Page 3 of A Flame of the Phoenix (An Heir Comes to Rise #6)

CHAPTER TWO

Faythe

T he curves of the small wooden butterfly dug into Faythe’s palms as she clasped at her chest. She awoke with the beats of her heart struggling and a tightness expanding behind her ribs. Every time she tried to Nightwalk to Reylan, she was slammed back to the cold truth of their distance.

She couldn’t find him.

As she rolled onto her side, tears slipped silently. She unfolded her tight grip to trace her fingers over the carving he’d made for her.

Forcing back her heartache, with a deep breath Faythe pushed herself up in the small makeshift bed inside her tent. She’d refused anything that would grant her more comfort than the rest of the Rhyenelle soldiers in the war camp at the edge of Fenher.

Faythe drove her hands through her hair and clenched tight, pulling at the roots to inflict pain. Her sleepless nights were only adding to her frustration and anger.

She had found Reylan once before without even trying. Found him through a dream, as an untrained human unknowingly reaching for the other half of her soul. There was no road too long; no mountain too high. She just had to figure out the direction.

Dressing swiftly, Faythe slung on her cloak and headed out of tent soundlessly. She remained as stealthy as an assassin so as not to wake Kyleer in the tent next to hers. He might reprimand her for what she was about to do to release the anger that wouldn’t stop growing in her bones.

Out on the streets, the wintry night air bit at her cheeks, and she rubbed her gloved hands together. Her frosted breaths were steady in her focus to extend her senses while she strolled the deserted streets of the small town, pretending she was oblivious to the darkness that had been tracking her from the moment she set out. It didn’t take long, sauntering with her distinguishable golden eyes fully exposed, for the vultures to pin her. This outskirt town was crawling with dark fae. They had begun to seep through her kingdom like a black plague, and she was riled and ready to eradicate them one by one if she had to.

After a moment of peace, Faythe Ashfyre took off in a sprint and did not falter. The pace drummed her pulse. She didn’t feel a single beat of fear after breaking her act and becoming the bait of a chase with four dark fae.

She raced over rooftops, hopping seamlessly between buildings with her laser focus. One of them she was tracking took a leap to the skies, and at that, Faythe began her descent.

Dropping into a slide on the ice near the next edge, she twisted as her body cut the air, fingers catching on the harsh ledge, and she dropped, meeting the ground in an elegant brace that scattered the vibrations of the impact throughout her body.

A scream ripped through the air, and Faythe’s attention latched onto it. The terror from the civilian pumped her blood hotter, spotting her vision with rage, and she ran faster .

Faythe found the victim in the clutches of her attacker—a dark fae with his teeth sunk into her neck, determined to drink her dry like the other human man already dead at their feet.

She saw white.

Dark fae minds were a void, some more depthless and demoralized than others. Slipping into this one almost forced her right back out with the ripples of bloodlust coursing through it. Sinister chants to kill , kill , kill .

Instead of retreating, Faythe embodied his merciless, cold detachment, letting it become instinct that seized his mind and shattered it in a breath. She wouldn’t have outlasted him in combat with the amount of human blood heightening his physical strength.

Those who’d been chasing Faythe closed in behind her as the one she’d killed slumped to the ground. The woman fell too, but Faythe was too far gone to check on her survival right now, and the threat wasn’t over.

Three rushed in at her back, one in the sky.

“Nowhere to run now, Heir of Marvellas .”

They taunted that title, and Faythe’s fists flexed, ready to unleash all she’d built in the ten minutes she’d been entertaining their chase. The only luminance to break the pitch-darkness they cornered her in was from the glow in her palms.

One dark fae took the lead, chuckling in mockery of the display of magick.

“I only need one of you alive,” she said. “Though death might be kinder.”

“We can’t kill you. But we can certainly have fun with you before taking you to her.”

Faythe only focused on the one closest, and as he stepped forward, she slipped into his mind. The surges of negative aura circled her, pushing back. It had taken some practice to remain inside against the nauseous force.

With a strangled sound, he crashed to his knees by her influence.

Keeping him there, Faythe thrust a hand skyward. Her ability was manifesting stronger every day, able to grip the hovering creature with a lasso made of burning gold essence. When she felt her snare around him, she poured in all her strength, amplified by the anger shaking from her, to bring him careening to the ground.

His wail cut off with a quick, revolting crack, and Faythe wasn’t immune to the note of disgust at what she’d done this time. But she never felt regret.

Another advanced, and her head pulsed to split her focus, but she seized his mind too. Then shattered it. The exertion was catching up to her, laboring her breaths and slicking her skin with a dangerous warning.

“Where is Marvellas?” she asked the one she held at her mercy.

“Burn in the Nether,” he spat.

