Page 14 of A Flame of the Phoenix (An Heir Comes to Rise #6)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Faythe

F aythe had passed another birthday. She was now twenty-one years old, and as she stared over the thick winter hills, her cheeks nipping and an icy breeze blowing through her hair, she wondered if she would get to see the hundreds more birthdays her fae immortality should grant, or if that were a cruel illusion. A promise turned to deceit if this war should freeze her years like the winter froze any new bloom.

Nik had been the one to remind her this morning, otherwise she wouldn’t have noticed the day. It didn’t really matter—she’d barely been able to surface a smile for it. He’d tried to insist they enjoy a night of drinking and forgetting, but Faythe couldn’t—not even for a moment.

She fiddled with the gold star necklace Nik had given her for her birthday last year while he sat opposite her. He’d shown up at her tent with a hearty breakfast and an apology he couldn’t get her a gift this year. The necklace was all the treasure she needed form him for a lifetime. Something she could use to reach him through Nightwalking anywhere.

“You said you needed to tell me something,” Nik said, tossing a grape up and down.

Recalling she’d said that at the inn, Faythe figured now was as good a time as any.

“Do you believe in past lives?”

“I should have known it wouldn’t be something mundane.”

His lightheartedness was always something she’d valued about Nik. He was the first to believe in her abilities, and just… her .

Nik said, “I guess in some ways I think we could come back. In a different form, perhaps only as an energy.”

“What if there was a Spirit or other Gods that could meddle to bring one back in mortal form again?” She slipped him a tentative side-glance for his reaction.

“Just tell me what you’re trying to tell me before I jump to the wildest conclusion.”

“I think…” Gods , her heart was racing. She’d thought these things over, not really having whole truths, only assumptions she’d only told Kyleer so far since fleeing Ellium. “I think Marvellas might have brought me back. She’s the Spirit of Souls after all. I get flashes of visions sometimes, and I think they’re from long ago, around the start of the war with Marvellas. When I met you and Tauria, something always felt frustratingly missing. I would train with you as if I should be able to contend. As if I should be like you. I think it’s because my soul was fae all that time ago.”

She took slow breaths when it felt like confronting a lie—that her whole existence as Faythe was false, and this past she did not know wanted to shroud her in helplessness.

Nik said gently, “There are so many things that have tried to make you see yourself differently. You’ve combated them every time. If this is true, then what does it change, really?”

“I knew him, Nik,” she confessed. Tears swelled. Her thumb twisted the golden butterfly ring on her other hand with a growing ache. “Reylan. I knew him then—I’m sure of it. I think I took his memories before I died, and I don’t know if he’ll ever forgive me.”

“He will.”

“How can you say that?”

“Because it won’t matter to him. When you’ve spent so long waiting for that one person to take on the world with, everything that came before them becomes insignificant.”

“I betrayed him.”

“You saved him. If you’d died, Reylan would have followed. That, I’m certain of. He has nothing to lose, Faythe. Nothing as great as you. Then Marvellas would have carried out her plan, and he wouldn’t have been here, waiting for you to return, even if he didn’t know it.”

Faythe hadn’t considered that. Though she wanted to deny Reylan would follow her to such an extreme, she knew in her heart he would. It killed her to be so sure of his devotion, but Gods , was she overwhelmingly grateful to have him.

“How are you so calm about this?” Faythe asked, wiping the stray tear that began to fall.

Nik gave a chuckle, throwing the grape into his mouth and chewing. “I found a human who could Nightwalk. Who turned out to be the unknown daughter of one of the greatest kings of our time.” He cast her a gentle smile, and Faythe’s chest warmed for her father. “We discovered a dark extinct species is, in fact, not so, and that they’re out for vengeance with a back-from-the-dead high lord. A second almighty Spirit entered our realm. I don’t think there’s anything out of the range of possibility anymore, nor do I think we’re done being faced with challenges. Acceptance is the only way it won’t shock us beyond being able to figure out what in the Nether we do next.”

Faythe absorbed everything he said. Treasured his wisdom. Her eyes slipped closed with liberation. She couldn’t imagine more perfect company right now.

“Maverick…” Faythe shuddered involuntarily at speaking his name. “Callen—that’s what you called him when I showed you my memory of the fire mountains.”

