Page 44 of A Flame of the Phoenix (An Heir Comes to Rise #6)

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Zaiana

W hen she reached the cells, Zaiana knew she shouldn’t have come. Everything in her was at a painful tug-of-war, wanting to retreat and desperate to get closer to him.

She’d lost her fight to stay away from engaging with him and saw him through the bars of the many empty cells before she reached his. Kyleer was leaning against the back wall, one knee bent for his elbow to be propped up on, and his hand shielded his eyes.

“I guess it was only a matter of time before they called you in to enjoy this,” he said. His voice was stripped of any emotion.

“Why would I enjoy it?” she asked.

Kyleer let his hand fall to look at her, and when she met those moss-green irises she wasn’t prepared for the yearning that pulled in her. Especially when they speared nothing but ice in her direction.

“Our positions have switched. Don’t tell me you don’t find a certain ironic amusement to it.”

Zaiana curled her fingers around one of the bars. “I enjoy flying. I often enjoy killing. Watching you sit in a pitiful heap…I’m not finding much of a thrill, no.”

Kyleer’s smile was a blade, and his laughter pointed the knife.

“What have they sent you here for? To see if my weakness for you is still there? Tell them to skip straight to the physical stuff.”

Her jaw worked. He assumed she was here by Marvellas’s order. Zaiana didn’t correct him. The Spirit was so concerned with Faythe right now that Zaiana wondered if she’d forgotten the leverage she had with him against the heir.

“I warned you not to fall for me,” she said.

“I didn’t. Not really. I fell for your performance.”

Zaiana tried to ignore the tightening in her stomach with that. “Why are you such a fool to have gotten yourself captured?”

“Don’t waste your breath, Zai. You’re far too smart to believe I’ll tell you anything after what you did.”

“I thought you were smarter than this,” she said.

“The truth is something incomprehensible to you.” He stood, and the resounding clank of his Magestone chains rattled a fury in her. “Imagine a loyalty where someone would damn themselves for their friend. Faythe is far more than my queen. Reylan is far more than my general.”

Zaiana didn’t believe that was the sole reason he was here. They were planning something from within, just as Zaiana had in Rhyenelle. She was patient enough to figure it out sooner or later.

“She is alone. Your plan was never going to place you two cozy in a cell together.”

His smile showed teeth, but there was nothing friendly in it. “If you’re to inflict my physical punishment, get on with it.”

Kyleer approached the bars. Zaiana didn’t move, though his proximity flipped her stomach.

“I might even enjoy it, coming from you.”

His large hand lashed around hers, tightening against her instinct to retreat. All he did was hold her with eyes of hypnotizing, deadly beauty.

“Maybe you haven’t been provoked enough to strike your lightning back into your palms,” he challenged.

She ripped her hand from under his. “Is that what you’re trying to do?”

Kyleer’s mouth quirked a fraction. “I’m just bored, I guess.” He took up a side-lean against the wall.

Zaiana could hardly breathe right from the lingering scent of his blood. “Did you get that dressed?” she asked, indicating the stab wound she’d inflicted in his side.

“There was hardly time.”

“If it gets infected from your mortal pace of healing in those shackles, don’t count on the same treatment you offered me.”

“No bath?”

She gave him her deepest scowl.

He paced to the back of the cell. “Terrible hospitality. Anything I can do to get an upgrade?”

“What are you doing, Kyleer?”

“This method of interrogation doesn’t suit you. Try again.”

He was the last nerve of her already thin patience.

“You’re going to get yourself killed.”

“Does that concern you?”

“No.”

“Good. Then leave. Tell them I want Maverick to inflict any torture.”

“Why him?”

Kyleer didn’t answer. He didn’t need to since the dark vengeance that firmed on his features told her he believed he could stand a chance against Maverick. Even in those bonds.

Zaiana admired his determination, even if emotional for his queen and misplaced. But she knew how vicious Maverick could be, and how merciless he could become.

Then again, there were times when Kyleer had this gleam in his eye that made her wonder what he was truly capable of. Especially for those he loved.

Perhaps love wasn’t a weakness. Perhaps it could fuel a wrath so dangerous it could triumph over anything.

“If you’re not here on their order, I’d rather you weren’t here at all,” he said.

The comment stung. Like a prick in her chest that spread the more she dwelled on it, trying to figure out if he truly meant it.

When she couldn’t stand the hurt, she chose to leave in silence.

