Page 16 of A Flame of the Phoenix (An Heir Comes to Rise #6)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Zaiana

Z aiana found the wicked Malin, chasing pent-up frustration and anger she was desperate to release. At the notes of a familiar voice, she halted the urge to barge into the drawing room she’d followed his disgusting scent to.

“All I’m saying is, you have the people’s loyalty right now. If they find out you’ve been slaughtering the strong and loyal forces of your warriors and generals simply because they were wary of a new reign, you’ll lose the trust you gained from them,” Tynan said.

“You’re giving me a nothing of fucking use,” Malin responded with cold exasperation. Then he seemed to calm. “My father would say I was destined for the crown he couldn’t have. But in order to be worthy of it, I couldn’t be weak—I had to show I was just as powerful in both my ability and my status to be better than Agalhor.”

“Your uncle seemed to care for you,” Tynan said carefully.

“Until he found a new candidate to give away what was rightfully mine,” Malin seethed. “Do you know how humiliating it was to watch all my centuries of building and waiting and proving myself be dismissed so easily when his daughter knew nothing— nothing —of what it took to lead?”

Zaiana could sympathize with the prince in that moment. She didn’t want to, but it was impossible to ignore the unfair hand that had switched the moment Faythe arrived.

“Then he left me,” Malin hissed, but there was a wavering to it. A note of pain that made it clear he meant his father.

“Death isn’t a choice on a battlefield,” Tynan said. He had more patience with him that she did.

A pause of silence passed. “I don’t think he died,” Malin said, barley a whisper of confusion. “I searched endlessly for his body. The things I saw from that battle that they say claimed his life… I was willing to look at any shredded body I could to find him. He was the brother of the king, yet no one kept track of him? And Agalhor—” Malin huffed a resentful sound. “It spoke volumes when he called off the search and declared his death without finding his body after only two weeks.”

“You think he’s still out there?”

“No. I mean, maybe. Never mind,” Malin grumbled. “It makes no difference to anything anyway. I doubt even after all I’ve done it would have been enough for him.”

“Did you always want to be king?”

Malin didn’t answer right away. She was beginning to think he never would.

“Want is a word of fantasy.”

Zaiana slipped into the room, immediately targeting him, and the prince straightened from the composure he’d let slip in Tynan’s presence. For a second, there was a broken child slumped in that seat, elbow propped on the red velvet side, with fingers digging into his temples like it would stop the battering inside his head. Until the ice froze in his eyes and his features cut to steel, ready for war against her.

Her mouth quirked, only to gain the tightening of his jaw. He knew there was nothing he could do that would make her afraid of him. Malin Ashfyre would never win her fealty, even if Dakodas herself demanded it of him.

“What do you want?” he bit out.

Zaiana’s fingers traced over the long mahogany table, deliberately lingering the suspense of her presence. She noticed the few empty vials in front of him. The prince had been consuming Phoenix Blood at an alarming volume. The whites of his eyes were turning red at the edges, and he appeared as if sleep had evaded him for weeks with the dark circles under them.

“Don’t tell me you forget your debts, little prince,” she said.

When Zaiana was held captive the prince had visited her, recruited her, just like the traitor Izaiah. Her task was simple: to tear down the inner-city wall. Her price was knowledge he’d taunted her with, and she’d come to collect.

“Of all the things you could have asked for, you chose something so pathetic,” he shot back.

His words had no effect on her. She already punished herself with worse for the information she sought. Picking up a wooden carving, she inspected the small figure holding a spear.

“Want to tell me what’s going on?” Tynan interjected carefully.

Her gaze flicked up to him. She thought to cast him away, but it made no difference to her what Tynan knew. He wouldn’t talk.

Zaiana threw her hand sideward. The figure sipped from her grip to pierce the wall with a loud thump of impatience.

Malin swallowed at the display. She continued around the table until she was right before him. With a deep breath, she held it, bracing her hands on the arms of his chair to lean in close.

“First, I want to know how you found out about it,” she said, her tone a beautiful warning.

“One of the messenger dark fae,” he said, trying not to be intimidated by her. “It seems the master’s cruelty crafted betrayers.”

“You met with dark fae in this city?”

Malin nodded. “Ones without wings. Not just glamoured—they were sawn off.”

