Page 30 of A Flame of the Phoenix (An Heir Comes to Rise #6)

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Faythe

F aythe couldn’t reach the last of her dress ties on her back. She arched and struggled, growing frustrated and ultimately letting go. Her head bowed, hardly able to stand the unnecessary spectacle she was being made to wear.

The gown was ruby-red, with crystals that glinted like spilled fresh blood down her bodice. She couldn’t shake the ominous thought. Her hair had been pinned back with dozens of red-jeweled hairpins too.

She let her sight drift over the bright, snowy mountain and cityscape through the single wall of glass in this room. Her breath was stolen every time she glimpsed such purity and innocence—a vision of peace or a tragedy of obliviousness, Faythe couldn’t decide.

Faythe’s sight snapped back to the mirror when fingers brushed her back. She found Reylan in the reflection, resuming the ties she’d abandoned. He didn’t hide his appearance anymore, and while she was glad, her heart permanently ached to watch him so emotionless.

“Why hasn’t Marvellas greeted me yet? I thought she’d be most eager.”

“ You shouldn’t be,” he said, his voice stripped of any feeling.

Faythe swallowed down her grief. “She’s masterful at hiding,” she said, watching his face to catch any hint.

“She has to be.”

“Marvellas has many talents, doesn’t she? The abilities may be Spirit-blessed, but they can borrow each other’s,” Faythe tested.

He tugged the strings a final time, meeting her gaze in the reflection. “Many skills, many faces.”

Faythe’s heart skipped. Reylan finished tying the back of her dress, and her stomach sank with the absence of his warmth when he stepped away. She turned around, debating in her mind how to gain any small insights she could before this dinner with the queen.

“You retrieved her ruin from the Sky Caves, didn’t you?”

Reylan folded his arms, taking up a lean against the bedpost. “Yes.”

“You couldn’t break it, so she planted it in you, knowing I would break it to save you.”

“I believe so.”

“But you feel nothing for me. So maybe I won’t bother.”

“If I had the choice, I wouldn’t want you to.”

It would have hurt less for him to have carved a blade into her chest.

“You do have a choice,” she ground out. “You have the power of a ruin in you—enough to contend with her. Why not take over?”

“She is my queen.”

Faythe resisted the urge to double over with the tightening in her gut. The betrayal those four words winded her with.

They’re not his words.

She approached him, a careful doe toward the lion. He didn’t move, but his eyes tracked her every step, debating whether to strike before she could get too close. Faythe dared to reach up a hand, slipping high up his jaw, until her fingers brushed his temple.

Faythe tried to enter his mind, but immediately she was slammed with so much dark resistance she almost buckled.

“Stop,” he warned, but he didn’t pull away.

Faythe searched deeper through his sapphire eyes and touched their bond to aid her. All she wanted was to show him one thing. One reminder. The shadows invading his mind hissed and wailed, and misery spilled across Faythe’s features. So much pain and darkness and death .

“Oh, Reylan,” she whispered.

She found a space to throw a light. A memory.

“My Phoenix. My Queen.”

Reylan’s touch brushed her cheek, and Faythe thought for a second that tenderness flickered in his eyes. Until ice froze over his irises the same second his hand wrapped around her throat.

“They’re hollow words to me now. Those of a past fool I am no longer. You mean nothing to me, Faythe.”

The loathing poured into her name sounded so torturously wrong from him. She stumbled back when he pushed her. Faythe’s eyes burned. She bowed her head to the ground and collected herself while heat flushed her skin.

It was no use. She wasn’t enough to reach him. Worst of all, Faythe drowned in the misery of failing him, but she wouldn’t give up. That was why she was here.

“Let’s go,” he said flatly.

All Faythe could do was follow with her hollow heart.

Despite everything, Faythe was glad he was here with her. Even if only to hurt her, she didn’t want him to slip from her sights again.

The banquet hall of Lakelaria’s castle was a picture of vulnerable beauty. Faythe’s shoes clicked across glittering white floor—a flat, smooth imitation of the snow that encompassed them from the walls on either side and in front of her, made of glass. The pillars in the room dominated like proud icicles thrown down from the Gods in the heavens. Guards in black littered down each side stood out starkly. Faythe briefly met one set of hazel eyes, while the rest of them were clad in a hood and a face covering, hiding their identity from the sins that might be asked of them at any moment.

The air hummed with a fragile peace as Faythe slipped her sight to Iana, who was already seated at the head of the banquet table. Faythe accepted the chair at the opposite end that was pulled out for her.

