Page 2 of A Flame of the Phoenix (An Heir Comes to Rise #6)

CHAPTER ONE

Reylan

T here were infinite ways to break a person. Flesh was fragile, easily torn, and fear was a relentless accomplice, twisting the mind until it fractured.

But for Reylan, there was only one way to truly destroy him—one weakness that could shatter his soul completely.

And she was safe.

For now.

Every shift moved the metal tearing the flesh of his wrists. So he kept still. Arms splayed and bare-chested, kneeling in dried pools of his own blood. He tunneled far away into his mind. He didn’t care how much time had passed. He wasn’t wishing for it to be over.

To keep Faythe from Marvellas, Reylan would kneel there and bleed until the final darkness claimed him.

There were times a part of him hoped for death, if only to keep his mate from the path that would lead her to him. He prayed to every damn God that was still out there she wouldn’t find him. And that Marvellas wouldn’t find her.

A cobalt fire blazed at his back, but the warmth hardly reached him from the far end of the quaint home. The chill still seeped into his bones, and he figured the fire was only a measure to dull the sharp cold from killing him.

They began his test of endurance with lashes. The scores across his skin were familiar, if distant, from a past that made him able to tolerate them now. They left hours in between lashings so he’d heal enough for them to start again and not have him bleed out too much.

Marvellas came frequently, attempting to slip into his mind each time he got close to the limit of his pain tolerance. Reylan would forget every slice of flesh, every ounce of blood spilled, to delve into his mind and block her violation with everything he was.

He couldn’t lose Faythe—the memories of her that Marvellas tried to pluck from him one by one. He didn’t want to live should she succeed in erasing Faythe entirely.

She won sometimes.

Faythe’s smile…it was gone.

Though not entirely.

He couldn’t remember the image, as Marvellas had gone straight for the things he treasured most about her. She’d been unrelenting in her attempts to erase Faythe’s smile this past week. Reylan bowed his head in defeat at the triumph she’d gained.

He remembered how it felt. That when Faythe smiled, it awakened something within him and cast a light through the shadows of his mind. He knew what a smile looked like on another person. Marvellas’s mouth curled often, but her smile was one of cruelty and amusement.

Faythe…her smile was a token of liberation. A streak of light breaking through angry clouds. It was his beacon home.

Yet when he tried to picture it, all he found was her mouth firm. Often troubled and frightened, and though she masked it well, it spoke to him in her eyes.

He’d been suffering worse than any physical pain since her smile was taken.

The hut door creaked open, and he squinted at the brightness flooding the dark. Outside the wind howled and flurried the air with snow. They had to have taken him somewhere high—a mountaintop, perhaps—for the snow to be so thick and the air so bitterly icy.

He knew her by the scent that triggered the first inkling of any feeling in days—or weeks—of deserted misery.

Rage.

“Not so mighty, White Lion of the South,” Marvellas drawled, taking steps so slow and predatory toward him.

She crouched when he didn’t lift his head. To lock eyes with her golden irises made him conflicted with heartache and fury. Though they couldn’t contend with Faythe’s, the color never failed to slice him with yearning.

Marvellas gripped his chin. With the Magestone shackles draining his strength daily, he had to preserve what he could, so he focused on his breathing and allowed the repulsive touch.

It left him with no choice but to meet her gaze. He’d seen the ethereal brightness before, when Faythe harnessed her powers and became a breathtaking spectacle. The same glow was ever-present in the Spirit’s eyes, indicating she was a force to be reckoned with even in her perfect calm form.

“I wondered for a long time if I should have come for you sooner. Killed you back then. But I believe in the Order, Reylan, and now I see it has brought you right to where I need you.”

“You’re going to fail, Marvellas,” he said, his tone dripping with venom.

Her head canted while two fae unlatched his chains from the wall.

“You’re not going to let that happen,” she sang.

Reylan remained in his shackles but gritted his teeth against the burning sting when his arms fell, shooting fire up his stiff muscles. The cold had numbed him enough, and with her so close…

His hands had barely risen a fraction to lunge for her when she invaded his mind and halted his movements—an impulsive error as the damn Magestone stripped his resistance, leaving him to her mercy. He channeled the heat of his vengeance through his eyes.

“It’s too perfect, us being together now. I believe there is a God on my side to have granted this alliance. Your reluctance only makes this painful for you.”

He remained still when the Spirit unfolded something in her lap before draping the material around him. Threads caught in the scabbing wounds of his back, and his teeth clenched at the itch. She clasped the cloak, and despite his lacerations protesting at the friction, it gave him relief from the frozen chill circulating the cabin she was keeping him in.

Her hand lingered, and she fixed her sight on his chest. He didn’t move at her touch, which felt so vile and wrong, fingers tracing his right collarbone, down over his pectoral muscle.

“She remained with you this whole time, yet you never remembered,” Marvellas said distantly, but he didn’t understand. “She was powerful then but succeeded in erasing your memory, while I can’t, only because your mind and soul were entwined with hers. That trust you yielded, the heart you surrendered, she used it against you. Don’t you see? Love will always be betrayal.”