Zaiana pushed away from him, the disgust coiling in her stomach. She knew of the barbaric punishment. Had been forced to watch it be inflicted many times, and the screams of those dark fae were imprinted in her memory forever. It was what kept her wings glamoured often. She couldn’t imagine a life without them. She would beg for death before that happened.

“What did they say?” Zaiana pressed.

She took up a lean against the far wall. Malin was testing her patience with a mere look of assessment that had her straining not to claw his eyes from his skull.

“That their greatest feat of control was in making you all believe you were unfeeling. That your still heart was the most cunning curse they could have placed on you for their masterful ruse.”

“A curse?” Tynan echoed.

His brow furrowed, but Zaiana couldn’t take his words as truth yet. Even if she did, there was no confirming the dark fae who’d spilled it to the prince wasn’t doing so out of desperate revenge against the masters.

“How many times have you blamed your wicked actions on your still heart? It makes it easier, doesn’t it? I heard what you did, you know…killing a past lover of yours. Then nearly allowing that poison that leaks out of you to kill another—a certain esteemed Rhyenelle commander?—”

Zaiana barely registered her movements in the flash of goaded fury, but she relished in the choking of Malin Ashfyre. Her hand squeezed tighter around his throat when he clawed at it.

“So much bottled emotion,” the prince wheezed. “I don’t think there’s any battle you could fear more than your own self.”

She pushed him, her two sharp claws cutting flesh, and his chair near toppled back with the force.

Malin struggled for breath, but he otherwise gave no reaction to her attack. As though he didn’t care anymore.

The prince went on. “Perhaps that’s what they’re hoping for. The moment you detonate, it will be for them. In battle against all of those you care about but deny vehemently you don’t.”

Danger was stirring inside her. For a moment Zaiana was glad for her missing lightning since she wasn’t confident it would still be contained with everything he spoke of. She wanted to kill him. It kept circling her mind, and she didn’t know why she allowed Malin to keep breathing.

“Did this traitor say anything else?” Her voice was calm and razor-sharp.

“Only that you were the key. As vague as that. Somehow I think they’ve tied it to you. Perhaps it’s why they can’t kill you when I’m sure they want to. Those called the masters who raised you. I’ve met them too—a cold and lifeless bunch, and it’s almost amusing how much they despise you.”

“People hate what they cannot control,” Tynan grumbled.

Malin shrugged in agreement, leaning back against his chair and hissing with the hand he placed over his bleeding neck.

“I may not like you, but those bastards need the challenge to their egos.”

Zaiana could barely hear anymore while she focused on her own dissection of the claim. A curse. It didn’t seem unfathomable—but why?

“Not many books exist about the dark fae anymore. Any that do only portray history. Maybe your kind aren’t born monsters. Maybe you were actually a peaceful people and this was the only way to begin to break that.”

She didn’t know why dread began to pool in her stomach. Perhaps she didn’t want it to be true. If it was something so simple, how could she accept that? If her still heart was nothing more than a spell …what would happen to every vile thing she’d stacked the blame on for this vacancy in her chest?

She’d been tormented by it ever since the King of Rhyenelle had infiltrated her sleeping mind and shown it to her.

A heartbeat. Hers.

No. She wanted any other truth but this. For if she came to welcome a pulse in her cold chest…she may very well rip it out for the evil that lurked within it.

Zaiana’s sight pinned on the open door, needing an outlet she didn’t want to display here. She knew just who she could take it out on.

“I haven’t granted you leave,” Malin objected.

He wasn’t saying this to her, but the fact he thought he held any real authority over Tynan flared in her all the same. Zaiana met eyes with her second, who had begun to follow her. She despised what she had to do.

“You should stay,” she said to him.

Tynan’s expression widened in ire, but hers warned against protesting. His jaw worked, but he gave a tight nod. She would come up with some excuse for him later. Right now, she couldn’t care about anything but the fury shaking her bones.

“You made sure he wouldn’t come after you?” Izaiah drawled.

Zaiana found him leaning with arms crossed against a small door in the library where he’d instructed her to meet him. He was going to take her to the ruin. There was no attempting his suicidal mission to wield it without the real thing. Anytime they met elsewhere in her attempts to school him on what it would take, all they achieved was useless bickering.

“Why would it matter if Tynan were here anyway?” she bit out.