The table, a proud slate of white marble, was filled with a feast far too much for just two of them, and Faythe had no appetite with her storm of emotions. At the side of the hall, Faythe almost lost her composure to see Kyleer as the first break in the tranquil illusion, a roughed-up sight. Unlike Faythe, who had been bathed and presented, he was still in his Rhyenelle attire, but what quickly threatened her volatility was the scent of his blood. Faythe glanced at his crimson-stained hands clutching a wound on his side, then she targeted an accusatory glare on Zaiana that was met with cool disinterest.

She was already struggling to contain herself, but the queen merely kept eating. It was almost as if Faythe had disturbed her feast and she was used to dining alone.

“Lakelaria is more magnificent than we’re told,” Faythe said, testing the conversation.

Those hazel irises slipped to her, lingering long enough to weigh every word Faythe spoke as if searching for tricks in them.

“This is what peace looks like,” Iana said with pride.

“There are no humans,” Faythe observed calmly . “I didn’t see any on our short venture around the city.”

A flex of the porcelain skin around her eyes spoke of suspicion. “There are some, but you are right. Lakelaria is mostly populated by fae.”

Some. Yet Faythe hadn’t seen a single one.

“I am new to my position. Court and politics. History.” Faythe picked up her drink, needing to soothe her drying throat. “But I had a friend tell me some things about your kingdom once. I am sorry to hear of the passing of your daughter.”

The queen’s chin rose a fraction. “It was a long time ago,” she said coldly.

Everything about her repelled company and conversation.

Faythe pushed a little more. “Around two hundred years ago. She would have only been past her first century. She was to be married right before it happened.”

The pauses between the queen’s engagement raced in Faythe’s chest.

“Yes. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of her.”

Lies. All Faythe could hear was deception, and her composure was shaking.

The queen wore sleeves that extended over her hands, and her neckline was always high on her throat. Faythe watched her hand reach for her goblet.

“The food will be getting cold,” Iana said.

Faythe didn’t respond to that. Instead she had to take a risk.

“Nikalias met you when he was young.” Her nerves were betraying her now.

Iana set her cup down, and there was a hint of suspicion in her pause. “Yes. I believe I visited his kingdom.”

“He seems to recall you had blue eyes. I guess, being in his youth, he might not have recounted the details so well.”

They were hazel, and as Faythe stared right into them, she thought they flicked a brighter hue.

“The young prince was hardly present during my visit.”

Faythe hummed, but her skin prickled. Then she had no patience left and threw all caution to the wind.

The knife in her hand spun through the air for a mere heartbeat, heading straight for the queen…

Thump.

The queen moved her head just in time. The blade pierced the back of her chair, inches from her eyeline.

Faythe couldn’t stop now.

The guards in black advanced, but Faythe yanked the tablecloth, sending everything sprawling from it, before her palm slammed to the table and a flare of her gold magick cracked across the surface, breaking the table apart.

Iana never summoned her legendary Waterwielding abilities.

Shapeshifting always leaves a trace.

Reylan had told her that. Then today, before leaving her rooms:

Many skills, many faces.

Faythe didn’t know if he’d helped seal her thoughts intentionally, but she couldn’t back down now as she ran across the wreckage she’d made of the table, having only done so to slow the guards from reaching her before she could reach the queen.

Command of a creature is more akin to your ability. Nik had told her that when he spoke of the legends he’d heard of the Queen of Lakelaria; that she could command the creatures of the sea.

The queen raised a hand…and that was when Faythe saw the final confirmation to her daunting theory.

The symbol within her palm glowed gold. So familiar. Faythe wore one just like it in hers.

A circle, with three lines scoring past the circumference.

Faythe’s steps slammed to a stop. Her chest heaved. No guards moved anymore—the hand Faythe couldn’t tear her sight from was her signal to stop them.

“Aurialis once said she lost track of Marvellas two hundred years ago,” Faythe said, her heart thundering. “It also happened to be when the Queen of Lakelaria lost her child. The queen might not have been the most loving parent, but losing her daughter left her alone and vulnerable. The perfect target.”

Adrenaline pumped her blood, threatening to sway her balance in this confrontation.

“So you can come out now.” Faythe took three terrifying breaths before she summoned the name of her terrors. “Marvellas.”

The silence that settled was so cold and deadly. She wore Iana’s face, debating if it was possible to grapple with the lie Faythe had torn open.

Then, there it was. The smile that chilled her blood every time she saw it. One of triumph and wicked glee, so not even another face could hide the intent behind it.