“Before you left, you said there would be no place for a hero with a villain,” Kyleer said to her back.

Zaiana stopped walking.

“You’re not a villain, Zai. You’re not a hero or a victim either. You’re a survivor.”

Words shouldn’t lasso around her as strongly as these ones did. Repeating. Tightening. Tormenting. Remembering his scars. His hand over hers with different lines, different stories, but embedded with cruelty all the same. She didn’t want those words to place them on the same desolate ground, because that would mean he was within reach. That would split a seam on a void of emotions she was constantly adding stitches to.

No. It didn’t matter what he saw her as.

There was no place for him with her . Not before what she had done to him, and certainly not now he despised her.

Zaiana came back to him. “I killed the last male who loved me,” she said.

Kyleer’s heart didn’t even waver at her confession. “I didn’t take you as one to enjoy tragic poetry,” he said.

“It’s not a damned poem,” she snapped.

His mouth twitched.

“Are you hoping to exchange tragic love tales? I’ll tell you how I killed my mate if you tell me how you killed yours.”

“He wasn’t my mate . ”

That seemed to disturb something in his chest, but Zaiana was coming to find the rhythm of his heart the most challenging to decipher. It was never so whole and steady. It always beat with fractures—too many for her to know what could cause them in someone so strong and resilient on the exterior.

Kyleer took a long, lazy inhale. “I think you should skip the bullshit, open that door, and test your many ways that you could kill me without your lightning.”

“Trust I’d enjoy nothing more.”

“Neither would I.”

He met her dark look with a slow, enticing smile. Her skin prickled with it. What should have been ire and anger was somehow tuned to sinful desire with this stare.

“You said she died, not that you killed her.”

Kyleer shrugged, tipping his head back against the stone. “The one who killed her did so because of me.”

“You take fault by association?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“Unless I took their life, no.”

“Ah, so the blood on your hands is a little thicker.”

Her fingers clenched as if they would drip with Finnian’s silver blood just to show him the truth.

“Why are you telling me this?” Kyleer asked, bored.

Zaiana resisted the impulse to hurt him and then leave him to bleed out. “For you to drop that insufferable wounded look you have as if you expect better of me.”

Kyleer laughed bitterly. “I’m not wounded, Zai. It’s going to take a lot more than luring me to you only to stab me in the back. Believe it or not, I’ve been through it before. You’re still not that special.”

She could credit him for his resilience, yet all it did was emit a sharpness in her chest that threatened to cut.

She would not bleed for him.

Kyleer said, “Go on then—tell me how you did it. It’s rather tedious in here day by day, so I could use a good horror story featuring my favorite beautiful nightmare.”

He riled her like no one else ever had. Not even Maverick. This was a different kind of irritation that wasn’t about winning but figuring him out, maybe even protecting him.

Zaiana paced in front of his cell. “The Blood Trials had three stages. The first was a game. We were set at the foot of a mountain and had one week to reach the top. Many were eliminated, being killed by their competitors. I didn’t spill a drop of blood to get to the top first. The second trial, we faced each other in combat. The winners would go on to compete against each other until there were only three. The final trial, we were told we would face our greatest enemy.”

Kyleer had fixed his attention her without any taunt or teasing. It made her skin crawl worse than when he was getting on her nerves.

“You faced your lover,” Kyleer concluded.

Zaiana glanced at her hip, at the strip of Finnian’s shirt tied there on the hilt of her sword, and the memory rammed into her. “Love is always a delusion. This ideal that a single person would truly put you above anything and everything. There will always be a temptation that overpowers it.”

“What was his?”

Kyleer voiced her eternal torment. She would never know. Heartache consumed her so wholly that when he’d attacked without mercy or hesitation, she’d had no choice but to fight back. Then rage embraced her for the betrayal as he tried to cut her down and she had to end him.

“Power. Status. Do one person’s reasons really matter?”

“Was he in the running for Delegate?”

“No. He claimed he didn’t want that. But perhaps that was the exchange for killing me.”

Kyleer’s frown deepened. “Why would they grant one person the chance to win without needing to complete the other trials?”

“You don’t know their ways,” she snapped. “They don’t need reason to bend the rules. No one needs logic to do as they damned well please, and they’re always starving for cruel entertainment at our expense.”

Kyleer groaned against the ache of his wound and shackles as he straightened. “All I’m saying is, even the wicked have a motive. Surely you’ve found out what that had to be for him to betray you like that. It’s a rather extreme way of trying to win a—no offense—hollow title, when he could have just competed himself.”