The third dark fae charged for her, and Faythe twisted around the vertical swipe of his blade. Her own dagger plunged through his back in the same maneuver. She yanked it free, letting his body drop.

One less obstacle to Reylan.

One less creature to pose a fatal danger to her people.

It was all she could console herself with. Grappling with threads of humanity that were fraying with each passing day.

“I’ll meet you there,” Faythe answered. She took a fist full of dark hair, yanking his head back, and he gave a venomous hiss. “Where is she?”

Silence.

It was a cold calling to her volatile rage. Every beat of silence darkened in her soul. It felt like wasted sand in an hourglass measuring Reylan’s life. Faythe didn’t know herself in his absence, while they were hurting him. It was all she could think of, and she didn’t know the limit to what she was capable of anymore as she approached every barrier to him not only with a determination to knock them down, but to make them suffer just as she was.

“Valgard?” Faythe prompted, flipping her dagger.

Turning back to her kneeling victim, she pressed the slick blade against his cheek.

The Niltain steel clawed a shriek from the dark fae’s throat.

“We don’t know where Marvellas is,” he hissed through clenched teeth.

Faythe cut from his cheekbone to his chin, collecting beads of black blood against his pale complexion, before pointing the tip to the hollow spot of his neck.

A headache cleaved her head, twisting her thoughts and warping reality as she delved into his mind for answers. If she wasn’t careful, Faythe thought it could drive her to madness if she lost herself too far. Their minds were always so, so desolate. Part of her wondered, maybe even hoped, she would come across one who didn’t seem like a lost cause.

If she had to annihilate them all—achieve what had been failed in history to eradicate them—she believed she could.

Faythe was their villain. And she was losing patience.

Retreating from his mind, her teeth ground together.

Nothing. They all knew nothing.

They were merely mindless soldiers ordered to capture her and take her to Dakodas, who must be the only one to know where Marvellas had taken him.

“Send this message to her for me,” Faythe said.

He jerked, seething with a string of profanities as her hand reached for his shoulder. She’d learned to tune out the ear-splitting cries. Gold dust crept in behind him, shimmering beautifully over his wings, until it began to devour the flesh and cartilage like flame. His eyes bulged and his mouth tore wide-open, but she could hear nothing.

Feel nothing.

When his wings had been burned to nothing but serrated stumps, she let him go.

The dark fae curled into himself, trembling on the ground. Every time she watched the vicious creatures turn from her foe to her victim, she wondered if any would ever make her feel regret.

Faythe crouched to him as she said, “I will burn flesh, I will burn cities, I will destroy anything she tries to claim if I find him harmed.”

When all turned silent, Faythe bottled her scream against the torment every still moment opened up to. With a deep breath, her exhale shuddered from her in the aftermath of her brutal vengeance.

“Phoenix Queen.”

Faythe’s shoulders locked, only her head twisting back to the woman she thought had been killed.

“They say you turned on us. Abandoned us. That Malin Ashfyre is our savior king who will bring peace again. I didn’t believe it.” Her voice croaked with pain. A hand clutched the bleeding wound on her neck. “It’s not true, is it?”

Words scrambled her mind, most of them vicious and self-deprecating. Faythe only lifted her hood.

“Get somewhere safe. Find a healer. They won’t get the chance to harm you again tonight.” She didn’t look to the woman again, disappearing as a shadow of the night.

Faythe took more caution to remain hidden now. On the rooftops, she tracked the injured woman until she found her way to an inn, where a group of humans immediately came to her aid.

Observing the moon spilling a glow over the cloudless sky, Faythe wondered, with a bleeding wound on her heart, if Reylan could see it, or if he was chained somewhere dark and lonely, robbed of day or moonlight.

Faythe crouched, gathering her hands together, and honed her focus on her task. Phoenixfyre had a distinct feeling in its magick. It wasn’t ashy or hot like Firewielding; it was like growing a heartbeat. Millions of tiny vibrations crawled to her fingertips and began to draw across the air in front of her. When she was finished, the form it took would never fail to entrance her. She watched the tiny Firebird fly away.

It had been six agonizing weeks without Reylan. Two of them, she’d been in and out of consciousness from the effects of her burnout and Niltain steel-poisoned wounds following the Battle of Ellium they’d lost and fled from. Since she’d been well enough, they hadn’t remained idle for a moment.

Kyleer had taken her to one of the army camps in Fenher. Most of Rhyenelle’s forces who had been told to retreat by Reylan—his last command as general when he knew the city was lost—would be around the many camps in Rhyenelle, waiting for their next instruction. As Reylan’s second-in-command, Kyleer had become the leading general.

There was not a day, barely a moment within each one, that Faythe wasn’t thinking about Reylan. They had a kingdom to take back and an evil to rout out, but she didn’t know if she could do it without him.

