Page 37 of A Flame of the Phoenix (An Heir Comes to Rise #6)

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Faythe

“ T his plan of yours sounds impossible,” Faythe said, pacing her cell.

“So does my being here at all,” Nyte countered.

That was a good point.

Faythe considered it again. His theory suggested Faythe might be capable of transferring the thread of his consciousness, which had latched itself to her, into someone else’s mind instead. Therefore, he might be able to control their mind and have a physical body.

“The mind is far more complex than we can ever imagine. An ability like ours to tap into conscious and unconscious brains is unparalleled and full of unexplored potential. Reading thoughts, compulsion…that’s all at the most basic level.”

“That’s easy, and fascinating to talk about in theory, but in practice, it’s never been done.”

“Yet,” Nyte added with a small, wicked smile. “Everything is unexplored until the first curious person ventures beyond what’s already known. I have no doubt in my ability once I have a host, so I need you to believe you can give me one.”

“And Captain Daegal is who you’re choosing to become?”

“Unless you have a host of others to choose from that you’re keeping to yourself.”

Faythe pursed her lips then groaned in defeat, running a hand down her face. “If this doesn’t work, all I’ll receive is a brutal beating from him.”

Nyte shrugged. “It’s a risk.”

He didn’t care at all. As he’d reiterated many times, even this plan to gain him a host was his attempt to aid himself. Nyte had no intention of helping them in this war against his mother—he had a far more important person he needed to get back to.

“The one who’s waiting for you…she’s your mate?”

Faythe lingered it like a question, but she felt his sharp edge was made of the deepest concern and distress to be parted from her. Just as hers was for Reylan.

“Yes,” he said.

Reylan was still close by. She couldn’t imagine the tear her soul would feel if she woke up in a new realm away from him.

“I’ll help you,” Faythe agreed. “But while we’re figuring out how to get you back, you have to help us in any way you can in return.”

The gold in Nyte’s eyes darkened a shade before it subdued. He didn’t like negotiation—that was clear.

“How exactly do you plan to stop my mother?” Nyte asked.

Faythe debated what to share with him. If she could grant him a temporary mortal form, how could she be sure he wouldn’t turn against them and side with Marvellas? Anything she told him would be compromised.

“We’re still figuring that out,” she said.

Nyte’s eyes narrowed, knowing she was withholding information. “I can feel your emotions, remember? I thought we were beginning to trust each other. I’m wounded.”

“You’re her son. Her blood. How can I be certain that won’t change your allegiance when you have the ability to speak to her?”

Impatience fell on his face. “There’s only one way to kill a God, so what is it you have of hers that can kill her?”

It wasn’t surprising he would know that.

“Maybe nothing, but if we lose the weapon to kill her, we know of something that can at least silence the power of a God.”

“Do you also know who will forfeit their life to use either weapon to bring her down?”

That slammed into Faythe. “Forfeit their life?”

Nyte gave a breathy laugh without humor and pushed himself up off the cot.

“You didn’t research too far into this, did you? Yes, Faythe. To either kill her or silence her power will kill the person who achieves it. You’re dealing with very powerful magick. It always demands a high price.”

Nerida hadn’t mentioned that about the Aetherbonds. Though that news was devastating, it changed nothing.

“I’ll do what I have to.”

“Then what was all of this for? Saving your mate, who will follow right after you if you die.”

Faythe swore inwardly, knowing he was right. She was willing to do what it took to save her friends and their world, but Reylan wouldn’t stay here without her. Not unless she took his memory like Aesira had done…

She fell onto her cot with the dark weight of that option. The mere thought tasted like bitter betrayal to his devotion, but it would save him.

Faythe’s head fell between her hands, and her fingers threaded through her hair. Her mind began to spiral.

“I can do it.”

Her head snapped up to lock his gaze. Nyte’s expression stayed passive.

He said, “In Daegal’s body, I can use the weapon against my mother, and you can pull my consciousness back in time.”

Faythe turned the proposition over and over in her mind. It was a brilliant loophole, and hope sparked in her chest. She rose from the cot, standing face-to-face with Rainyte Ashfyre, son of Marvellas… Was it possible fate had finally fallen in their favor to grant this solution?

She didn’t want to die. There was still so much she hadn’t had the chance to experience.

“Are you sure you’ll be able to go through with it?” she asked. Her pulse raced to place the most trust she ever had in an uncertain alliance.

“Your only option is to find out.” His eyes flicked over her shoulder. “And your time to do so is now.”

Faythe’s heart skipped, and she turned, anticipating the vile image of Captain Daegal to appear. The footing sounded too light, however, and the scent she captured next exposed Zaiana before she slipped out of the darkness.

