Page 25 of A Flame of the Phoenix (An Heir Comes to Rise #6)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Zaiana

K yleer, the fool that he was, hooked his bound wrists over her head right before the impact of the ruin’s power sent them—and the whole establishment—flying in pieces. His body easily encased hers, and she couldn’t be separated from him because of the chains locking them together. She wasn’t spared from the impact—his body was hardly a cushion as they hit whatever it was that stopped them from being projected further—but he did save her from worse pain.

When they lay against each other in a heap of wreckage, Zaiana couldn’t even lift herself immediately.

“You’re a damned idiot,” she seethed. Wiggling her body, she managed to duck under and out of his chains.

“Yeah, I think I am,” he groaned in pain.

Zaiana scrambled up, fully aware and searching through the debris and panicked civilians. She hadn’t expected Faythe to be so na?ve as to try wielding the ruin. What an insufferable, overpowered fool. It was incredulous the heir had refused to die until now.

She had to brace on her knees to catch her breath from the surge of adrenaline. Zaiana had never felt so useless. The power of the ruin had vibrated and taunted her core of magick, caressing her skin in dark strokes. Mocking her. She should have been able to silence it safely herself, yet her magick only battered the seal on the vault she could not open.

What was it all for?

Her suffering, her training, all the times she’d conquered death to defy the claim of a ruin and become its master. Now she was nothing.

It was all for nothing.

“Zai—”

She spun, dagger drawn in a flash of rage, and he was the closest thing to unleash it upon. Her steel screeched against metal, wedged between a link on his Magestone chains, which he raised to protect his face.

“What happened to your magick?” he asked—not with any teasing or mocking but concern .

“Nothing.”

“You’ve demonstrated how well you can use a ruin’s power, so you can drop the bullshit.”

She pushed him with a hand to his chest. “I just can’t reach it right now,” she said defensively.

He frowned, assessing her in a way that made her itch at the attention. At the thought, Zaiana surveyed the room for Faythe. Perhaps she would engage in combat with her instead to release her sour resentment that the heir wasn’t suffering any loses since their battle like she was.

At first glance over the wreckage and commotion, she couldn’t see her or Reylan. Kyleer’s chains rattled in her pursuit as she searched for them. The town was in a state of upset with what Faythe had done, the scent of human blood lingering with an icy note through the air, and Zaiana’s tongue traced her sharp fangs.

She stopped her search when a compulsion pulled her attention. Zaiana found a man on the ground, clutching his leg while the snow drank his blood. She swallowed dryly, unable to tear her sight from the waste. When human blood was spilled warm and fresh in front of her, it tested all the restraint she’d spent centuries mastering.

“You spent months in our cells and didn’t crave it,” Kyleer said carefully. His large form blocked her view of the man, and her lethal stare latched to him instead.

“He’s going to die anyway,” she snapped.

I don’t need to drink. I don’t need to drink.

Zaiana scrunched her eyes and swallowed again, but each time only reminded her how damned thirsty she was right now. She wanted to kill that man himself for tempting her this way.

“Drink from me,” Kyleer said.

What an outrageous suggestion.

At least, that was her immediate thought, until she found the pulsing vein in his neck by instinct. She’d never craved blood from a fae before. Never considered it.

“You don’t mean that,” she said a little breathily.

All she could smell was blood . She needed to get out of here.

“I do.”

Zaiana’s violence was growing under her skin.

“I’m fine. Let’s just get away from this,” she said, already marching away.

If he wasn’t hers to guard and escort right now, she would have taken to the skies. Instead she gripped Kyleer’s chain and dragged him along with her marching pace. Her mouth wouldn’t stop salivating. Her breathing came in harsh drags, but not even the icy air could numb the itching thirst in her throat.

Finally, the scent of blood drifted away, faint enough for her to start composing herself. Letting go of Kyleer, she cast her sights skyward and counted the stars to distract herself.

“Your control is admirable. That didn’t look easy to resist.”

She didn’t want to talk. Too bad that was Kyleer’s favorite pastime.

He said, “My offer still stands, by the way?—”

Zaiana was still volatile, and the reminder of blood pushed her violence through her hands on Kyleer’s chest. Caught unawares, Kyleer grunted when his back slammed into the closet building.

“Don’t tempt me again. If I sink my teeth into your throat, I won’t stop until there’s nothing left,” she snarled.

“Understood,” he said, but there was still a hint of deviance in his eyes.

As they kept walking, Zaiana admired the beauty of a kingdom bathed in glittering snow, but the temperature left little to be desired. She was accustomed to cold climates and had faced training and trials in the thickest of winters, but she always preferred the heat of bright summer days or the warmth of a fire outdoors where it became a shield, battling the bitter temperature and wrapping her in protective arms.