Nik’s expression fell, vacantly studying the table. “As Callen Osirion, the Prince of Dalrune, he was my friend. Not close in the ways people expect. I didn’t see him often, and then the Great Battles happened, and his kingdom was collapsed completely. High Farrow, Olmstone, and Rhyenelle sent scouts to see if any of the royal family had survived, but all they found was the kingdom in worse wreckage than Fenstead. No one could have imagined Callen…” Nik trailed off, pain written in his features.

“Maverick isn’t that person you knew.” Faythe tried to console him.

“Does he remember who he was?”

She knew the answer wasn’t what he wanted. “Yes, I believe he does, though I don’t know when he started to remember.”

Faythe wouldn’t absolve Maverick for a single heinous choice he’d made, but she couldn’t help that her heart had started to separate the dark fae from the former prince. In the end, they were one and the same, but for Nik and the friend he knew, for a prince that had his will and his life stolen, maybe she could understand just a little.

“I want to talk to him—just one last time,” Nik confessed.

She couldn’t be sure they would ever get that chance, so she didn’t respond.

After a quiet moment, Nik said heavily, “Mordecai is taking Tauria to Valgard. She told me last night.”

Faythe dropped her last piece of bread with that information.

“Have any of you ever been across to that island?”

“No. All our lives, we’ve stayed far away. Even before my father was compromised as Marvellas’s servant, he’d never in all his battle plans or talks with the other kingdoms considered leading an attack on the county they believed responsible for the war.”

“What makes them so frightening?”

Nik contemplated. “I guess their history of the Dark Age. No one even knows who’s ruled over there since. The kingdom might be in disarray, and that’s why Marvellas took over before bringing Mordecai back.”

“Why would he be taking Tauria there now?”

“I can’t be sure. I’m terrified for Tauria. It’s killing me that she’s alone in this, but as she said in her letter, this is an opportunity to see inside enemy territory that’s never been possible before now. She’s afraid but also so damn brave and confident.”

Faythe was also torn with immense concern for her friend. Nik’s pain and turmoil ripped through her.

“I believe in her,” she said.

“Me too. I just wish I could be with her.”

The somber silence left them picking at the last of the breakfast.

“While Tauria is gaining advantages, we should keep ourselves busy doing the same,” Faythe said.

“What do you suggest?”

“With all forces heading to High Farrow, that’s where we’ll make our stand. In the meantime, we have to gain as much as we can before we head there ourselves. With Reylan and Tauria.”

Nik inhaled, long and deep. “Agreed. I plan to head to Fenstead when Tauria returns from Valgard. If we can’t reclaim Fenstead, we can still retrieve her, and maybe she’ll have something valuable to use against Mordecai.”

That gave them both a lift of pride and hope. Tauria was brilliant.

“While I still have you, want to accompany me on a quest the others might try to argue against?”

Nik’s slow smirk of deviance was all the confirmation she needed. “Now I’m intrigued. Spill it.”

“Just meet me at sundown.”

“It’s only sunrise—you’re keeping me on edge all day?”

Kyleer called out and came into her tent. “You didn’t tell me it was your birthday!” he exclaimed upon entry.

She shot Nik an accusing look, but he held his hands up.

“I didn’t tell him.”

“I did,” Livia said, slipping in around Kyleer’s dominating form. “Reylan told me. He…was planning a surprise dinner he wanted my help with before everything happened.”

Faythe’s heart plummeted.

Livia quickly added, “No sulking today—he’d be beside himself if he saw it. You’re coming with us.”

She wasn’t in the mood to go anywhere, but Livia anticipated that, crossing the few short strides to her and hauling Faythe up despite her disgruntled protests.

The market she was dragged to was bustling by the afternoon. Nerida and Samara had joined them, and Faythe had to admit it was nice to be in the company of just her female friends as they wandered aimlessly through the stalls, losing themselves to pretty things for a while.

Livia lifted a pink scarf off a table, draping it around Samara. “Pink is definitely your color,” the commander said.

Samara blushed, and Livia’s smile dropped as if she hadn’t meant to be so bold.