She did take offense to the gibe at her title. It infuriated her, because she knew it to be true now. Her whole life she’d trained for it, thinking it would prove something, but it didn’t matter; she would always remain the masters’ foot soldier.

“Zai,” he said. The jarring softness snapped her sight to him from her tunneling thoughts. He’d come close, right to the bars, and his moss-green eyes were searching. “Have you ever considered his will wasn’t his own?”

“What?” she snapped. It was a ridiculous notion. She had been there. Felt the ferocity of his attacks. Listened to the taunts he’d goaded her with.

I never loved you.

It was all a trick.

You are weak.

Zaiana shook her head, having nothing but anger to torch those taunts she’d buried with his corpse.

“Think about it. They wanted you to be unfeeling. Their perfect, ruthless leader. They never would have accepted you falling for someone, because they’ve made you believe that is the ultimate weakness. That you’re incapable of love.”

“You don’t know anything,” she hissed. “You don’t know what it was like down there.”

“You’re right. I don’t. But I know you…I’ve felt you. Your biggest war will always be within yourself, because you want something you’ve been told your whole life you can’t have. That it will always betray you, and so you try to get there first.”

“I didn’t want anything from you, Ky. Not then, and not now.”

The skin around his eyes flexed. Zaiana was held by him. She didn’t want to be, and there was a threat in her that was screaming to turn away. Because when Kyleer looked at her, he didn’t see what everyone else did. Somehow, he had the ability to dive deeper, as if the vault of depravity and sin and heartbreak didn’t exist to him. He saw everything and never balked.

“When are you going to break free of their manipulation to think for your damned self?”

He might as well have struck her since those words held the impact of a blow to her gut.

“I should have killed you.”

“Probably. Because Gods forbid I actually shine a light on your delusions.”

The key to his cell was thrust into the lock before she even knew what she was doing. His irises flashed with wicked delight when the barrier between them swung open and she marched to him.

Kyleer’s back met the wall, and Zaiana braced her hands against his abdomen, leaning in close.

“I bet you’re running through the many ways you think you could overpower me and escape right now,” she said in a low, seductive murmur.

To her delight, Kyleer’s pulse picked up in speed, not expecting this reaction from her.

“I also bet there’s another voice that wants to stay,” she said, pushing up on her toes, but it wasn’t enough to reach his mouth unless he inched his face closer to meet her. Slowly, his head did angle down, enough that they shared breath.

Zaiana couldn’t deny the closeness affected her. That she too had to silence voices in her mind that wanted to surrender to the enemy.

Just as his irises began to cloud with the same alignment of thought, it winked out with a hiss when her metal guards pressed into the wound on his side. Zaiana pushed off him, slicing into it as she did.

The scent of his blood flooded the air stronger. Zaiana was transfixed by the crimson over the metal on her middle and pointer fingers. The thirst in her throat tightened to pain. So fast she’d never experienced this rage of desire for it before. Especially not from a fae.

“Do it,” he said thickly.

She hadn’t heard him approach, so temptingly close. Zaiana should have gained distance, but she didn’t. Not even when his hand reached around the wrist she held up.

Their stares locked with a heat that battled fire with fire.

Zaiana lost herself, letting him guide her hand to her mouth. Her breathing quickened.

This is so wrong.

Yet the craving roared over all her senses.

The moment the blood touched her tongue, Zaiana exploded with euphoria. Her lips closed around the metal tip of the talon adorning her finger, and she was hardly aware of the arm that wound around her waist, pulling her against a solid warmth that entangled with the taste of him.

“You are a stunning little monster,” Kyleer said as a quiet gravel. His pupils were so large they’d swallowed most of the green. His thumb traced over her bottom lip, and her hand dropped.

“There are at least seven ways I could kill you right now,” he said.

“Only seven?”

“How many do you have?”

“At least nine, but I can get creative in the moment.”

“I don’t doubt that for a second.”

Zaiana slipped out of his hold. “You’re lucky Marvellas is too focused on bending Faythe’s mind. She doesn’t care what happens to you. You’re nothing to her.”

“I’m not offended by that. What is she doing to Faythe?”

“I don’t owe you anything.”

“Then why are you here?”

Once again, Zaiana didn’t know why she’d come. She wanted to blame boredom when it was only the partial truth. As in Rhyenelle, she was left to wander with no purpose during the days, while Marvellas was occupied with her plans for Faythe. Her nights were also getting restless. She’d awaited her sleep demon, but he hadn’t come back yet.