“Who is that?” Nyte asked. There was something in his tone that felt like shock.

“Zaiana,” Faythe said aloud, as it wouldn’t seem odd to answer with her name.

Faythe didn’t move, tracking the dark fae with slight curiosity to see if she might acknowledge Nyte behind her. She didn’t.

“She’s sent me for you,” Zaiana informed her.

“No Captain Daegal this time?” Faythe asked, keeping her tone disinterested.

“Marvellas wants me to supervise your attempts to break the ruin. She thinks I might be able to teach you .”

“Why doesn’t she make you break it?” Faythe grumbled.

“It would be a waste of my talents to die that way when you have it in you to break it and live.”

Nyte said, more as a thought to himself, “She’s fascinating, and I’m assuming quite powerful.”

He had no idea.

Faythe followed Zaiana out of the cell, leaving Nyte behind and focusing to rally her composure if she was to make her first attempt with the ruin. Above that, Faythe was yearning to see Reylan again. Even if he still looked at her like the enemy.

“How is Kyleer?” Faythe tried to inquire with the dark fae again. She’d been in turmoil over her captive friend.

“I took the task of watching you instead. You should be glad—the alternative would have been Maverick, no doubt.”

Faythe’s spine locked.

“He’s here?”

“Yes.”

“He’ll torture Kyleer.”

“Probably.”

Faythe stopped walking. Zaiana turned back lazily, doing a commendable job of appearing like she didn’t care what happened to Kyleer. Was she bluffing? Faythe didn’t know why she kept believing Zaiana harbored a shred of feeling toward her friend, if no one else. She felt in her gut that Zaiana wouldn’t let him be tortured or killed.

“Are Jakon and Marlowe?—”

“I don’t care about you or any of your friends. It’s been mildly entertaining watching your circle break apart while everyone tries to be the hero. One way or another, you’ll all get yourselves killed, and you should focus on yourself, like they are.” Zaiana stopped, and Faythe flinched, backing against the wall when she swallowed the distance between them. “I’ve always thought you reckless and weak and in over your head. Too many times you’ve proven me right. She’s going to try to break you. Both of you. I can’t say I’m confident you’re strong enough not to let her. But if there’s ever a time to put everything you have into proving me wrong, it’s now. They call you the Phoenix Queen? Then set your heart ablaze for those you swear to protect.”

The second half of Zaiana’s speech was contrary to the first. She did care—about more people than she could admit even to herself. Faythe didn’t display her empathy—Zaiana would despise it—but all she saw when she looked at the dark fae was a softening heart at war with a steel mind.

Faythe gave one nod of affirmation. That was enough for Zaiana to back away and lead again.

Her skin chilled with every step. Her cage had become safer than wandering the wild in Marvellas’s domain.

Two fae in all-black uniform waited ahead. Before they reached them, Zaiana came close, hovering behind them. Her voice whispered across her ear.

“Do not break.”

Zaiana shoved Faythe, who almost lost her footing. The fae in front caught her, and the next second she felt the familiar pull of Shadowporting.

When the darkness cleared and the temperature dropped, she immediately saw why she’d needed that reminder from Zaiana.

Reylan was here. Faythe’s horror kept climbing the more she took in of the scene. The dried blood around where he kneeled in this small cabin. His bound wrists splaying his arms, and his bare chest. His bowed head that didn’t look up.

Marvellas stood like a beacon of blood and fire. Faythe couldn’t even spare her a kernel of her attention beyond a glance —it was all fixed on her mate as fingers jabbed into her spine, forcing her further across the space.

While Reylan’s skin was free of fresh marks or blood, Faythe began to tremble, knowing that wouldn’t last long.

“You don’t have to hurt him.” She whispered her weak words, knowing they were futile.

“I wish that were true,” the Spirit said, so calm and uncaring.

Do not break.

Faythe thought she could find the strength of mind, the physical resistance to pain, against what Marvellas might do to her, but this… Reylan was her biggest weakness.

Marvellas glided like a poisonous red snake around Reylan, and Faythe jerked at her proximity. She was stopped from taking her first step by a rough grip on her arm from the fae who’d brought her here.

“I really hope you both make it,” Marvellas said, tipping her head with an admiring look at Reylan as if he were her prized pet. Faythe’s rage boiled under her skin. “Zaiana will stop you if you get too close to your limit.”

She’d agreed to do his. Condemn the world by breaking the ruin—the only thing that could send the Spirits back to their realm or kill Marvellas herself. Faythe approached Reylan even though he paid her no mind. She crouched in front of him…and knew in her heart her choice to save him was absolute, no matter the cost.

“What do I need to do?” Faythe asked quietly.

“That is what you must figure out. I cannot touch it. Zaiana is the only one in our history who has been able to wield the colossal power they contain. She will guide you.”

