Page 22 of A Flame of the Phoenix (An Heir Comes to Rise #6)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Faythe

S hortly after everyone had gone their separate ways, Faythe suffered their absence in the core of her stomach, both fearing for and rooting for them all to be safe and achieve their tasks.

When they’d awoken before parting, one person was unaccounted for. They’d waited until midday in case he’d gone hunting or to bathe, but Tarly Wolverlon never returned. Faythe’s heart ached for Nerida, who’d hardly spoken a word to anyone and tried to shield her upset over his disappearance.

They’d offered Nerida to stay with them instead, but the healer was adamant to go to Lakelaria in search of a cure for Tarly even though he’d abandoned her and the prospect. So Faythe had called Atherius, and the Firebird had taken her friend across the sea.

Faythe spied with Kyleer, inconspicuous on a rooftop with a view overlooking the enemy camp in Fenher. They hadn’t sighted the general again, and the Eye of the Phoenix hadn’t given a single flare in the Ember Sword Faythe chose to carry. Anxiety crawled through her bones every passing day. What if he never returned here and she’d missed her one and only chance?

“You’d better not be cheating with that intense stare you have,” Kyleer said, snapping Faythe from her thoughts.

Kyleer had stolen a deck of cards from an inn and insisted they play to relieve the boredom while they scouted. Faythe eyed her fan then the rows of cards between them. He was beating her to an embarrassing degree. Usually, she was excellent at this game, but as she’d warned him, her attention was hardly focused.

She couldn’t stop glancing at the ruby pommel on her hip, mistaking every slight glare of sunlight against it for a signal the other eye was close. Then she would scan over the tents and bodies they could see from here one by one, as if she might find the general anyway.

Faythe placed down a card that gained her nothing.

Kyleer gloated as he placed his next, which won him the game easily.

“I like to win, but this is just sad,” he said, gathering the cards.

She hated to lose, even when she knew she deserved it.

Faythe huffed, throwing down her cards and rubbing her face. She’d run out of the sleeping tonic Nerida had provided her with, and the nights were once again restless.

“Shit,” Kyleer muttered, dropping the cards so they flurried back to the rooftop.

Faythe’s heart leapt, sights immediately targeting the ruby stone that finally glowed. Her hand smothered the flare, but they both scanned the field wildly.

She said, “We should go down. It’ll shine in the right direction, and we can follow.”

Kyleer nodded, and when they were quickly darting through the streets, Faythe could hardly contain her adrenaline. Her hands trembled. She unbelted the Ember Sword and passed it to Kyleer who caught it with ease.

“This way,” Kyleer said when it had stopped glowing in the direction they were headed.

It continued to change more times than Faythe had the patience for. She was growing dizzy with the erratically changing direction, until she stopped.

“He’s toying with us,” she said. A cold lick of realization trailed down her spine.

He’d found them first.

Kyleer braced to unsheathe the Ember Sword, and Faythe’s hand hovered over Lumarias.

“Looking for this?”

It was not the general who spoke.

They both whirled, and Faythe was overcome by a mirage of emotions to see the raven-haired dark fae beauty.

“Zaiana.” Kyleer said her name, armed and disbelieving.

She smiled, a hint of a demon within. The ruby amulet shone brightly, dangling off her two metal-clad fingers as she held it up.

“Where’s the general?” Faythe asked, pushing aside her fear of Zaiana that had never subsided.

“Will you ever learn to stop walking into the obvious traps set to capture you?”

“Every time she’s tried, I’ve escaped.”

Kyleer sneered, “Fitting for her to send her best killer and manipulator.”

“You flatter me, commander.”

“Yet I’m guessing they don’t know of your weakness in letting me live.”

The dark fae’s expression darkened on him, and her hand dropped. “A mistake on my part, I’ll admit. One I won’t make again.”

Faythe shivered at the promise in her monotone voice. She was about to brace against Zaiana when a new awareness crept across her nape.

She spun right as arms reached to grab her, but thrusting a hand to the chest in front of her was a mistake with the surge of power that emerged from that connection, clashing with the magick she summoned from her palm.

One second she was standing; the next she was flying. Then what stopped her projection was a solid, unforgiving force.

Faythe wheezed for breath, scrambling to collect herself while magick seized her entire body like currents of lightning. So much so the initial impact of the wall hadn’t hurt her, but now the power was subsiding, a throbbing ache spread across her head and her back, and warmth pooled at the base of her skull.

What in the Nether was that?

Now her consciousness was coming back, she picked apart the familiar dark essence.

She’d felt a touch of that power within the tent her target general had been in. Faythe forced her head up, needing to blink few times to gain focus, but there he was…the dark-haired general with deep blue eyes.

Faythe pushed through the pain threatening to shackle her down, peeling herself up just as he did. At least she wasn’t the only one to have suffered in that unexpected collision, but what had happened?

His chest…she’d only pushed a hand to his chest for that dark power to detonate.

“You don’t want to try that again,” he growled.

Faythe could hardly organize her thoughts and tame her wild heart. She didn’t have time to do either when he surged toward her, and Faythe pulled Lumarias free just in time to cross blades with him.

She’d known exactly how he’d do it. Exactly how he’d move. Staring into those blue irises, though filled with loathing, Faythe was certain, so sure in her soul…

“I found you,” she said through a breath, trembling with the strength it took to hold their locked blades.