“You are still every part my daughter, Aesira,” Marvellas said in her own voice.

The heat blazing her skin cooled at the fear that crept in with the changes in her appearance that followed.

“Maybe even more cunning in this second life of yours.”

Flame engulfed the lengths of white hair, starting at the root and devouring, until the brilliant red returned. Shapes of her face morphed so slowly Faythe had to blink consciously, struggling to believe she wasn’t asleep in some terrible nightmare.

Marvellas shed the skin she’d worn on these lands, hiding, for hundreds of years. Biding her time. Masterfully puppeteering a war from this one safe place no one thought to go looking.

Face-to-face with Marvellas at last, the purpose for her existence had never sung so clearly. She was created to be the end. To kill Marvellas once and for all. Her will to live beyond that goal lingered behind her.

Reylan had remained so still despite Faythe’s outburst.

Kill Marvellas. Free Reylan.

Faythe was willing to contend with how villainous Marvellas could be to achieve both.

“Dine with me?—”

Faythe’s magick reacted before Marvellas could finish. The Spirit defused her flare easily, but Faythe tried again, and again, until Marvellas attacked back and Faythe was slammed into by a force of magick like her own.

It sent her sprawling across the broken stone, cutting her flesh where it was exposed in this gown. The wind was knocked from her lungs, and Faythe struggled to roll off her back and gather breath. Kyleer yelled her name, but she listened to his struggle as he was detained from reaching her.

All Faythe could do was grant him a weak look, hoping he read that she was okay. Zaiana stood by him, with purple eyes that darted from Faythe to Marvellas, but what it showed was the dark fae had no knowledge of Marvellas’s guise until now.

Marvellas’s face finally lined with harsh anger, but it was nothing compared to what Faythe was burning with.

Faythe peeled herself from the rubble. “I could burn this castle to sand, and your soldiers to ash.”

“You wouldn’t kill innocents.”

“There are none if their allegiance is to you.”

Perhaps she’d lost her sanity. Morality. Maybe she wouldn’t be able to live with herself after what it took to win. But he would be safe, her friends would be safe, and that was worth condemning her soul.

“You always did have a temper, Aesira.”

“Aesira died trying to escape you,” Faythe said coldly. “All of this, bringing back my soul—why? What was so special about me?”

“Everything.” There was an ache in that whisper of a word from the Spirit.

All Faythe saw were markers to hit to make her bleed as much as Faythe had over two lifetimes. Each time Marvellas had come between Faythe and the only thing she wanted in the world.

“You could have taken the realm without me.”

Marvellas stepped over plates of food without even looking. Faythe wanted to retreat, but she stood firm against the instinct.

“This war began because I had someone who meant the world to me stolen from me.”

“Me?”

“No.”

Faythe didn’t want to see the humanity that was surfacing in the Spirit, but it felt important to understand.

“Your son,” Faythe said in realization.

At the thought, a new set of bright gold eyes flashed to the forefront of her thoughts. She’d dreamt of him before, and it had been the reason she’d snuck out to meet Gus in Rhyenelle—the last time she saw him. She’d needed answers, and it was then he’d told her Aesira had discovered Marvellas had a son. A male with dark hair and eyes like hers. But something had happened long ago…something that had taken him out of this realm, beyond where Marvellas could ever go looking.

“How do you know of him?”

“I don’t know how…but Aesira found out about him.”

“I never told you about him in the past,” Marvellas said, turning to suspicion. “Oh, my dear, perhaps I didn’t get to find out all of what you discovered back then before you foolishly got yourself killed.”

“How-how did she die?”

“Misplaced bravery. A mere mortal wound, of all things, on a battlefield you should never have been on.” Marvellas stopped, glancing over the ruins Faythe had made of the table. “We could change the world together. This doesn’t have to be a fight.”

Faythe shook her head, unable to fathom this ages-long delusion of partnership Marvellas still clung to.

“You want to eradicate an entire species,” she said. It was the first conclusion Faythe could make of Marvellas’s driving motives for this war. “Starting with the humans. Why?”

“They’re too weak to survive in this world. And if left unchecked, they will try to take a power that was never meant to be theirs. Time that was never theirs.”

This vengeance was personal to the Spirit. After all this time, Faythe had to learn the story of Marvellas, as far back as the beginning of her fall to land, or she would never have closure.

“What happened to you?”