Izaiah lifted a brow at her tone, but he said nothing as he unlocked the door. When he waved a dark, bloodied cloth at the entrance, Zaiana spared a second to marvel at the ward, enjoying the thrill that was a temporary balm to her constant irritation.

“I don’t need anyone else telling me the obvious odds of what I’m doing,” he said casually.

Zaiana watched his back as he entered. A sinking anchor fell within her at Izaiah’s comment. Realization that he’d become a vulnerability to Tynan, and there was nothing she could do. Killing Izaiah would only turn Tynan resentful against her even if he tried to hide it. Her fists balled with bitterness toward the younger Galentithe brother for the new claim he had—unwitting or not—over her second.

Izaiah reached the desk, meeting her eye with a gleam as he reached beneath it. As he pulled something out, Zaiana braced against the groaning of wood and stone that disrupted their silence. Then movement began along the back wall. The back tapestry sank in, then it slowly lowered, disappearing into the ground to reveal a long, narrow, depthless corridor.

A secret passage.

She chilled at the sight of it. Her throat constricted, and she swallowed against the rising nerves.

“Not afraid of the dark, are you?” Izaiah quipped. “It would be rather ironic.”

“No,” she snapped.

Izaiah only smirked, and with a hand slipped into his pocket, he headed inside without hesitation.

Zaiana took a few deep breaths as though they might become limited before following him. She focused on the air coating her throat. The cool temperature that began to drop. Tracking the walls, it was only her cruel imagination that tightened the space and forced her hand to occasionally brush the rock to be sure.

They descended stairs that felt endless, until light broke at the bottom, and she was eager to each it. They emerged into a giant space she hadn’t expected. Catacombs. At the far end, a huge sculpture of a Firebird stood, wings splayed and triumphant. In front of it, a tall, dominant male figure.

“The first King of Rhyenelle,” Izaiah said as she gawked. “And that’s Atherius. We had the pleasure of meeting her on the Fire Mountains, if you recall.”

Zaiana couldn’t tear her eyes from the bird while her mind replayed the scene from the mountains. The gray stone torched with brilliant red fire. It was not the king she saw…but Faythe.

“You fear confinement,” Izaiah diverted.

The change of topic snapped her head to him. She found him watching her with an expression she couldn’t decipher, but it coated her skin with vulnerability .

“I’m not,” she said. He wasn’t convinced. “I’m merely cautious, being led down a secluded path by the enemy.”

Izaiah smiled, though not with any kindness, as if he enjoyed the hostility between them. Zaiana preferred her enemies quaking at the thought of her, not excited to torment her back. This was going to be a long and insufferable task.

It wasn’t often Zaiana was disturbed by the presence of death, but something about being in the resting place of someone so ancient and legendary pricked her skin with judgment. In front of the sculpture, there was a sunken tomb. Zaiana gravitated toward it to discover Matheus Ashfyre wasn’t the only person who rested here.

“Should we really be down here?” Zaiana muttered, glancing around as if she would catch a flicker of something that would give away there were spirits around, watching.

“Probably not,” Izaiah said, so chipper it contrasted with her skittish mood. “But no one else can get past the door we came through, and they won’t suspect we can. You’d do best to keep that to yourself.”

Zaiana didn’t take well to warnings, especially when delivered in a threat. Izaiah was impressing his demand that even Tynan and Amaya stay unaware of what they were doing down here.

“So if I kill you here, no one will find you,” Zaiana answered.

“Likewise.”

Maybe she did enjoy the challenge Izaiah offered. It gave her something of a thrill to think she might be the one to end him first, but not before she got what she wanted.

“Where’s the ruin?”

Izaiah wandered over to a sunken grave, crouching beside it.

“You’re not going to?—”

He grabbed a long iron rod, jamming it into the crevice before angling it to pop the stone free. Gods above, this was grim even for her. As he pried it loose and begin to slip the long, body-length stone aside to reveal the remains within, Zaiana noticed there was no given name, only the house name of Ashfyre and two dates, the occupant’s end dating to around the start of the war five hundred years ago.

Zaiana peeked into the depths.

It was empty.

“My guess is it’s supposed to be Malin’s father,” Izaiah said, hopping into the space without a care. “It’s the newest-looking space here.”

“No name?” Zaiana spoke the obvious.