Marvellas straightened, and Reylan tried to calculate her words—what she meant. More games, trying to make him surrender his mental barriers enough that she could slip inside and steal more of Faythe. He guarded her fiercely in his thoughts.

“Come. We have much to do.”

Though he was weak, he shrugged off the guards who closed in to haul him up. Reylan forced his stiff legs to rise from the position he’d been kneeling in for so long. It was like standing with broken bones. He didn’t give any of them the satisfaction of seeing his agony as if glass shards sliced through his muscles with every movement.

Outside, his body tensed against the brutal beating of the weather that seemed to be in alliance with his enemy. Ice chips carried on the sharp wind to cut his flesh and lasso his body, dragging him back as if the thick snow weren’t enough to slow his miserable trek.

Against possibility, Marvellas was nearly untouched by the winter storm. She glided ahead, a flame against the ice.

His punishment from the weather eased when they entered a cave. He followed, because there was no merit in fighting while weak and outnumbered.

Instead he mapped everything. The way Marvellas moved; the way she talked. Every habit and quirk. He searched for weaknesses should he get his moment to end her. He observed the cavernous walls: warped and winding but with no alternative direction. Getting out would be a one-way sprint. That was the easy part. Stealing the right moment would be the challenge.

The cave opened to a wide, cylindrical space, and they wound their way down a spiral staircase attached to the wall, with no railing to protect them from the fatal drop.

Down and down.

On the ground level, through the shadows, Reylan understood where she’d taken him.

The familiarity of the door made dread clench in his gut. He’d seen it first in High Farrow, adorning Aurialis’s mark. Then on the Niltain Isles, in the cave, adorning Dakodas’s mark.

Now…

“A bond is the key to touch the sky.” Marvellas recited the poem just as he found it in his memory.

Faythe had shown it to him: the locations of the Spirit Temples.

He knew she’d been containing him on some high mountain range, and now it seemed foolish he hadn’t thought of this sooner. They were in the Sky Caves of Lakelaria.

Reylan’s spine straightened with foreboding.

Muffled cries carried down a passage before two forms were dragged in. A fae male and a fae female.

“It used to only require a true bonded pair to visit my temple. They had to be willing to draw blood from one another,” Marvellas said, so detached and distant she wasn’t really speaking to Reylan.

The couple were brought to the door before being roughly pushed to their knees. His body stiffened against the instinct to intervene.

“But I needed to be sure no one would make it through those doors, so I added my own protection. Blood is not enough.”

With a dip of her head, the guards reached for a dagger. Reylan got one step before the invasion in his mind stole his will to move. His teeth clenched, fighting the ache that amplified to a drum in his head, trying to defy Marvellas’s control.

“It now requires the life of one mate from a true pair, and you get to choose, Reylan Arrowood.”

The Spirit came around to stand in front him, leaning in close. Her flaming red hair spilled over her shoulder with the elegant tip of her head up to him. Her red-painted lips curled with cruel amusement.

“Which one shall we allow to live?” she coaxed.

Marvellas slipped a hand around his arm, leaning her head against him to watch the tragic souls on their knees as though she owned him. Reylan had never experienced a touch so revolting his blood boiled beneath his skin. He wanted to tear her arms from her body to be rid of it.

“I’m very patient, Rey, but when the solution is only one small decision away, I can become very impatient.”

There was nothing small about what she was asking of him.

“You want blood? You’ll choose it yourself,” he snarled.

Marvellas pushed off him with a bored groan. “I expected your refusal, of course,” she crooned. “It only makes it more satisfying to craft you into my willing soldier so very soon.”

She lingered a twinkling gaze of admiration over him before turning to the guards. They gave a nod of obedience, both dropping a dagger. Metal clanged against stone, declaring a challenge that taunted death.

The two fae on their knees glanced with terror between each other and the blades dropped in front of them. Reylan’s skin began to crawl.

“Love is only a delusion,” Marvellas said, standing beside him and waiting. “You’ll see.”

The male lingered a longer look at the dagger closest to him, contemplating. The female could hardly contain her sobs. He reached for his.

“Stop,” Reylan snapped, realizing what was about to happen. “You prove nothing by having them kill each other.”

Marvellas turned her head to him curiously. “I am giving them a choice,” she said.

The female reached for her blade with a choked cry, and they both stood with trembling balance. They clutched their weapons, ghostly stares targeting each other.

“They can take the blade to their own heart or each other’s.”

The choice seemed easy. As barbaric as this portrayal was, Reylan waited for the point of steel to turn from each other toward themselves.

“In their minds, I have shown each of them a life of wealth, of finding love again, if they choose to save themselves. Being mates is merely a recognition of equal power and potential.”

Reylan’s head shook vacantly. It didn’t matter. There wasn’t a single thing in this realm, or in any, he could ever want more than Faythe. Every material thing, every living being—it all became insignificant and hollow in a world where she didn’t exist.

Yet to his incomprehensible horror, the pair didn’t redirect their blades from pointing at each other.

