering slightly above the ground. “In magic, he would represent quicksilver.” And she pointed to one of the pricks of light, its colour turning hazel-golden as Logan’s eyes were. Stray fancied it looked feral and grave. “You are a creature of re-formation, Stray,” the Phoenix continued, gesturing to the other light which promptly turned jade-green. “In magic, you would represent salt. The substance which knits together, which holds its form.” Again she gestured and the yellow prick of light split in two, a burning, platinum ball glowing next to the other two. Stray couldn’t help but notice that it looked rather ominous, burning there against the grey. “And I would be sulphur,” the Phoenix-Child continued, nodding to the platinum light, “that which burns, that which catalyses. This is the way of all magic, the Heavenly Substances Three.”

And with a flick of her wrist she set the three balls of light spinning around one another like dice across a table. They skittered and leapt but the green and the yellow ball seemed always to remain within one another’s reach, orbiting one another. Stray wondered whether that too was a message or simple an illustration of the way the universe worked.

“I want you to help me bind Gold to this place,” the Phoenix said softly then, eyes still on her waltzing, scapegrace planets. “I want you to do it quickly. We will use Logan and we will enact the hex-work which will make us all safe, right here, right now, and then I will set you and Logan free and never bother you again.”

Her gaze was shrewd, calculating. Weighing.

But for the first time in her young life Stray felt more than up to taking that stare.

“You will let us go,” she said tightly, her tone leaving no room for argument.

The Phoenix nodded.

“You will return us to our realm and never bother me or mine again.”

Again the creature gave a tiny dip of the head.

Stray put her face into the Phoenix’s. “And you will save Illyenka, you will take her from this place and restore all that your interference cost her.”

The creature opened its mouth as if to protest and then shut it. For a split second the Phoenix-Child really did look like a little girl, caught in some grave misdoing. But she still nodded- As did Stray. She had to.

She would endure no more of these plague-bitch power games.

“Then tell me what I have to do,” the spring maid said softly. She was looking at Logan as she said it, for she knew she did this for him.

“My dear,” the Child-Phoenix told her, “I must make you weep, I must make you sob for me-”

And with that the Phoenix gestured with her hand and the green prick of light darted up to touch Stray’s forehead. The yellow ball starting as if, like Logan, it would protect her if it only had the power of its own will. Green washed through her vision and Stray saw a blast of dazzling light, felt the heat and the burn and the power of it-

And then there was only sorrow, harrowing wrenching sorrow.

She couldn’t be entirely certain but she thought she saw the Phoenix smile.