“How many Nightwalkers do you know?” she blurted.

Kyleer frowned. “A few. Not many that personally though. Why do you ask?”

Her insecurity came rushing to seal her lips. “Never mind.”

“Zai,” he said as she tried to walk away. “Ask something more specific. Your company is mildly better than the delirious silence.”

She didn’t have anything more specific.

“It doesn’t matter,” she mumbled.

“Clearly, it does.”

Zaiana ran a hand over her face, debating whether she should abandon him.

“Is it possible for someone to have more than one ability?”

“Of course. It’s very rare though. Most who have two are Waterwielders with healing as a second stem.”

“What about two that have nothing to do with each other?”

Kyleer’s brow hooked as he looked her over. “Now I’m intrigued. Is this about you?”

“No.”

Her quick reaction exposed the lie.

“You think you can Nightwalk?”

“No. I mean…I don’t know. I guess not,” she rambled. It wasn’t often she was so flustered.

This new uncertainty about herself had been slowly eating away at everything she thought she’d mastered in herself. She didn’t want to discover that was what it was. Rather, she hoped it was simply the fae who visited her dreams who was responsible for her being able to meet him there.

“Who else have you told about it?”

“No one. Forget I said anything—no one will believe you.”

“Damn, I was itching to tell the nighttime rats.”

She glowered at him. Kyleer huffed a laugh before sliding himself down the wall to sit. Zaiana harbored a note of guilt for his wince of pain as he did.

“When did it start?” he coaxed.

She pinched her lips. There was some lift of liberation in getting to speak of it. She couldn’t tell Tynan or Amaya. Certainly not Maverick. With Kyleer, she could pretend it would be forgotten. Irrelevant.

“When your king infiltrated my mind, I woke with him in there,” she began, pacing with her reeling mind. “He seemed surprised by it. I didn’t know it was something I shouldn’t be able to do. I think it’s the only way I survived it. Or he would have taken what he wanted without my knowing and killed me.”

Kyleer was silent, and she found him with a tense, distant expression.

“I assumed Faythe managed to wake you before that,” he said, devoid of emotion.

“She arrived too late.”

“Faythe was against what he did to you. As was I.”

Zaiana didn’t want to hear it. The damage was done.

“It doesn’t matter. I was going to kill the king for what he did. I would have, if Maverick didn’t get to him first. If I didn’t hesitate .”

“Don’t hate yourself for your hesitations,” Kyleer said. “If anything, it may be the last thing you have to remember you can feel anything at all.”

“I don’t want to feel.” It slipped from her mouth like a plea.

Around him, she was always slipping .

“Why?”

Because it hurt too much. No matter what she did or who she tried to be. It always cut and tore, and she bled.

When she didn’t answer, Kyleer said, “If you don’t feel, they win. It’s what they’ve always wanted. An army fighting to a vicious degree because they have nothing to lose. They made you kill your past love to claim back your full attention. They’re afraid of you, Zai. Of what you could become in the name of something you love, rather than on their side by hate and vengeance. They could have just killed him themselves, but in having you do it, believing as strongly as you do now that he betrayed you, they win again. I’ve seen it—there is not a piece of you that will ever fully trust again.”

“Finnian made his choice to betray me,” she seethed.

“It’s not a choice if it’s forced.”

He was wrong. So, so wrong.

“You weren’t there.”

“Zai…the dark fae have been under the command of a Spirit with the power to command minds .”

That slammed into her worse than anything physical. So hard she didn’t feel anchored to this gravity anymore.

Marvellas had never visited her under the mountain. To her kind, she’d been all but a fable growing up.

Then she remembered the dream, a memory, that had been plucked from her subconsciousness by the male who’d visited her. Had that been real?

Zaiana couldn’t be sure.

She was spiraling.

Through time, space. She didn’t know where she was anymore.

“Zai.”

She only heard his voice when it was accompanied by a touch on her hand. Zaiana glanced at his fingers against hers, and she ripped them free.

“I know it must be difficult to believe?—”

“Difficult?” She mocked the word. What a silly, insulting word for the weight of the world that was crushing her.

Your love is deadly.

Agalhor had been right. And staring into those moss-green eyes that had shifted to sympathy, she couldn’t bear it.

“I won’t come back here again,” she said.

“What if I want you to?”

“Then you’re already falling for the easiest way I could kill you.”