Marvellas held her with a deep look, so cold and detached as she said, “Love.” Then her gaze dropped, one note of sorrow, before her guard firmed and she walked away from Faythe. Casting her sight out the glass wall, she added, “It will always find a way to destroy you.”

Faythe’s throat turned dry, her next words an attempted plea. “Just release him from your ruin and compulsion, and we’ll leave.”

“I thought all this time, Reylan would only get in the way as he tried to tear us apart in the past. But now there is a way for you to stay together. We can finally start to bring this world to its full potential.”

Her head was already shaking, making the slight flicker of hope turn ugly on the Spirit’s face.

“Then you leave me no choice?—”

“You leave me no choice,” Faythe cut in. Slipping into the minds of the two guards who moved in behind her, Faythe had to set aside her morality to snap their necks. It wasn’t without consequence. Each life, even those of the vicious dark fae who were loyal to Marvellas’s cause, tainted black spots on her soul. “I never knew I could contend with you in villainy until you gave me the right motivation.”

To win, to get Reylan back, she was prepared to give in to the darkness completely.

More guards flooded into the room, and she braced to kill again.

Until Kyleer’s groan of pain stopped her, and she found him on his knees, Zaiana poised over him with a hand fisted in his hair, the other holding a blade to his throat. Marvellas smiled, pleased with the dark fae’s initiative.

Faythe was seeing murderous red toward Zaiana. She remembered her greatest fear of having her mind infiltrated, and Faythe was tempted to shatter it right now.

“Don’t,” Kyleer rasped, reading her intent.

She couldn’t understand why he would object after what Zaiana had done to him. How even now, she was proving Faythe’s hope of redemption in the dark fae was a childish fantasy. She would always be their enemy.

“You only prove my point, time and time again. Love is a weakness that will always be exploited against you,” Marvellas said calmly.

Too calm. It grated against Faythe’s trigger to erupt.

“Kyleer Galentithe,” she drawled. “As I hear, your brother is adjusting quite well to Malin Ashfyre’s new rule. Perhaps I may have use for you too.”

“It’s only me you want,” Faythe hissed. “I am your heir, Marvellas. I despised that for a long time, but now, seeing the fear that crosses your face when you try to hide it, you’re beginning to realize what you have created in me is the end you cannot escape. A weapon crafted so perfectly to bring about your own downfall.”

“You always have been ungrateful. Selfish. It is because of you every one of them will die.”

Her blood raced with the challenge. Heat flooded her palms with a dare she could hardly contain. If she clashed powers with Marvellas here…Faythe knew no one in this castle would be spared.

Faythe said, her voice as calm as death, “Release Kyleer. Release Reylan. You have me now.”

“In truth, I thought the ruin would kill him. It was to my great surprise that he not only lived but also became my ruin. His magick is unparalleled now. How can I not see this as fate meddling in my favor? For now I have a bargain for you,” Marvellas said.

A cold shiver of dread broke over her skin at Marvellas’s cruel smile.

Marvellas continued. “I quite like the weapon he is, but as I’m sure you’re starting to figure out, the only way to free him is to break the ruin.”

The gravity of what that would mean for the world wasn’t lost on her.

Faythe’s gaze shifted to Zaiana, who retained her steely exterior. “You could be lying. Breaking it could kill him as well,” Faythe said.

“How might I convince you of my truth?”

“A blood bargain.”

Marvellas’s eyes narrowed in consideration. “Very well.”

Faythe’s pulse skipped as she watched her glide across the chaos toward her. A small pocket knife slipped out of somewhere in her ruby dress, which flooded around her like blood and water.

Marvellas held it out to her. “You first.”

Faythe took the knife, with her wary sight fixed on Marvellas, anticipating some kind of trick. She sliced a small cut in her palm and then handed it back. When Marvellas cut her own flesh, Faythe almost expected her blood to be a different color, or that she wouldn’t bleed at all, but crimson beaded across her wound.

Marvellas reached for her suddenly, clasping their bleeding palms together, and Faythe gasped at the pulse of energy that exploded through her body.

Then…a reel of moving images. As if she were watching forgotten memories through the eyes of Marvellas. She saw Aesira. Faythe looked like her, with the same color of hair and eyes, but the younger fae had shorter hair, and some of her features were different shapes or angles.

The Spirit seemed distracted by the unexpected connection too, and Faythe used that opportunity to draw a dagger from her side and slice it across her cheek. The blade flew out of her hand when next she lunged for Marvellas, and they both crashed down among the stone and spoiled food.

Faythe was quickly grabbed from behind and restrained by two dark fae. She was forced to her knees as Marvellas rose, the heat of a God’s rage in her amber eyes.