Faythe had been too distracted to detect an intrusion sooner, but she freed her blade, lunging up to attack…

Her body relaxed from a braced pose of combat as her eyes trailed the length of the Ember Sword as it clashed with Lumarias, finding a disgruntled Kyleer peering down at her.

“If you’re heading out for some fun, it’s only fair you extend the invite,” he grumbled.

Faythe huffed as their blades slipped off each other, and she sheathed Lumarias. Watching Kyleer do the same, an ache clenched within her, catching the glint of the ruby pommel that mocked her.

Every time the light caught on it, her pulse would skip, but never did it glow like she hoped, indicating the direction to Reylan. She’d slipped the twin Eye of the Phoenix around his wrist before they were parted.

Perhaps Agalhor’s tale about them had been a fable.

“At least one of us should be well-rested,” Faythe said. It certainly wouldn’t be her.

Kyleer folded his arms, but his expression was all-knowing. “I’m not having much luck with sleep either.”

Faythe ran a hand down her face. She was exhausted, but it wasn’t often by choice she didn’t find sleep. Most nights she braced to meet horrible nightmares in the darkness, and this time she didn’t know how to tame it.

“Perhaps a drink might help,” Kyleer suggested.

Faythe nodded, trying to reciprocate his smile, but her mouth refused to pretend.

Kyleer glanced down the alley, where quiet whimpers of the wingless dark fae still echoed.

“That’s the third you’ve done that to,” he commented as they turned from him.

“I won’t have her forgetting for a moment that I’m coming.”

There were days she felt her world crumbling. She would walk and walk until her steps stumbled, as if she’d come to a cliff edge, about to collapse. Times when she would wake and gravity no longer felt like an anchor. Moments air refused to fill her lungs, and her mind was convinced she was drowning on land.

Every time, she would remember all over again that Reylan was not with her. That her father, Agalhor Ashfyre, was dead. And her mighty kingdom lay in evil hands.

“Still no luck reaching him through Nightwalking?” Kyleer asked.

Her fists tightened. “No. It’s like he’s…gone.” Her throat tightened with pain. “Or she’s taken him too far for me to even reach a small essence of a clue as to where she might be holding him.”

“It seems our obvious choice is Valgard.”

A chill swept over her at the conclusion they’d circled before. It seemed the most viable option, but her gut couldn’t settle on it. They’d sent spies to try to reach the enemy island east, but none had returned. Faythe had tracked down as many dark fae as she could while they were actively hunting for her, trying for some reassurance it wouldn’t be time wasted if she went to Valgard herself—a path that, should it be wrong, could cost her Reylan.

At least in remaining here until they could find something to give them hope for a way to him, she was training, leading, helping to keep their armies strong, and strategizing tirelessly for ways to take Ellium back. It soothed a small part of her to be productive in a way Reylan would be proud of until she found a course to him.

“Maybe we should split up,” she suggested.

“That’s not an option,” Kyleer said firmly.

It was a weak suggestion, but she was so tired—and terrified—of choosing wrong.

“We’ll try to hunt more darklings tomorrow for information,” Kyleer said, with an inkling of hope she couldn’t muster anymore.

She gave a nod regardless.

“I miss him,” she said, realizing another absence, a more permanent one, also softening the ground her own grave was being dug in with every footstep. “Both of them.”

The hopeful future she’d dreamed of in her father’s company had always been painted in watercolor, but now it was drowning, washing away scene by scene what would never be.

Her absolute determination not to lose her mate too had become a powerful suppressant for that anguish. The will to do her father proud kept her active and engrossed in battle plans for the kingdom.

Kyleer shared her grief in tangible waves as he said, “Me too.”

There were two halves to the heart of Rhyenelle since she’d laid her claim, and without Reylan, she feared it might be forever lost.

“I would feel if he…? I mean, you said you did?—”

Gods, how could she even ask that of him? Her selfishness silenced the thought, but Kyleer knew what she’d wanted to say.

“Yes,” he answered. Kyleer gave a smile to shadow his hurt from the past. “Even without a completed mating bond, you’ve been forging a tie to him since you met…again,” he added with a quirk of amusement. “I felt it when Greia died. With your bond to Reylan having been formed over more time and stronger, I can’t imagine you wouldn’t, even being so far apart.“

It was the relief she needed in her time of turmoil. Reylan was alive.

“Maybe we should go back to Ellium ourselves,” she said.

“We checked a week ago. He’s not there.”

“The others are.”

She watched the lines on his face firm. Though she didn’t mention Izaiah, she knew it was he who struck him in that moment.

“Marlowe couldn’t tell me why, but she told me she created the Phoenix Blood for Malin, and that he plans to have her spell the others.”

“Then they’re traitors.”

Faythe winced, but she couldn’t blame his observation.