“Green is certainly yours,” Nerida said, the savior in their spiral of awkwardness as she plucked a sage version of the same item and held it up. She was right—it complimented Livia’s auburn hair beautifully.

“I’d choose gold for you,” Faythe said, joining in with the lighthearted fun and swiping a golden shawl to wrap around Nerida.

She giggled, and finally, Samara chose one too, grinning brightly.

“Red for our Phoenix Queen, of course,” she said, her tone naturally so polite with the elegance of court imbued in her.

Faythe accepted the deep red sheer material, glad Samara was beginning to ease into their company when she’d arrived quite reserved.

This kind of normalcy made her pine after Tauria and Marlowe a little harder, but she was trying to enjoy the day with the high spirits of Livia, Nerida, and Samara lifting her.

Nerida linked arms with her after they’d purchased the scarfs, keeping them on though they certainly didn’t match the leather Rhyenelle attire they all wore. It was more for sentiment than stylish appeal. Faythe had picked two more—a sky-blue for Marlowe, and an emerald-green for Tauria—in a silly effort to keep them close today.

They stopped to admire some brass trinkets and jeweled daggers. Samara reached her fingers up to rattle a beautiful wind chime. The sound pulled Faythe’s focus, tunneling her away from the chatter of the town. She watched the small metal rods dangle.

A breeze pushed by her, tangled with a presence that pricked the hairs at her nape. Faythe’s sight shifted, finding a tall, hooded, and masked figure about to pass them through the bustling crowds. Her attention tacked onto him, but she didn’t know why—only that her heart picked up, and there was nothing in her senses besides this person and the gentle chime above her.

They passed by Faythe, nearly brushing her arm, and it was then her sight fell again, catching on the quickest glint of ruby where his sleeve lifted.

Her world stopped still.

It couldn’t be…

Faythe was pushing through the crowd after him without a missed beat. The siren in her mind was all that rang now, maybe misleading her into thinking it was the amulet with the Eye of the Phoenix on this person’s wrist.

The one she had slipped onto Reylan’s wrist before they were separated.

People complained about her lack of grace as she pushed through the tight throng, but her heart was desperately reaching after him. She hadn’t been able to see his eyes or much of his face at all, and now he was only flashes of dark clothing escaping her.

Faythe became more frantic, trying to push faster, but when she finally caught a clear breath, the bodies lessening, she’d come to an intersection. She spun, glancing down each path, but the figure was gone. Tears welled in her eyes out of utter frustration and misery.

Had Reylan been right in front of her, and had she let him slip away again?

She couldn’t breathe. Faythe doubled over to brace her hands on her thighs with the dizzy, sweeping overwhelm and the scream she had to bottle. She focused deeply, recalling the familiar pulse of power from the Eye of the Phoenix she’d once worn herself. She searched within for her bond to Reylan. Despite it not being fully claimed, a part of him always resided within her.

“A warning before you run off like that next time.”

Livia’s call of outrage as she caught up to her severed any threads of the bond Faythe was trying to reach. She straightened, forcing back her whimper and tightening her fists, so as not to lash out at the commander.

“What did you see?” Nerida asked—a far more gentle reception than Livia.

She debated sharing. It would only seem like she was losing her mind in her desperation.

“Sorry,” she said in a subdued voice, coming down from her high of adrenaline. “It just looked like someone I knew, but I was wrong.”

“Valgard soldiers could be anywhere now—we have to stay vigilant and stick together,” Livia groused.

Faythe only nodded vacantly. Nerida’s gentle touch guided her again, and the Lakelarian healer wore only a smile of kindness.

“Ooh, a fortune teller!” Samara said excitedly.

Faythe wanted to return to camp after her disappointment just now, but the High Farrow lady was already making her way over to the purple tent down the market, and Livia was quick to follow.

“I’ll wait outside,” Faythe said, not in any mood to have some vague false foretelling of how her future would go.

“I always loved when fortune tellers came to the city in High Farrow. Many don’t believe in them, of course, but I always feel a sense of…enlightenment,” Samara gushed.

For the joy it brought her, Faythe appreciated the novelty.

Samara went inside, and Livia insisted none of the group should be alone and went with her. When it was just Faythe and Nerida left outside, her wandering gaze settled on the healer, who was already studying her.