Childish thoughts. Her mind cast them away.

Icicles hung as if the buildings had wept and their tears had frozen before they could melt against the snow. For the main streets, two narrow stone paths were separated by a river big enough for small boats to pass through. Occasionally, Zaiana lost herself to the rippling water, feeling a certain pull to search deeper, as if creatures beyond her knowledge might lurk below.

“Can you swim?” Kyleer asked after their long walk of silence.

“Yes.”

She didn’t know when it had begun to happen, but she could feel certain emotions from him, and when she stole a glance, she confirmed his hardly suppressed smile.

“Did you know, your jaw tenses and you let one heartbeat pass before you tell a lie?”

“You can’t possibly have picked up on that.”

“I had enough time to think over everything from those months you were my captive.”

“I haven’t thought about you at all.”

There it was again—that smile of infuriating callout.

“I can swim.”

“But if I pushed you into that river, you might not make it to the side?”

She dared him in her cold stare.

“The river isn’t that wide.”

“Ah, so you can swim well enough, but you fear unknown waters with depths that could host?—”

“Stop that.”

“What?”

“Trying to read me as if I’m some damned book.”

“You’re not a book. They’re peaceful and quiet, with words of wonder and wisdom,” he said.

She didn’t want to know what that made her in contrast.

“You said you didn’t enjoy reading unless it was battle strategies,” she said.

“I’m touched you remember that.”

He was riling her up on purpose.

“I make it a habit to retain intel on all my enemies.”

“Even such trivial things?”

“Has it ever bothered you”—Zaiana decided to switch topic before she reached for his throat—“to always be second to Reylan Arrowood? To be known as such in title and to everyone around you.”

“No. Not at all,” he answered easily.

“So your ambition has a limit?”

“Just because I don’t seek to gain Reylan’s place or more doesn’t mean I don’t strive every day to better myself in my current role.”

She tried to understand.

“You don’t want to be a general? You’re content to never rise to anything more?”

“I wouldn’t say never, but it would mean leaving Reylan’s side, and I don’t want to do that. I fight side by side with both my brothers and serve my kingdom to the best of my ability—why would I want more than that?”

All Zaiana knew was the pursuit of greatness. To be better than everyone around her: faster, stronger, smarter. To rely on no one and care for nothing but her own rise and survival.

But there was a certain contentment in Kyleer’s experience that felt worlds apart from hers.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked thoughtfully.

She stared through the snow-darkened clouds with her thoughts, but her face firmed to steel when she looked at him. “That your ideals are pathetic.”

He took no offense. “Where is your next ambition, Zai? Who stands above you that you clearly want to overtake?”

“Everyone” was too arrogant and broad of an answer, but it was what swam in her mind.

“Anyone who stands in my way,” she settled on.

“Right now, who is most imminent? You’re a higher rank than your lover—that seemed clear enough.”

“Maverick isn’t that,” she defended too quickly.

“Then what is he?”

“Like you, a pretty distraction I wouldn’t hesitate to turn my dagger toward.”

“That’s what I can’t understand. Your tastes. I’m nothing like him.”

He was right but also wrong. There was one thing, a certain kind of darkness, that Maverick wore on his sleeve but Kyleer harbored deep within. The kind of darkness that touched hers. But otherwise, they couldn’t be more different. Where Maverick was cold, Kyleer was warm. Where Maverick was cruel, Kyleer was kind. Zaiana related to Maverick, and there was no denying the tragic bond between them from their wicked past, but she couldn’t shake being drawn toward someone who offered new perspectives on life.

She’d stopped walking, overwhelmed by her own thoughts, and she despised the commander for making her consider either of them in any regard.

“Are you all right?” he asked tentatively, having walked a few paces without her.

The snow began to fall, and she hated it, wanting to stop and attempt rest but in another establishment Faythe wouldn’t blast apart. Zaiana had also discovered as of late that she hated being at sea. She’d flown as much as she could, but the vessel was too slow compared to her flight speed, and she was tasked with keeping close watch on the irksome commander.

“We should find a new place to rest for the night,” she advised.

She couldn’t keep walking with him. It seemed to make him too talkative, and she needed him to stop with his words that felt like a trick to draw things out of her she didn’t want to expose.

“You do look tired,” he commented.

That only made her expression sour more, but his expressions were becoming weighted too. The long weeks at sea had been grueling, and this was their first day on land.

They approached the next inn they found—a slender building wedged down a narrow street, with little to offer inside.

“Are you hungry?” Kyleer asked.

Zaiana swore before admitting, “I don’t have any coin.” Then she regarded his chains. “And Reylan has the key to those.”

“I doubt you planned to release me from them.”