Zaiana stood poised, as straight as a soldier, by the small fireplace in the room.

Marvellas had sworn a blood oath it wouldn’t kill him, but what if Marvellas knew a broken magickal bond couldn’t kill her anyway, and Faythe had been a fool to stake her belief in it?

There was no more time for questioning, no time to reconsider her choice, but still, her mind spun and spun on an endless loop of doubt, terror, and dread.

“I’m not very patient, my dear,” Marvellas said calmly.

She gave Faythe no second to respond before she intervened. Reylan’s body tensed, and a pain sound escaped his gritted teeth.

“Stop hurting him!” Faythe yelled, taking his head in her hands, wild panic in her eyes.

His body relaxed, heaving deep breaths, and Faythe could hardly stop shaking from the pure bottled rage within her.

“We’re going to get through this,” she whispered to him. “I’m going to get you back.”

“I’ll need time to explain how she can open herself to the power without letting it dominate,” Zaiana interjected.

Marvellas’s attention swung to the dark fae. Impatience flexed in the Spirit’s jaw.

“If she dies on your watch, your life will be next, and it will not leave this world painlessly,” Marvellas warned.

Faythe didn’t expect such a lethal threat. As she passed Faythe like a red river, her knuckles reached down to brush Faythe’s cheek with a stinging tenderness.

“I’ll see you for supper.”

Then she was stolen by darkness, leaving Faythe alone with Reylan and Zaiana.

“I’ve faced many challenges in my grueling upbringing, but keeping you alive is by far the most infuriating,” Zaiana grumbled.

The dark fae relaxed from her strict stance, slackening her hands from their clasp behind her back. Faythe watched her, wondering if it was nerves she saw spilling over Zaiana now the Spirit was gone.

“This should be easy for you. It sure seemed that way on the Fire Mountains when you showed off your ability to wield the ruin.”

Zaiana’s purple eyes sliced into her with accusation. “I can’t do that right now,” she said, low and dark.

Faythe’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“I mean it’s your fault I have no magick!”

Zaiana spun away from Faythe with that, pinching the bridge of her nose as if she hadn’t wanted to admit it. Faythe was stunned. She never would have guessed since Zaiana had seemed as frightening as ever.

“How is that possible?” Faythe asked, genuinely curious.

It should be a win for Faythe, shouldn’t it? But all it inspired was concern.

“If I knew, I would have recovered it by now,” she answered bitterly.

“So you can get it back?”

“I think so, I just…don’t know how yet. Which means I can’t contain the power of the ruin if you lose control again, just like I couldn’t when you recklessly exposed yourself to it at the inn.”

Faythe should have realized sooner.

Her sight fell back to Reylan, who remained utterly unmoving. She had to track his shoulders to soothe her panic that he was still breathing.

“What do I do?” she whispered in horror.

Zaiana gave a groan, pacing the small cabin behind Reylan. She appeared deep in thought, trying to figure out how to explain the complexities of where to begin with wielding a ruin.

“I really hoped I would never have to do this again,” Zaiana muttered under her breath.

“You were made to teach others?”

“No. Kyleer’s foolish younger brother was Nether-bent on attempting it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s killed him since I left.”

Faythe gasped, covering her mouth and standing. “The Light Temple Ruin,” she whispered.

Oh Gods. She’d entrusted its location to Izaiah and didn’t want to believe he would betray that. Now she couldn’t be sure. What possible reason would Izaiah have for wanting to learn to wield it?

“Did he say why?” Faythe asked.

“He wouldn’t tell me.”

“Then why would you help him?” It slipped out of Faythe like an accusation. She didn’t know Izaiah’s intentions, but she cared for him as deeply as she always did, hoping in her heart he would never truly turn against them.

“I owed him a favor. He kept Amaya and Tynan alive when your father betrayed our agreement, and he captured them again the moment they were out of my sight.”

Faythe blinked, steadying her thoughts that were battered with this new information. She’d been an oblivious fool to Agalhor’s plans, and she couldn’t decide what emotion was dominating her now at discovering this.

She wanted to believe in Agalhor’s actions. He’d only done what he’d had to do in the interest of his kingdom, even if it was dishonorable to betray Zaiana’s deal in offering herself as a captive in place of her friends. But the dark fae had been cunning—she’d already known Agalhor wouldn’t honor it.

Zaiana was incredibly preceptive and cunning.

“Why did Izaiah come to you in the first place?” Faythe asked, needing all the pieces she could get of this picture before the Battle of Ellium unfolded.

“He wanted to know about the ruin, and he taunted me with Tynan as if I didn’t know he’d grown feelings for him and wouldn’t have let him die anyway. Amaya was my concern, and she wouldn’t have survived without him.”