“Want to talk about what you really saw?” Nerida asked patiently.

Faythe shifted on her feet. “I’m just exhausted and overwhelmed. I thought it might have been Reylan.”

It sounded foolish to admit out loud. As if he would be wandering so freely in Fenher after being captured by Marvellas.

“How so?”

The fact she didn’t immediately hit her with sympathy and simply accepted the delusion surprised Faythe.

“I thought I felt the amulet I gave him.”

“The Eye of the Phoenix?”

Faythe nodded, and the healer’s brow furrowed thoughtfully.

“It would be quite hard to mistake that unique power.”

Hope skipped in her chest. Was Nerida suggesting she might have been right?

Nerida said, “Though it’s likely Marvellas found it on him and threw it away. Perhaps it was found and sold.”

Then her hope winked out completely. That explanation was a blow to her chest. It was logical.

Faythe gritted her teeth at the mockery. She wanted to hunt the person down anyway just to get that amulet back. It was her family’s heirloom.

Samara’s giggling drew their attention to where she and Livia had emerged, holding small pieces of parchment. The lady’s brightness turned to a faint scowl as she read hers again.

“Not very enlightening this time,” Samara mumbled. “What did she say to you?”

Livia was snapped out of her thoughts by Samara’s question, and she crumpled the paper she held. Samara pouted that she hadn’t gotten a peek, but Faythe observed the commander seemed…flustered. It was amusing to witness her like this when Livia carried herself so firmly most of the time. Now the commander was blushing, not meeting Samara’s eye.

“A load of false promises as usual,” Livia muttered.

Samara held hers out to Faythe, who took it curiously. “Maybe you could find a deeper meaning for me. I could use something hopeful,” Samara sighed.

“Why is that?” Livia asked, genuinely concerned.

Faythe tuned out of their conversation to lazily scan the fortune teller’s words, but past the first line, her body tensed.

Come the return of the lost first son.

Faythe’s head snapped up to the tent, and her feet marched for it in a drive of impulse. She’d heard this poem before, and her adrenaline beat faster as she didn’t bother with courtesy and pulled back the tent flap, heading straight through to the back, where she threw open those curtains too.

The aroma of citrus and vanilla hit her nostrils, the incense so potent she resisted the urge to recoil. A beautiful woman dressed in only a few strips of flowing fabric, barely held together as a dress that exposed most of her dark skin, reclined on cushions elegantly, smoking a long, ornate pipe. Her raven hair was voluminous in tight curls, and she smiled at Faythe—the kind that told her she expected her intrusion. A low string melody played, but there was no instrument she could find as the source.

“You’re the Dresair I freed.” Faythe didn’t waste time in spilling her conclusion.

“I have adopted the name Presilla. This body is the fourth I’ve inhabited, and I think I’ll keep it. Many gawk upon my beauty—it’s a power in itself.”

“You killed her.”

The Dresair shrugged. “I’ve immortalized her.”

Faythe’s anger began to climb. “What is your goal?”

“As with all creatures, goals are an ever-shifting tide.”

She would have expected her friends to have come in after her by now, but all was so quiet despite the thin purple sheets of the tent.

“So what are you doing now, here in this town?”

“Selling fortunes to make mine. It is rather entertaining to bewitch mortals so desperate for direction on their aimless paths.”

“I would have thought you’d have your sights on bigger ambitions.”

“Do you know what a Dresair is?” she said in a silky voice.

“I met one first in High Farrow. It said it was a keeper of knowledge, holder of precious things, and?—”

“Traveler of realms,” Presilla finished for her. “Do you know how one becomes a Dresair?”

A cold chill slithered up Faythe’s spine. Presilla smiled.

“Not everyone who tries to Realm-Walk makes it through. Those who fail become trapped in an endless space. They lose their name, then their memory, then their sanity. Then they become servants to the void between all places.”

Faythe shivered. “You were once…mortal?”

“Yes. I don’t recall which realm I came from or why I fled it. I will never remember what species I was, what gender, what appearance I had, or even how long I was trapped in that void. Clearly, I was not equipped for—or deemed worthy of—passage into another mortal realm. It takes a grant from one of many primordial beings, and there is often a high price to pay, which is why we as Dresairs demand something, or give something unwanted, in return for knowledge or items.”