Zaiana didn’t know what compelled her to stop in the hall and reach for one of his wrists, holding the Magestone. She stared at the thick abrasions burning his skin from the material, and yet she was unharmed by it. This was what separated what they were. Fae and dark fae. He was of the weaker species—it was what she was always told and had observed, and yet it was hers that was driven to the brink of extinction. Her kind that was forced into hiding for centuries. Her people who cowered high in the mountains.

So if the wicked could be afraid, and the good could be ruthless, why was there such divide at all?

“Do you need a room?” an elderly voice croaked like nails across wood, jolting her to release Kyleer.

Her sight didn’t turn to the human but rather flicked up to find Kyleer’s moss-green eyes watching her with a frown of confusion and question.

“I’m going to kill her,” Zaiana informed him.

“You don’t have to do that,” he protested firmly.

“We have no coin, and she’s not just going to let us pass.”

“Just let me try before you result to murder,” he grumbled under his breath, stalking away from her, hiding his bonds under his cloak.

It didn’t take long before he was returning, grinning like an idiot.

“How did you manage it?”

“My irresistible charm, as you’re familiar with.”

She pushed him and followed his lead, resisting the urge to take a blade to his back to stop his gloating.

They didn’t head upstairs—they came to the top of a set that headed down, and she didn’t follow when he descended a few steps.

“She wasn’t going to give us a cozy room she could get coin for,” he explained when he noticed she’d stopped. “She took pity on my story of us being a couple running from our betrothed, having no time to gather previsions and coin in our desperate pursuit of true love together.”

Zaiana’s stare on him widened to disbelief at the outlandish lie, and he broke into deep laughter.

His voice grew more distant as he headed down. “It might be a little colder in the cellar, but it’ll be better than being exposed to Lakelaria’s lethal temperatures. She said there’s blankets.”

Kyleer was swallowed by the dark abyss that set everything in her on edge. Her breathing hardened as she took her first step down. She couldn’t show her weakness here. Yet her hand lashed tight to the railing as she forced her next step. Fear was a terrible, hideous beast.

She heard his chains before his head came back into the light. He looked up at her, about to ask, but he read her exterior instead, so easily it was like she’d become clear words on a blank page to him.

“You have a fear of the dark?”

“No,” she bit out.

He reconsidered with a glance behind himself. “Underground?”

The confirmation was in her glare. Instead of mocking her about it, his expression relaxed.

“I’m not fond of it either. I can’t Shadowport underground.”

“You can’t do that at all right now.”

“True. But I’ve always been uneasy underground.”

It was far more than a dislike for her, but she reinforced the vault of her mind that threatened to blast open every time she was forced to face this weakness they’d created in her.

Kyleer’s chains rattled as he held out his hand. She wouldn’t accept it.

Zaiana mentally chastised herself for being so pitiful, and with a deep breath, she forced herself down the remaining steps without him.

The cellar was still really cold but admittedly better than the icy breeze outside. A spark of light made her whirl around to find Kyleer with a lantern. There wasn’t much down here, just some supplies like alcohol kegs, blankets, pillows, and other materials.

Zaiana watched Kyleer stick his head over various shelves, collecting things and investigating despite his pain and restriction with the Magestone shackles. He acted as if they didn’t bother him at all, and for a moment she stilled, wondering if it were possible he wasn’t as affected by it as she believed. That he could be fooling her just as she had him when she was bound in Niltain steel shackles, a material that was incapacitating to her kind—but she’d mastered those effects long ago, and that was how she’d escaped her Rhyenelle cell when it was time.

No. The fae had long forgotten the existence of Magestone until recently. Kyleer was just very resilient to physical pain, and that she could relate to.

Kyleer threw blankets and anything cushioned he could find onto the ground before settling himself down on it, placing the lantern next to himself.

“You’re going to have to tolerate the closeness, I’m afraid. There aren’t enough supplies to make two makeshift beds far apart. Besides, it makes sense to share body warmth. Purely survival instinct, of course.”

Zaiana’s reluctance held her still. The last time she’d lain with him…

Her body grew warmer of its own accord at recalling the pleasure he’d given her. And Dark Spirits be damned, he was good with his hands. Too good.

“Don’t get any ideas,” she warned.

She lowered next to him and almost raised her unsheathed dagger to his throat when he slung a blanket over her shoulders unexpectedly. The extra barrier against the cold was enough for her to yield her defense a little and hug it around herself tighter.

Kyleer shuffled to a lying position, and Zaiana had the right mind to stay sitting. She couldn’t truly sleep, but the relaxation would be enough to replenish some of her energy.

“You can sleep,” he mumbled, already sounding like he was on the cusp of it.

She didn’t answer, only tipped her head back against the stone and closed her eyes for a moment of peace.

It didn’t last long before he said, “Why do you fear being underground?”