She had to be tricking them with something else.

“I may be wicked in my methods.” She answered his desperate, disbelieving thoughts. “But I am no cheat. Why should they sacrifice themselves when their dream life is one act away?”

Reylan wanted to avert his gaze from the scene he couldn’t fathom. He pictured Faythe, his Phoenix, and perhaps Marvellas was right. Love could kill, for there was nothing he wouldn’t give for her. Even himself.

They moved in unison, lunging for each other, but the female seemed to waver in her choice right before they met. It became her end when the male’s blade plunged into her chest. His arm circled her as they fell to their knees, and Reylan witnessed their wide stares turn to regret in an instant.

“The action can be hard to bear in the moment, but time will bury the guilt,” Marvellas said.

“What have I done?” the male whispered.

Reylan tried to find pity for him through the outrage at what he’d chosen over his own mate. He wanted to believe Marvellas was a liar and had orchestrated this play.

“You proved nothing,” Reylan said coldly.

Marvellas sliced him a bored look before her hand rose and a sickening crack cut off the male’s sobs.

He stared at the two tragic fae, watching their love spill in a crimson pool around them. It might have been selfish only to think of Faythe as the devastating scene changed from two strangers to him and Faythe. It slammed into him, the gravity of what Marvellas was capable of. If she broke his mind, she could force him to do something unforgivable toward Faythe.

“You don’t have the Riscillius,” Reylan said vacantly.

Marvellas liked proximity. Perhaps she felt a person’s emotions more intensely with physical touch and she loved to manipulate them.

“Do you want to know a secret, Rey? One I have not even exposed to my sister,” Marvellas said with a note of pride. “It will remain just between us. I had the Riscillius once, and when I came here, I made sure I would never need something so easily stolen to get to the only weapon in this realm that can kill me. You see, Faythe has been told I can be sent back to the Realm of the Gods and face my penance there, and that can be done. So all I have needed is to find someone with enough strength to break a ruin.”

The Spirit glided over to the fallen bodies, bending to swipe her finger through a pool of blood before reaching the temple door. “It took three oracles to break the binding of the Riscillius and forge my own. I haven’t told my sister, because when it becomes a matter of life or death, one might find betrayal lies in the thickest blood. I want Aurialis’s ruin because it is a powerful tool on its own, but more importantly, I have been searching endlessly for you , Reylan. I commend you for keeping the extent of your abilities from me all that time ago, making me believe you were like any ordinary Mindseer. It took seeing you in action with Faythe to realize how wrong I was.”

After her blood tracing, the door groaned inward with a familiar, daunting crawl. Marvellas looked to Reylan expectantly, and the uncanny resemblance to the first time he’d followed Faythe to the Light Temple in High Farrow made his heart race.

Gods , he missed her with such agony there were days he thought it could end him.

The chain between his wrists clanked as he braced, pushing the stone door with more exertion than it should take in his feeble state.

“I am a Goddess. A true immortal. I cannot be killed by mortal weapons or means. There is only one way to kill a God.” Marvellas passed him inside, heading straight for the podium. “With something from which they are made. I couldn’t risk Dakodas finding out that when she could attempt to use you or Faythe to break her ruin first. When you achieve this for me, there will be no portal to open to the Realm of the Gods, and no weapon that can kill me. It is a peace I have been waiting a millennium for, and only then will I be able to right this world one mighty continent at a time, starting with Ungardia.”

They knew Marvellas wanted to conquer their realm, but it was horrifying to discover her ambition stemmed beyond a single continent.

“Come,” she commanded. With the word, she forced his movements.

Reylan shook with a growing, palpable resentment. When he was standing in front of the arrow-shaped slate slotted into the podium, his hands reached for it.

A hum raked over his skin, pricking him with heat, and whispers of power and destruction twisted like wind around him. The first pulses of strength he’d felt in weeks were too tempting to answer, but there was a counter voice in his mind that reminded him how deadly this power was.

He craved it. How could he not?

His fingers hooked under the metal, and he lifted it from its place. His chest flooded with warmth in response to the magick trapped within the slate, calling to merge with the well that resided in the core of his being.

“Addicting, isn’t it?” Marvellas said, admiring it with him. “The essence of power. There isn’t a being in any realm that would resist the pull. Yet power can corrupt as fast as it can lift. It invites the impossible into the minds of men too weak to balance such a privilege.”

His breathing came clearer. Something primordial and goading whispered within the gray rock. He became spellbound to it, and the symbol of Marvellas started to glow. All he had to do was open himself?—

“This is necessary for now.”

Reylan had become so entranced by the magick coursing through him he didn’t hear the approach from behind. He hissed through gritted teeth when a thick collar of Magestone slammed shut around his neck, and another two around his ankles. Whatever beckoning he’d begun to feel was now silenced by the additional suppressing material.

“For my own protection, as I hope you can understand.” She glided toward him, pausing just shy of pressing her chest to his, and tilted her head elegantly to observe him. “I will break you, Reylan. And when you think I can no longer hurt you, remember that the broken can be shattered.”