Faythe found her explanation both fascinating and horrifying. “It’s not a coincidence you’re here, is it? You could have fled anywhere, but you’re conveniently right here.”

Presilla set down her pipe and shifted onto her knees. She gestured with her hand for Faythe to do the same, and she felt compelled to obey, settling down on the other side of the table, where a glass sphere hovered, held up by nothing.

“Your song has been sung since the dawn of time,” she said, her voice trance-like. “Bound by strength, her fire will burn. Shaped by darkness, with no return. Spirits will clash as the fates demand. And the cost will be life, torn from hand.”

Her breath held.

Presilla continued, “There are many ways this war will end. There are many where you win, but only one leads to all your heart desires.”

Faythe’s heart began to thunder. “I don’t want to know. I can’t know,” she said, beginning to panic.

The last time she had been given knowledge from the Dresair in High Farrow about one of her friends dying, it had sent her into a terrified, maddening spiral. Ever since, she had been tormented by the thought things could have turned out differently for Caius if she hadn’t known.

“I do not wish to harm you, Faythe Ashfyre. If I told you exactly how to win, you would fail, because you would try to prevent the sacrifices you will face.”

“Stop,” she croaked. Faythe couldn’t bear it. She’d known war wasn’t without risk and losses, but she couldn’t do this again—couldn’t know someone she loved was going to die.

“You have to realize that should you lose, should you fall, they will all fall. You are the one .”

“I don’t want to be,” she whispered.

Presilla’s features softened, her hand waved over the glass sphere, and it flooded with whorls of red and amber. “You have to be,” she said.

They watched it create an image so beautiful Faythe choked on her sob.

Faythe only saw her back in the moving image as she stood between two lines of Rhyenelle soldiers holding their swords high like an arch. That wasn’t the most wonderful part. It was the two small children in her arms, their heads resting on each of her shoulders, and Reylan by her side, holding an older child—a daughter with hair as silver as his that flowed in the wind. She could see none of their faces, and she wished for them all to turn around.

“Of all the infinite paths this war could take, only one leads here,” Presilla said.

Her tears fell silently. Faythe understood then. She could win the war with the many other ways Marvellas could be defeated, but only this way—this one precious path—kept Reylan with her.

“That’s impossible,” she whispered.

With those odds, the fortune in front of her was like trying to catch wind in her palms.

“It does not mean there is no room for error, child. Fate is like the ever-growing roots of a tree. Some may seem like they stem away from your desires for a while, all may seem lost, but your path can reconnect you with the outcome you fight for. Do not be afraid. Do not stop fighting.”

“What do I have to do?” Faythe’s voice broke.

“Trust in yourself, and in those who have stood by you from the start. But Faythe, you must accept that not all the mortal Gods may be with you until the end.”

“The mortal Gods,” Faythe echoed. Some part of her knew…had been threading the pieces together ever since Aurialis taunted her with it, though she hadn’t used that term.

“Knowledge, wisdom, courage, resilience, strength, dark and light as one, and you—power.”

“I can’t lose any of them.”

“Take solace, Faythe Ashfyre, that because of the Gods who have meddled to awaken their chosen from their long bloodline and join you, those who fall will rest in an ether of paradise. Say not ‘farewell’ but ‘see you in the crossing.’”

“It’s not fair.”

“Love is meant to be painful.”

“Why are you telling me this?” she demanded, with the fractures of her heart sharpening.

“Because there are many ends in which you live and you triumph, but what you become because you could not accept your losses is a force worse than the one you seek to destroy. That is my gift of warning. You have a power in you this realm has never seen, and grief can make the most devastating choices. It can turn a golden heart black if you let it.”

All of this was a warning…about herself. Not help to avoid anything nor knowledge to aid her. The most dangerous outcome of the war was the world in ruins not because of Marvellas’s destruction…but Faythe’s.

She stumbled in horror, pushing herself back up to her feet, not wanting to believe she was capable of it, but as her friends’ faces flashed through her mind, Faythe’s chest beat with such fierce protection over them all.

Faythe spun to leave, but Presilla called her name.

“Follow the eye, Faythe Ashfyre. Sometimes you have to lose to win.”