Page 38 of A Flame of the Phoenix (An Heir Comes to Rise #6)

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Zaiana

S he didn’t want to be here, cramped in a dark servant’s supply room with Maverick Blackfair. They leaned against opposite walls, mirroring each other, with crossed arms and a foul stare, but the space between them was barely a wide step.

“The easiest way to test this theory is to kill you,” he said plainly.

Zaiana’s mood soured. She’d told him everything she suspected about the curse on dark fae hearts, and how she believed herself to be the anchor for it somehow.

“I’ll give you one attempt to try,” she answered flatly.

Maverick almost yielded a half-smile.

“It makes you wonder, doesn’t it…? In history and now, the fae and the dark fae have been at war with each other. Marvellas merely took advantage of what was already a simmering conflict. But no one wants to admit evil isn’t born, it’s made. And the fae are just as susceptible to it.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does. This changes everything. You can change everything.”

“I may be powerful, but I’m not enough to take down Marvellas. Nothing but her ruin can do that, and it’s embedded in Reylan Arrowood’s chest.”

“Then we retrieve it. We have the one weapon that can kill her, and I’ll rip it right out of him for you to wield.”

She didn’t doubt he would hold true to that.

“I think it would kill him to remove it intact. That’s why she did it—she wants Faythe to break it to save him,” she said.

Maverick didn’t flinch at that. Of course he wouldn’t.

Zaiana calculated. She actually thought of the general’s death if it meant stopping the evil even Faythe and her company wanted to end. But at the thought of Reylan dying, Zaiana actually shuddered with a cold lick of dread at Faythe Ashfyre’s wrath toward the world.

“No. That can’t happen. Reylan needs to stay alive.”

“I didn’t know you’d grown to care so much for him. Did he treat you kindly in Rhyenelle?”

She shot him a look of daggers. “Faythe is just as powerful as Marvellas, and she wouldn’t stop with the death of us if her mate died.”

“She’s too good for that.”

“Love and grief make a deadly weapon, and Faythe is not immune to wielding it for those she loves.”

Maverick hummed, considering her opinions. “I suppose those months in Rhyenelle served you well. You’re particularly observant. I trust your intuition.”

To have Maverick admit he believed in anything she would say came as a jarring surprise.

He said, “So what is your plan then?”

She hated to admit it. “I don’t have one…yet.”

“Maybe not something certain, given the gravity of what you hope to achieve, but you must have thought of some options.”

“The dark fae aren’t going to believe the curse by word of gossip. Even if some did, the moment the masters hear of it, they’ll just start killing anyone who speaks of it. But if I can’t reach Marvellas directly, she’s nothing without the forces she’s gained over centuries. All the dark fae, the masters, Mordecai.”

“Then why don’t we start with them?” he said. “The masters are ancient, but they bleed silver like you. They can be killed.”

“I’ve considered that. But if I kill them without the sway of the dark fae led by them, I’ll only be branded a traitor to my kind. They’ll believe I’ve sided with Faythe against them, and I will not allow everything I’ve built to be thrown into the shadow of an insufferable, overpowered heir.”

“We kill Mordecai then.”

Zaiana ran an exasperated hand down her face. “Do all your suggestions begin and end with killing and no thought or strategy beyond?”

He shrugged. “I like to kill and deal with the consequences as they come.”

“Mordecai is another unknown,” she argued. “We don’t know enough about his resurrection to be certain he can be killed by mortal means.”

“Someone might be on the path to finding that out,” he enlightened her.

Zaiana’s interest piqued.

“It seems he’s taken a liking to Tauria Stagknight. She’s with him now, and he’s taken her to Valgard.”

Zaiana became puzzled at that. “He’s trusting her in his kingdom after what she did in Olmstone?”

“It seems so. Unless he has another motive and the Fenstead queen is na?ve prey in his trap.”

That seemed more logical, but though Zaiana had never really met Tauria Stagknight, all she’d heard had made her believe she was more silently cunning than people gave her credit for.

“Do you know when they’ll return? She must be planning to escape him, or…where’s Nikalias? Her mate, is he not?”

Maverick’s expression shifted with the mention of the High Farrow king. “I assume he’s gone after her, but I don’t have intel on his movements.”

Zaiana’s mind was reeling with what to do. Where to go next. She didn’t feel like she could leave yet, and infuriatingly, there was only one thing that made her reluctant to any plan that involved leaving Lakelaria.

What were Marvellas’s plans with Kyleer?

She shouldn’t care. Her mind tore itself apart over that question that only served to distract and delay her from advancing her own goals.

“How can we get your magick back?”

Maverick’s tone turned softer, and she despised it. The topic made her fists clench, with her now useless iron guard cutting into her palms. Even though she couldn’t conjure her lightning, she couldn’t leave them off.

“Stop using the term we ,” she hissed. “I’m only telling you this since you already know half of it. Our plans aren’t the same.”

“I want Marvellas dead as much as you do.”

“Then why have you been her willing soldier all this time?” Zaiana snapped, her voice rising. She straightened off the wall, which brought them closer. “All this time you’ve been aware of the life she stole from you, yet still you did her most heinous bidding. You killed Faythe and Agalhor when you could have joined them to stop Marvellas. They were your people long before I was.”

Maverick didn’t speak right away. He watched her with a deep, studying frown, and she could hardly stand to be caught in it. She couldn’t understand him, and something told her she never would.

“Someone had to.”

That stung the wound of her failures. He’d done what she’d failed to.

“It didn’t have to be you,” she said.

“Yes, it did.”

Maverick pushed off the wall, pausing with only a slither of space between them. He wore nothing on his face as he stared down at her. His black eyes were so vacant, so… dead .