“No body either. Got to wonder why they bothered reserving a space for him.”

As he slid a small box over the ledge, Zaiana eyed the intricate carvings with a rush through her blood. Izaiah hauled himself out of the grave.

“I figured no one else would be twisted enough to go grave-robbing if they did manage to find out we came here.”

“Not above your limits though.”

Izaiah shrugged. “I’ve been trying to figure out what feels off about Malin. His father…there’s very little about him. It’s almost like he’s been erased.”

“Why would someone want the king’s brother forgotten?”

“That’s the wicked question, isn’t it?”

She couldn’t understand how he wouldn’t know about such an important person in the royal lineage.

“I’ve felt the power that comes off this thing. I’ve heard it responds the most to chaos. Are you composed enough for this, little darkling?”

She cut him with a look. “You’re going to die by this,” she warned.

“Perhaps.”

Izaiah pulled a small knife from his side, not hesitating to slice his palm. Zaiana fixed her attention on the box he set on the ground and spilled his blood onto, anticipation tightening in her gut. It had been a while she’d tasted the magnetic, otherworldly power, and all she hoped for was that once it found her, it would drag forth her damned stubborn lightning.

Every shift of the wood and glow of the markings inched her closer, hungry for the power that would call to her the moment the ruin was free…

The glow diminished, and she listened to Izaiah’s heart quicken a fraction. His fist clenched, and Zaiana…she felt nothing. Dread consumed her. She approached the box only to drop down and knock the lid away to confirm it was inside. Only then did she feel the hum. Only a taunt, as if it knew her ability hid from her and it would offer no help to coax it forth.

“If you think of crossing me with its power, you should know I have an assassin tracking Tynan and Amaya who will act if he doesn’t see me by sundown.”

The rage from her stifled magick and the mockery the ruin made of it boiled over at Izaiah’s threat. She lunged for him, a hand wrapping around his throat, and they crashed into the nearest wall.

“This is the last time you lay a threat before I make sure you can’t speak another,” she seethed in his face.

Izaiah only matched her loathing stare.

“No lightning?” he taunted.

Her claws cut into his skin, earning a hiss. “I don’t need anything but my bare hands to kill you.”

“I don’t doubt it,” he said. “Though how are you going to teach me to wield the ruin when you no longer can?”

Zaiana’s nostrils flared, and she pushed off him to pace away. How in the Nether was she going to keep up her pretense that she still possessed her lightning when it seemed so damned obvious it was missing?

“For what it’s worth, I only happened to overhear you and Maverick.”

Her shoulder blades locked at this. The memory of being in that room with Maverick combed over her mind, everything that was said…

“The Prince of Dalrune—who would have ever guessed?” Izaiah said.

Zaiana should kill him right here. Izaiah was perhaps the most cunning of them all. He was observant, patient, and with his ability, he was the perfect spy. Looking him over, how could she deny the brilliance of his scheming? Stay cheerful, stay unbothered, and he’d become the most unsuspecting player.

“What do you plan to do with that information?”

“Nothing…yet.”

She wanted to kill him. For the threat he posed not only to her companions…but now to Maverick.

“It means nothing.”

Izaiah chuckled. “Perhaps not. When his days are numbered anyway.”

Zaiana breathed steadily. She couldn’t give Izaiah the impression she cared. Not about Maverick.

“Have you ever wondered why they kept who he was a secret? I hear it’s rare for the Transitioned to keep their abilities. Royal blood, perhaps? Marvellas wanted to Transition Nik and Tauria this past summer.”

“There’s a lot to be figured out about this war on both sides. And I’d rather we started with what in the Nether you hope to achieve here,” she bit out.

“I’m waiting for some instruction. Teach,” he quipped.

Zaiana groaned internally. This was going to be insufferable. She was accustomed to schooling darklings in combat and keeping them in line—she supposed taking the same approach with Izaiah wouldn’t be too different. Someone who was going to test her patience to murderous capacities.

She looked at the ruin with resentment, and since she wasn’t volatile right now, she stormed to it without care, sticking her hand in to retrieve the broken, arrow-shaped slate. When she did, Zaiana gasped at the current that surged through her, almost believing it shifted movement in her chest. It was nowhere near the velocity of power she should feel from it, but hope grew a dangerous bud in the pit of her stomach that it was something.