Izaiah had feelings for Tynan. Unexpectedly, Faythe found a sense of hope in that. The fae and the dark fae weren’t born enemies. They just had to make the world see that.

Her thoughts reeled back to Izaiah’s motives with the ruins, running over why he could possibly need to be more powerful… Or, the question was, what could he become with his Shapeshifting ability if it was amplified by the ruin?

“You’re wasting time,” Reylan said, cutting through their building tension. “I’m rather hoping it kills you before you can break it.”

Faythe’s heart squeezed. Even Zaiana gave a flicker of disturbance at the cold statement.

“Too bad. I’m not dying, and neither are you,” Faythe said, kneeling back down in front of him. She glanced up at Zaiana. “Tell me what to do.”

“It’s not as simple as that,” she said bitterly. Zaiana cast her sight to the heavens as if a God might hear the plea for sanity in her thoughts. “I guess we’ll see if your stubbornness against dying can hold out with this too.”

Faythe listened to Zaiana with all her attention. Nothing that left her as instruction or personal experience sounded remotely appealing. The more the dark fae went on, the more Faythe grew riddled with terror, disbelief, and anxiety to achieve the impossible.

“You’re not trying to wield it, however. My guess is that you have to trick it. Open yourself just enough for the beginning of an alliance, feel for a crack of weakness, and throw everything you harbor in your own well into the ruin.”

In conversation it sounded plausible; in practice, Faythe knew it wouldn’t be so easy.

“And you can’t take over if I lose control,” Faythe said in a fearful breath.

“I might be able to sever your connection, but it will hurt both of you. A lot. I can’t be certain it won’t leave permanent effects.”

“Like what?” Faythe dreaded to ask.

“Madness.”

She swallowed hard against her dry throat.

Faythe slipped her hands over Reylan’s cheeks, coaxing his face up until she met his sapphire irises. They were so cold and lost it ached in her soul.

Her trembling fingers slipped down his chest. Threads of the ruin’s power wound around her fingertips, quickly spreading a vibration up her arm. It slowly raked over her body and latched onto her well of magick.

Faythe held her panicked eyes on those of the other half of her soul. “Just please stay with me, no matter how much it hurts. I hurt with you,” she croaked, absolutely terrified for them both.

She didn’t know what she was doing. The power began to flood her veins and crash like a shadowy storm through her mind. In her panic, Faythe struggled to keep the magick from overwhelming her in an instant. This terrible, ferocious, starving power that clawed and shrieked and wanted to claim her, mind, body, and soul.

She couldn’t let it, but already, it was winning. Faythe tried to search for Reylan in the chaos of dark power—the only anchor that could keep her from drowning in the shadows.

“Please stop.” Reylan’s voice of pure agony echoed through this void of ending they were lost in together.

“I have to do this,” Faythe said. Her soul tore to hurt him.

She hugged his physical body tighter. At least, she thought she did, but her tether to the real world was slipping fast. Faythe might have the power to break the ruin, but she had no skill to navigate this fight for dominance. The ruin was a force that could not be defied or controlled easily. It was fighting to take over, and if that happened…Faythe would be no more than a vessel for the deadly power.

It wasn’t something whole she could target. It circled her, evading her, mocking her. Faythe was too overwhelmed and frightened, and she didn’t know how to stand against it for a chance.

An arm of smoke grew around her, growing in size, until she kneeled helplessly in a raging tempest of wailing souls and furious darkness. The sound…the beating wind, it was familiar.

Like hundreds of crows.

Faythe gasped when a thick tendril of smoke surged down from the eye of the tempest, ready to devour her?—

Faythe’s eyes flew open though she didn’t remember closing them. An eruption of pain in her shoulder tore a scream from her throat. When she found Zaiana straddling her, a Magestone blade dripping crimson in her hand, she understood it had been the dark fae’s last resort to snap Faythe’s attachment to the ruin.

She slumped against the floor, panting and sweat-slicked.

“How long did I try for?” Faythe asked, trying to get her vision to stay focused on the brown roof flickering with firelight.

“Two minutes.”

Horror doused her. Two minutes had felt like hours on her body.

Zaiana got off her as she said, “We knew you weren’t going to achieve it on the first try.”

“That almost sounds like you have faith in me.”

Faythe had never heard the particular huff of light amusement from Zaiana. “Your name is ironic.”

Her head lolled to find Reylan, head bowed again, but he was breathing with more exertion now. His skin was paler, with a sheen the flames glowed over.

“Are you okay?” she barely whispered.

Reylan’s head lifted a fraction. He took a pause of silence before he spoke. “So long as you remain afraid of the dark, it will always hold power over you.”