Infinity Son by Adam Silvera (e book reader free txt) 📗

I shut up because complaining isn’t a good look in front of Prudencia; I’ll be a punk in front of Emil later. I gather all the swag and beeline toward the exit. Celestials are bravely playing beam-disc, which is basically Frisbee with someone’s conjured energy, but I’m not in the mood to watch other people show off their powers, so I keep it moving.

Hours pass, and I become more tightly wound, waiting for something extraordinary to happen. During my shower. When I’m changing. While we eat dinner with Ma at Emil’s favorite vegan diner in Brooklyn. After we get home, I spend time alone on the roof, staring up at the faint outline of the Crowned Dreamer, barely noticing when Emil climbs up the fire escape.

“You good?” Emil asks, tossing me my hoodie.

I’m freezing, but I can’t bring myself to put it on. “It’s not going to happen, is it?”

“No, but it’s okay. You’re already a hero because of all the stories you’re telling with Celestials of New York.”

“More like a sidekick,” I say. “Aren’t you bummed we’re not going to be the people’s champions?”

“We don’t have to be chosen ones or whatever to do good.”

We sit in silence as I pray to the Crowned Dreamer to change my life. But when midnight hits, I turn my back on the stars. We go down the fire escape, through our window, and straight into bed, where we fall asleep, as painfully ordinary as we’ve been the last eighteen years.

FiveA Cycle of Phoenixes

EMIL

The train’s air conditioner shutting down sucks in this September heat, but for once the train is getting me to the Museum of Natural Creatures early enough that I can linger a little before my shift begins. My back is sweating by the time I enter the cool indoors. It’s all good—my body is hidden thanks to the baggy work polo I ordered one size larger. I check my bag through security and throw on my name tag, stealing a second to marvel at the massive coal-black fossils of a primordial dragon suspended from the starlit ceiling. It sucks that I’ll never get to see a dragon in my lifetime, but it’s probably for the best they’re all extinct so we don’t have to worry about alchemists getting their hands on dragon blood. The way people are hunting down living creatures for power, it won’t be surprising if they’re all history soon.

I cut through the Ever-Changing Chamber, which doesn’t live up to its name anymore due to the museum’s budget being slashed, so I’m still caught up on July’s rotation of shifter art. I completely avoid the dark and chilly Hall of Basilisks, because no thanks. I had to brave it on my first day, and that was enough. I have not been about that serpent life since our sixth-grade field trip to the zoo, when this blind basilisk lunged at the barrier hoping to swallow me whole with its fanged mouth.

I reach the forked path where one stairwell leads downstairs and the other up, which during orientation I learned was intentional out of respect for the long-standing war between hydras and phoenixes, who seem magnetized to eliminate each other. The Hydra House downstairs starts off pretty innocent, with illustrations of hydras being tamed by fishermen to catch fish and ward off bigger sea animals, but it gets progressively scarier the deeper you venture. The last room shows footage of a territorial fight between a hydra horde and a cycle of phoenixes. I was speechless and heartbroken when I first saw the clip of a massive, seven-headed hydra biting phoenixes out of the sky and swallowing them whole.

Another room I haven’t returned to since.

I race up the spiral steps to my happy place, the Sunroom. Above the entrance is a stained-glass window of an egg and phoenix connected by a ring of fire. For our thirteenth birthday, Ma brought us to this exhibit. Brighton was into it just fine, but he got impatient quick as I stopped to read every card—I wasn’t a fast reader then, and I’m still not today—and I posed for pictures in front of every display in case I never got to come back.

The Sunroom has it all: flutes that mimic the music of a phoenix cry to train and communicate; wooden and iron crossbows shaped like wings; fans made from green and blue feathers; ceremonial candlesticks for believers praying to phoenix fire for renewal when loved ones pass; eggshells ranging in size and color and texture; an hourglass with ashes inside; clay masks with massive beaks and leather jackets with feathered sleeves, close to the ones still worn by the Halo Knights today; dried tears fossilized; a row of ender-blades with bone hilts that are charred black and serrated blades as yellow as the hydra blood they’ve been cruelly forged from, designed to snuff out a phoenix and keep it from ever resurrecting.

“Excuse me,” someone says in an English accent, which is no doubt my favorite accent. My chest tightens. I turn to find a young, beautiful guy with pale and freckled skin, stubble, messy red hair, and the kind of New York T-shirt someone only wears if they’re a tourist or lost a bet. He points at my name tag. “You work here, yeah?”

“Yup.” My face warms up and I wish I could turn invisible to hide my blushing cheeks. “You need help?”

“What time are the group tours?”

“Start of every hour.”

The guy checks his watch. “I have a show to catch at half eleven. Would you mind giving me a brief tour? Promise I won’t ask too many questions.”

With a voice like that, I want to hear all his questions. I got ten minutes before my shift officially starts, and man, I have no problem working a little earlier to hang out with him. “I could show you around. You with anyone else?”

“No.” He extends his hand, which I eagerly shake. “Charlie.”

I shouldn’t be doing this. I’m far from a know-it-all like