“Her gift is a heavy burden. She can often risk harm more than help should she make the wrong move with what she’s seen.”

Faythe’s heart was split, trusting her two friends while also carrying a sting of resentment. She had to see them and had mulled over the idea of infiltrating the castle again, but their scouts had strongly advised against it with the forces of the dark fae and the new defenses they’d implemented.

Malin knew she was reckless enough to think of attempting a return too soon.

“Why wouldn’t Izaiah have told me?” Kyleer said.

Faythe had no answers, only the fleeting recollection of Izaiah’s last words, which hadn’t been very reassuring.

“Tell Kyleer, for once in our lives, I was one step ahead.”

What was Izaiah planning?

They entered an inn, keeping their hoods up.

The bustling establishment lingered little attention on them as they headed to the front to order a drink. It was exactly what Faythe needed to curb the sharp edges of her anxiety.

They’d barely had time to deeply reflect on all that had happened before they fled Ellium. Kyleer had been as closed off as she these past few weeks.

“What happened—?” Faythe tried carefully. “In those cells, before everything went to shit. Zaiana made me believe she’d killed you.”

The air threatened to choke her at the mere recollection of that grief.

Kyleer gave a twitch of a smile, a wince of his pain, staring into the ale-soaked wood of the bar. “You were right,” he said, detached, but his hurt weaved through her. “You were all right. Dead hearts can’t beat, and I fell for the foolish notion she would yield something different to me.”

Faythe leaned on the bar with him. Her head fell to his shoulder.

“For what it’s worth, I think she did.”

“You don’t have to try to make me feel better about my lapse of judgment.”

“I’m not. When we took to the skies, even through my rage, I believed her true self had surfaced in those moments we were both preparing to go down. I think?—”

“Don’t,” he said softly. “She betrayed us all. I won’t forgive that.”

Faythe sighed with the weight of sorrow they both carried.

She straightened when two tankards were placed in front of them, but as she reached for hers, Faythe’s back curved with a strike of alarm at the prick against her spine. Kyleer hissed with a similar reaction at the threat behind them. Bold, in an establishment so packed. Who would risk confrontation here?

“Please state your name and business.”

Every sound in the room was stolen completely, leaving only those words on repeat. Ones from a distant memory. In a voice she would treasure until the end of her days.

Faythe’s eyes stung.

She couldn’t move. Even when the blade was removed from her back and she knew who she would find. The impossibility of it taunted it was only a trick.

Her heart thumped so hard it stole her breath.

Grief, heartache, yearning—it all threatened to bring her to her knees before she could turn around.

“Faythe,” he said gently.

A hand encased her upper arm, and she released a whimper. It guided her, and the moment she met those emerald eyes, Faythe broke.

Shattered.

Tears slipped from her eyes when she blinked hard to clear her vision, but she smiled with such elation that it broke through her resistance to feeling anything at all since having been torn from Reylan.

“It’s really you…” she breathed. His smile was a piece of treasure given at her most dire time. “Nik.”

They embraced tightly, and she didn’t care for the ugly display as she sobbed into his hood. Faythe breathed his scent to calm her. Her human senses had never been able to detect the notes within—hints of vanilla and meadows, then deeper. It had a smoky essence, not like fire but a storm. She committed it all to memory.

Faythe shut out the questions of this chance meeting. Why he was here; how he’d found her. All she clung to was the impossible gift that consumed her.

“I suppose I should order a few more drinks,” Kyleer cut in when she was beginning to come down from her high.

Faythe pulled back, lingering one last look on her dear friend before she was alerted to the fact he wasn’t alone.

She let Nik go in her shock.

“Nerida?”

The healer beamed brightly as they stepped for each other and collided.

“I knew we would meet again soon,” she said in that beautiful, melodic voice of hers.

Gods, Faythe felt in another realm with this reunion. It was lifting her from a dark pit she hadn’t thought she’d be able to claw her way out of. There’d been no light until now. But as she scanned the others, it shone brighter, reminding her not everything was lost.

“It’s so good to see you, Your Highness,” Lycus said, smiling knowingly, and Faythe choked a sob.

She also found a breathtakingly beautiful fae female with auburn hair by his side. The fae offered a timid smile of greeting, then the person who’d crept close to Nerida…

Faythe blinked at the Prince of Olmstone.

“We have a lot to catch up on,” Nik said, but his tone wasn’t all cheerful, and Faythe acknowledged their reunion might hold heavy tales on both sides for him to be here without…

“Tauria,” Faythe breathed, whirling to Nik.

She’d never seen such desolation overcome him in an instant. Nik flicked a look to Kyleer behind her and gave a quick survey of the group, noting Reylan’s absence too.

Her face fell, as torn as his.

“A lot to catch up on indeed,” he said sadly.