He was really Nether-bent on testing the limits of her tolerance with him.

“I was born with wings. Underground is the opposite of what I desire.”

“It’s more than just unfavorable or inconvenient to you. And you lived under mountains.”

Curse her for being unable to hide her childish terror on those damned steps.

“The masters would use it as a form of punishment,” she confessed, if only to sate his curiosity and shut him up.

She should have known it would only open the door for him to barge in with his questions. Kyleer shifted onto his side to face her.

“By locking you underground?”

“In far less space than this.”

It was like she could feel his growing tension. Dangerous and angry.

“A cage?”

“A stone cage,” she said. He wasn’t going to stop. “Barely big enough to turn around in, and no space to sit, only stand. Sometimes the insides would be made of a thin layer of Niltain steel, so you couldn’t even lean against them. No sound or light could penetrate. In that kind of isolation, a minute quickly feels like an hour. Then hours become days, and days weeks. It turned many dark fae mad, and I almost lost myself a couple of times.”

“They put you in there more than once?” he asked.

She shivered at the gravel of rage in his voice.

“I might have a lot of discipline and ambition, but my drawback was often being rebellious to authority. There were many times any other fae would have died by their hand for the things I did.”

“But they kept you alive.”

“I’m an asset with my ability. They’re not wasteful. Abilities are coveted among the dark fae as it’s not as common as in the fae—not even close. They think royal blood is key. Some dark fae have weak abilities, likely from long diluted royal lineage somewhere. But Maverick— Callen Osirion —was the first Transitioned to keep his full power.”

“What about you?”

“Me?”

“You’re exceptionally powerful.”

“I’m born dark fae.”

“Are there others born with great power?”

Her brow knitted. “Not that I know of.”

She couldn’t stand his silence and glanced at him to decipher his thoughts, but he gave away nothing in his faraway stare.

“Who were your parents?”

“I don’t know.”

“How?”

“Darklings are given to the masters when they’re young. To train as soldiers.”

“That’s…absolutely terrible.”

“Is it more terrible than knowing the parents who harm or abandon you?”

She regretted those words as soon as she spoke them. Zaiana could hardly stand how much it unsettled her to witness his emotional pain, however fleeting.

“That’s a fair point. I guess we all become soldiers one way or another.”

Kyleer turned silent for a moment, and she hoped it would stay that way.

“It’s not normal, what you went through,” he said quietly. “These masters…why do they still hide?”

“They’re our teachers. The oldest of our kind. I wouldn’t expect them to leave their safe confines.”

“They’re cowards.”

She almost smiled at that.

“That much we can agree on.”

His hand slipped over her thigh, and Zaiana tensed.

“If you don’t kill them, I will.”

Her sharp stare angled down to him. “Don’t act heroic for me, Ky. I could watch them kill you and not feel anything for it.”

Lies. Such terrible, haunting lies.

At that, Kyleer barely smiled. He squeezed her thigh before releasing her, and he turned the opposite way.

Zaiana relaxed when she was released from his attention, but his words were going to replay in her mind for some time. When her head grew too heavy and Kyleer’s breathing deepened, she risked shuffling to lie down, facing his broad back.

The impulse to feel the wavy locks of brown hair spilling behind him itched her skin so much that she turned around. The warmth of him behind her became a craving she was restless to resist. The slither of cold space between their backs sent a chill rippling down her spine.

At the first chime of his shackles, Zaiana rolled as he did, purely out of a triggered instinct since he could easily wrap his chain around her neck with her back to him.

When they both stilled, they shared a breath, and his heartbeat echoed into her vacant chest. The only barrier between them now: the tip of her blade under his chin. His large hands wrapped around her wrists, but she was confident she could end him swifter than he could stop her.

“This is better,” he said, the gravelly lilt in his voice crawling over her skin. “That breeze between us was terrible.”

To her utter dismay, he closed his eyes again, peaceful despite the threat of her blade. In her annoyance, she scratched the tip under his jaw, and his lids flew open with a frown of annoyance.

“Let me go,” she hissed.

“My hands can’t really go anywhere else. Besides, maybe you’ll actually sleep knowing your blade can take my life at any second and you’ll wake up if I release you or move.”

He had a point. But how was she to sleep when his face was so close to hers? His mouth was a temptation she shouldn’t think about, but her traitorous eyes explored every part of him.

“Sleep, Zai,” he said, as much to himself as her.

The warmth was nice. His body shielded her from more cold than the blankets could, and she fought her body’s desire to bathe in it.

Just one night. Just for warmth.

She let her eyes close but kept her hearing sharp. Soon she found herself only focused on two things: his breathing in tempo with his precious heartbeat. Sounds that, against her better judgment, she found peace, maybe even safety, in the cadence of.