Page 32 of A Flame of the Phoenix (An Heir Comes to Rise #6)

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Izaiah

I zaiah thought this might be it. The end of him.

He lay on his back, hanging onto his consciousness by a final thread. The roof of the catacomb flickered with the amber from the torches he’d lit, but it was his own skin that felt set aflame. He’d even taken his jacket and shirt off after the fourth attempt at merging with the ruin’s power—the most he’d tried in a single session, because he was running out of damned time.

Izaiah was about to give in to the pull of darkness. Maybe some rest would replenish him enough to try again. A hand slipped around his nape and yanked him up, making his eyes fly back open. He was met with a frightening intensity in the familiar brown eyes of Tynan.

“What in the Nether do you think you’re doing?” the dark fae snarled.

Izaiah was too shocked to speak, and still held in the soft clutches of death.

Tynan growled, setting him back down, and Izaiah felt no more useful than a sodden stick. Next thing he knew, ice shocked his system, animating his body against his previous thought of incapacity. Now sitting upright, with both hands against the floor, Izaiah blinked, some clarity returning as he watched the droplets from his hair gather in a puddle.

“Did you just throw ice-cold water over me?”

“I’m surprised it didn’t turn to steam hitting your scorching flesh. Do you have a damned suicide wish?”

Izaiah rubbed his eyes, shifting with a groan to his knees. His muscles barked in agony.

“I don’t expect you to understand. How did you follow me? Dammit, I was careful.”

“Zaiana told me before she left.”

His eyes scrunched shut, internally cursing her for divulging this when he’d explicitly conditioned her not to. Then the second part of his answer registered, and Izaiah slid a look at Tynan.

“Left? Where has Dakodas sent her?”

Why hadn’t she told him? He wasn’t done learning from her, even though their sessions had started to consist of her merely watching his failures, claiming she’d provided all the information she could.

“Zaiana left on her own to track down answers about our still hearts since Malin planted the idea of a curse, not a birth defect.”

Izaiah leaned back on his knees, his breaths finally starting to feel normal again. “Did she? Good for her.” He meant it, glad the dark fae was taking her own initiative for once.

“Before she did, she told me of your own plan of stupidity. Honestly, it’s like running a daycare here sometimes.”

“I told her not to tell you.”

“And why not?”

Tynan stood cross-armed, staring him down. Izaiah pitied the emotion that slipped through the dark fae’s anger toward him.

“For the reason you’re looking at me now. I told you not to care about me.”

“Too late,” he snapped.

Izaiah knew he’d done wrong by Tynan in letting him attach feelings to their moments of lust. In his defense, he hadn’t expected Tynan to be capable of caring. Everything they thought about the dark fae, all the sinister tales of their history, it was not a linear truth. It seemed so ignorant and desperate upon reflection, an easy way out, to pin blame out of fear and condemn an entire group of people by letting the heinous acts of a few be loud enough to define them all. Perhaps the good in their history was merely hidden in the shadows.

“I didn’t know Zaiana cared so much about me to send a watcher.”

With unstable balance, Izaiah rose to his feet, taking a moment to brace on his thighs. “She doesn’t. But what she won’t admit is that she cares for me, and she foolishly cares for your brother. So by association, you have more care than you damn deserve.”

There was no arguing with that.

Tynan said, exasperated, “What are you hoping to achieve here anyway? What could you possibly want with more power?”

“The power of a crown is just an illusion. True power is worth everything.”

“You’ve never struck me as one to desire a throne.”

“I don’t. But the ability to take one for someone else, to stop tyranny before it can warm another seat of influence—that’s worth everything.”

Tynan took a pause for thought. “You’re doing this for her? For Faythe Ashfyre?”

“She’s my queen.”

“The second she gained that title, her kingdom was stolen right in front of her. That’s who you’re giving your life for?”

Izaiah straightened, challenging Tynan with a dark stare-off. “The first half of my life I was a coward. I let my father tell me who I had to be. He didn’t like my preference for males, and I wasn’t a fighter—not back then. I didn’t want to be. I let him take his anger toward me, the world, and himself out on Kyleer,” he confessed. There was no reason to hide his failings. “Agalhor was the best ruler of our time, and he saved me from the mines my father sent me to. But Faythe has it in her not only to make a change for Rhyenelle but also the world. She falls, she gets back up, and she fights. But it’s more than that. She sees, she hears, and she understands. In her, I see a world where fewer of those like me have to fear being themselves, because she will lead by example, as human, as fae, as a commoner, and as a royal. And I’m going to do my part to see her rise.”

Tynan’s harsh expression had relaxed while Izaiah talked. “Believe it or not, I actually understand. For I see the same in Zaiana.”

That set them on a road of mutual perception.

“Then don’t try to stop me.”

“What will the ruin help you achieve?”

Izaiah smiled, musing to himself, “A greater form than a mouse, I assure you.”

Tynan circled around the box, coming closer. “No one but Zaiana has been able to wield that thing. I’ve watched many die trying, and I can’t—” Tynan stopped himself, both in speech and in his steps, less than an arm’s reach away.

Izaiah said carefully, “Only you can stop your feelings. It’s only going to hurt you in the end.”

“Then don’t let there be an end.”

“I know the risk I’m taking.”

Izaiah’s jaw tightened when Tynan reached for his nape, drawing them closer but keeping their stares tangled.

“Then I’m taking it with you.”

“I don’t need you here.”

“I don’t care.”

“I don’t want you?—”

Tynan crushed his lips to his, and Izaiah became torn by anger over the dark fae’s stubbornness and a passion that had begun to grow deeper roots beyond thoughts of lust. He had to stop them, but it felt as futile as commanding the darkest clouds not to break their rain or the brightest sun not to cast its rays. Izaiah’s resistance now was only in an attempt to spare Tynan. To keep his feelings whole and wrapped precious for someone more deserving when he was gone. After the life the dark fae had lived—believing, like Zaiana, they had no hearts to give feelings to—at least Izaiah could leave this world with the fulfillment to have proven that wrong.

So fast, they became a furious collision of shattered resistance. Izaiah didn’t know when they’d moved, but pinning Tynan to the wall allowed his body to press into his, reliving some of the tension to be impossibly closer. Before he knew what he was doing, he was helping Tynan out of his jacket, pulling his shirt over his head, not knowing how since they barely paused for breath.

To the Nether with it all. If that was to be his destination, by the ruin or in some other scar of this war, then why not give in to lustful—maybe even romantic—notions for a while?