“If you’re going to behave like a beast, then you leave me no choice but to treat you like one,” she hissed venomously.

Faythe knew her attack wouldn’t go unpunished, but it had felt damn good.

“You are nothing without me. Nothing more than the peasant your birth mother made of you. I gave up my pretense—now it’s your turn.”

The guards let her go, and she caught herself on her hands.

“Take it all off.”

It took a second for Faythe to understand, until she glanced at the beautiful ruined material pooling around her. The jewels she wore on her body and her hair. She’d been dressed up for Marvellas’s show.

“Or he suffers until you do,” she warned.

Tight sounds of pain echoed from Kyleer, and Faythe became horror-struck. Zaiana still held him, but it wasn’t her inflicting the pain. Marvellas was in his mind.

“Stop!” Faythe yelled.

Marvellas did, turning her attention back to Faythe, coldly impatient.

She forced back the humiliation she felt at this display. In front of Kyleer…Reylan…and… Nerida. The fae healer stood in perfect disguise among the guards. Faythe had met her eyes on the way in but couldn’t bear to see the disturbance that would be filled in them now to witness Faythe’s defeat.

Faythe started with her hairpins, plucking them one by one, and the only sounds to echo in the room were the chimes of her dignity hitting the ground piece by piece.

Red crystals fell around her like tears of blood, but she would not feed the Spirit’s sick pleasure with her emotions. Faythe kept calm, pulling the ties of her corset bodice. The front came loose, and Faythe let it fall. Then she kneeled there in nothing more than a white camisole, her hair unbound.

Marvellas approached with the intent of a serpent, and she struck just as fast, taking a tight grip of the back of Faythe’s hair. She pinched her lips to smother her whimper from the torn roots. She took hold of Faythe’s hand, slipping off her golden butterfly ring before Faythe could fight it, and she gasped.

“No—!”

Faythe’s plea was too late as the ring turned to gold dust between the Spirit’s fingers.

“It was a wretched thing then, and now,” she said spitefully.

Faythe’s heart withered watching the gold particles float away until they were nothing.

It wasn’t just a ring.

It was a thread of time that kept Reylan on the path to finding her soul again. It was their love in all its defiance. That ring was a bond, a promise, between them.

Faythe glanced over her shoulder to where Reylan stood in the shadows. He held her with an intense stare but gave no indication he felt anything at watching the ring get destroyed.

Her head bowed in sorrow.

“Finally…if you loved your poor and powerless life in High Farrow so much, then you don’t need your magick.”

Marvellas released her with a shove, but Faythe was caught by guards again.

Kyleer struggled, shouting profanities and pleading for her. Faythe couldn’t bear to look at him.

One guard pulled her arm, and before she could register what was happening, a blade sliced deeply along her forearm. She was wrong to think that score of fire was pain when what followed was enough to make a person beg for death.

She only caught a glimpse of the dark iridescent stone, and when it was pushed into her wound, Faythe couldn’t scream. An agony so consuming stole her will to do anything at all.

“Faythe!” Kyleer yelled her name, but he sounded so distant now.

Faythe’s consciousness brushed darkness, but it wouldn’t fall under completely. She wished it would give in and let her go. The blood boiling in her veins tested the very limits of her physical endurance.

“I could ease your pain, but you deserve to feel it all for your rebellion,” Marvellas said close to her ear. “But I’ll ease you into the next.”

Faythe was floating in a dark oblivion. She felt a new sharpness scoring her other arm. Her throat burned, but she couldn’t hear the screams clawing from it.

Her veins were torched, and she was burning from the inside out.

Days, weeks, years she was set ablaze, and didn’t know when the flames began to dwindle. She lay now, her cheek cutting into broken marble, with her vision coming in and out of focus. All she wanted was to drift away. Why wouldn’t her mind let her leave this state of torture?

She thought she saw Kyleer. On his knees, still being restrained from reaching her. But it was someone else’s struggle that broke sobs from her when she realized…saw a glimpse of silver hair…and became desperate to break from this poisonous hold to crawl to him too.

Reylan was fighting for her. To reach her.

Multiple guards restrained him, now on his knees, so close she wanted to reach out an arm but couldn’t move her body.

It was too late.

He couldn’t save her.

Faythe’s mind flooded—not with picture but color. Swirls of sapphire and silver. She would never forget, for it was a sea that didn’t drown, nor could she ever be lost in it as she let go and floated deeper, and deeper, and deeper…