His eyes flared, and her brow furrowed deeper before he pushed, and Faythe stumbled, immediately on the defensive. She stepped to dodge most of his swings, watching his every flicker of movement that had become memory to her. There were dozens of patterns he could take, but there was always a style she would never mistake.

“Reylan, stop!” she yelled—not a plea but a command.

He did, perhaps only to decide whether to maintain the facade he wore.

“Why is she making you hide?” Faythe asked, softer now.

Marvellas had to have known Faythe would figure it out easily—she just had to be close enough. Then Faythe realized that was the Spirit’s plan, because once she found him, Faythe wouldn’t let him slip away again.

It tore her apart to stare into her anchor to this world in those sapphire irises that were placed on the face of a stranger. She wanted him to shift back, but he didn’t. The color was him, but the unfeeling, harsh stare he held her with was not Reylan at all.

“What did she do to you?” she tried again when he stood there like cold steel.

He stalked to her slowly, like a predator confidently approaching its prey. “You made this as easy as she said you would,” he said, but these words weren’t his either.

Marvellas had succeeded in breaking his mind, and Faythe crumbled at the mere thought of what it took.

She paid the error for her pining stupor when she allowed him to get close enough to wrap his powerful hand around her throat.

There it was again. Ripples of dark, sinister energy emanating from him. In his sapphire eyes, she thought shadows flickered through them occasionally. He wasn’t completely restricting her airway, and Faythe’s attention was drawn to his chest. Right where she’d touched him before.

It was a reckless move to press her palm to it again, this time without summoning her own magick in defense, but the moment she felt something solid there Faythe gasped, and Reylan’s grip turned deadly around her neck.

With little time to think, Faythe wrapped one of her hands around his, summoning magick to burn him, and he let her go with a hiss. At the same time, she’d retrieved a small dagger from her side, slashing at his chest deeply enough to only cut his leather armor.

When a glow broke through the black material, Faythe stumbled back until she hit the wall.

“How did she…?” Faythe couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Feeling.

She wanted to deny what was damagingly obvious.

Reylan had a ruin embedded in his chest.

Faythe didn’t know the full gravity of what it meant, but one thing was certain: it was powerful enough to have split his mind for Marvellas’s influence, and it had granted him unparalleled power.

At the same time, Faythe could still feel its pull, wanting to merge with her and amplify her power too if she dared to reach back.

She was too untrained to give in to the tempting lethal advantage. It would risk killing her or Reylan if she didn’t resist its dark chants.

“Let me help you,” Faythe said desperately.

Reylan’s smile was scarily sinister. “Help me? I have more power than you right now. The more you resist me, the more it will hurt, but it makes no difference to me.”

Faythe hadn’t felt him take any of her power, but her eyes flew wide when he cast his palm toward her and a gold flare surged at her. She clashed her own lazy attack against it, but that was the wrong response since it vibrated through her as if she were a struck gong.

Her head slammed against stone again, and more warmth leaked down her scalp and her nape.

“Giving up yet?” he taunted.

Never. She would never give up on him.

Reylan gripped fistfuls of her jacket and her cloak, hauling her up to stand on weak knees.

“You can’t contend with me, Faythe. I can take everything you have.”

Staring into his deep blue irises that were her home and her orbit tore her apart.

“You’re still in there,” she whispered. “You have to be.”

Reylan let her go, only to grip her jaw, and she whimpered at the vise grip.

It’s not him. It’s not him.

She’d wanted him to shapeshift back, but now she was glad for the disguise that soothed her heart. This is not Reylan.

Yet every time he searched her eyes, a glimmer of hope sparked that he would push through the poisonous influence of the ruin and Marvellas.

“Your lack of self-preservation is astounding.”

He pushed her head against the wall again, and her vision blackened around the edges with the sharp pain that ricocheted through her skull.

“In every realm and in every time,” she breathed. A promise he’d once made to her.

His grip on her jaw slackened, and Faythe would have crumpled to the ground were it not for his arm that snaked around her. Reylan’s cold stare never changed, but his head canted thoughtfully. Curiously. As if she were a puzzle he was trying to figure out.

Faythe hissed when his fingers slipped through her hair and touched the gash at the back of her head. His brow flinched, and he pulled his hand back, examining her blood coating his fingers. His nostrils flared, and his breathing deepened.

Her mate, her Reylan, would never harm her. She thought, just for a second, that realizing the injuries he’d caused her would snap him back.

It didn’t.

His tongue touched a sharp fang in his mouth, and his chest heaved. He’d never drunk from her before, but the wildness in his look told her he didn’t have the restraint or the consideration not to right now.

“If injury won’t make you come easily, this will,” he said.

“Reylan, wait?—”

She got no other words out before his head angled to her throat and his teeth pierced her flesh. The initial burst of pain seized her body tightly against him. The shock made her frozen prey in his arms.

Faythe had imagined this moment many times. She’d long craved it. But not like this.

Though the pain subsided, there was no pleasure to follow, only numbness, as he took her blood against her will. She didn’t fight him. He drank and drank and wouldn’t stop until she fell unconscious.

There were worse ways to greet the inevitable darkness, she supposed. He groaned against her throat, pulling her to him tighter, and she let her mind pretend this was happening under other circumstances. Being held in Reylan’s arms this way was a cruel, deceptive safety, but she was so tired of yearning for him that she didn’t care.

She’d found him.

Faythe stared up at the midnight sky, so beautiful and full of stars. She’d always thought his irises captured them so she could bathe in the glittering beauty even in the daylight.

He took more and more and more of her blood, until she let herself sleep in his arms.