“This was a very insightful chat,” he said calmly. “I think we both need time to figure out the best move forward with what we know.”

He brushed by her, and light spilled into the small room when he opened the door.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“Play my part in this show, as always.”

He left without another word, leaving her in this cramped space where her thoughts began to suffocate her. There were too many wheels turning in the war that was heading to a climax. She could feel it. The familiar aura of death hung in every new dawn. The building crescendo of battle hummed in every twilight. Only, this time, there was no telling when each battle would come.

Zaiana walked the foreign halls of Lakelaria’s castle, and if it weren’t for how cold the island was, she would have said the kingdom was the greatest in the continent. After being suffocated under so much rock all her life, there was no other place indoors like this, with so much glass, that invoked a similar sense of freedom to what she felt standing atop open mountains.

“Zaiana, my child.”

Her next step paused at the unexpected caress of her name from within the room she was about to pass. The door was slightly ajar, and Zaiana had no choice but to answer the Goddess’s call.

Slipping inside, for a second it was jarring to watch Marvellas so… peaceful . She sat in a large reading room, a book splayed between her palms, but she wasn’t reading. She stared intently into the fire blazing in the pit beside her, so lost in thought or something else that she didn’t react to Zaiana’s presence.

“Join me,” the Spirit said, gesturing with a graceful hand to the gold velvet chair opposite her.

Zaiana really didn’t want to, but she obliged. Refusing would only rouse suspicion or anger.

When her sight fell to the book in Marvellas’s lap, Zaiana read the title: An Immortal Heart of Vengeance .

“Everyone wants to be remembered, but history seldom tells the right story,” Marvellas said, catching her observation before swinging her golden eyes toward the marching flames in the fireplace.

She propped one of her elbows on the arm of the chair to rest her chin against her knuckles. Right now, the Spirit who’d started a war and become the greatest villain in centuries appeared so soft, with the gentle glow of the fire over her features, and so tired .

“You’ve been alive all this time—why let them tell your story any differently from the truth?”

Marvellas’s head tipped back against the tall seat. “Because it wouldn’t make a difference. There’s no amount of truth or sympathy that could atone for all I’ve done now.”

Marvellas didn’t talk with regret for what she’d done, but there was something displaying right now that Zaiana didn’t think the Spirit harbored anymore: humanity.

Zaiana asked carefully, “Why do you want all the royals as dark fae? Why not just kill them and replace them?”

Marvellas’s delicate brow pulled together, and her sight tore from the flames to Zaiana. “That is not part of my plan. The only time the dark fae are more powerful than the fae is when they consume human blood. That’s too volatile and uncertain for my world.”

Zaiana was slammed with confusion, trying to recall where the rumor about her plan for the royals began if it wasn’t true. Then the question arose: Why would she curse her kind to be unfeeling soldiers without hearts?

“Then what is your endgame?”

“The humans are greedy and weak—I plan to annihilate them all. Then I will replace every royal except Faythe Ashfyre. She is too powerful and will bend for me. The others…they may have strong abilities too, but if they get in my way, I won’t hesitate to cut them down. I have plenty of very powerful fae loyal to me that could bring a new reigning name for all the kingdoms in my empire.”

Marvellas told her this with such confidence, as if that future was already set.

“What about the dark fae?”

“They will still serve a purpose. Once all the humans are gone, I will have to put down those who become too savage from the overindulgence. The rest will find use in other ways.”

Use. Zaiana’s bones began to shake. Her very core repelled everything Marvellas spoke of.

The Spirit added, “You have nothing to worry about. Your future is very triumphant—we’ve made sure of it.”

“We?”

Marvellas cocked her head, a hint of a smile at the corner of her red mouth. “Sometimes I look at you and think I made a mistake in letting the masters raise you. There was a moment of weakness where I…” She stalled, considering her next words.

Zaiana’s skin grew too hot. “What do you mean?” she asked desperately.

“I thought you could replace what I lost with Aesira. But it was too soon, so I gave you to them.”

“You’re not my mother.”

Marvellas chuckled lightly. “No. Your mother is dead, and your father would have killed you too…until he saw your eyes. The purple color that foretold the power you would come into. His legacy would live on.”

“My father…” Zaiana choked on the word. “Who?”

“I think a part of you has always known, child.”

Zaiana stood abruptly. Her breathing heaved out of her, but she didn’t know what she wanted to say.

“I have no parents.”

“Good. You have become stronger than anyone could have predicted just on your own. We are creatures of darkness, Zaiana. We were born to be alone.”

She couldn’t stop the rush behind her eyes, and that infuriated her. Zaiana’s blood trickled in her palms, but the pain wasn’t enough to stop the emotions battering the vault within her.

“May I leave?” she ground out.

Marvellas gave a single nod, and Zaiana turned, marching for the door.

She wanted to claw free from her own mind, but there was no escape. She needed something to overpower the weak feelings flooding through her body.

Zaiana didn’t acknowledge the destination her storm was marching her to until it was too late.

She didn’t let herself get closer to the cell that held Kyleer. Zaiana had avoided coming down here for days, even though her nights kept her restless with the itch to just look . To see where he was being kept and what provisions he had.

He sat alone in this cellblock, and Zaiana stayed in the shadows down the hall. He gave no reaction, so she believed she remained hidden. Spying was one of her greatest talents. She couldn’t understand why looking at him calmed her. Knowing he was breathing and within reach allowed her mind to stop raging for a moment.

Making herself known to him might break that peace she was desperate to hold onto just for a while longer. So she breathed the faint scent of him from where she stood. Once, twice, three times. Then she left.