Page 5 of A Flame of the Phoenix (An Heir Comes to Rise #6)

CHAPTER FOUR

Zaiana

Z aiana stood in void without memory, but the peace it offered left her with little desire to question it.

She wasn’t alone.

From the dark depths, Maverick eased out. Her breath caught at his shirtless chest, eyes mapping the scars he wore. She tried to find her own within them, and where their paths of cruelty joined.

“What are you?—?”

He hushed her with a kiss to her neck that tipped her head back on a breath. His hand cupped her nape. It was then she realized all she was wearing was a dainty black silk nightgown. She couldn’t stop her desire to place hands on his abdomen.

“What’s one more night of fantasy? ” he murmured over her skin.

She almost nodded; lust clouded her senses to drive an immediate agreement.

“Why didn’t you kill him?”

Zaiana’s fluttering eyes snapped open at the question. She racked her mind for a name teetering right at the edge of her thoughts. “Who?” she asked, though a coil tightened in her gut.

“Me.”

Her breath drew sharp when Kyleer pressed into her from behind. Large hands dominated her waist, and his scent. Zaiana’s eyes pricked.

“I couldn’t do it,” she whispered. Gods, she hated herself for the weakness, but more so, she was overwhelmed with need for him.

Her back curved into him, her body turning to clay that was his to mold.

Kyleer’s soft lips planted to her shoulder, and she bit back a pitiful whimper.

The heat from him—and from Maverick—encased her in two conflicting yearnings. She couldn’t push either one away, giving in to the greed of wanting them both.

Her hand reached behind her, and her head inclined sideways against Kyleer’s bare chest while two sets of hands explored her. Maverick’s kiss met her chest; Kyleer’s breath trickled over her ear. She was melting in the press between both of them.

“Why did you do it?” Kyleer’s hurt vibrated across her neck.

When she angled her head back to look at him, she came apart inside. The betrayal he pinned her with smothered her lust.

His moss-green irises swirled to hatred so fast. Both his hands wrapped around her throat, and she clawed at the vise grip.

“Ky—”

Darkness peppered her vision.

“You will always be cold and alone, Zaiana. Always lost and wandering with the choices you’ve made.”

A spear of air sliced her throat. Zaiana’s whole body jerked with a pain that shot through every nerve and clenched her teeth. She panted, snapping her lids open when it eased, but her breathing wouldn’t tame as she recalled her dream—no. It had turned to a nightmare twisted from her reality.

Her skin was slick and hot, and one glance to the side stilled her at the person she found in the chair across the room.

“You mumble in your sleep, you know?” Maverick drawled, flipping through a book.

Zaiana tried to prop herself up, but her movements were agony.

“Here,” a soft, feminine voice said to her on her other side. Amaya.

Zaiana’s senses were stuffed with cotton—she could hardly detect a thing. The fright caused another wince Amaya shared. The darkling extended a glass of water, which Zaiana immediately reached for. Her throat ached with every gulp.

Wiping her lips, she dreaded to ask, “How long have I been asleep?”

“Six weeks,” Maverick said, thumping his book shut in one hand. “In and out, but I’m going to guess you don’t remember any moment of consciousness when you were hardly present.”

She couldn’t have heard that right. No—it wasn’t possible she’d lost that much time since the Battle of Ellium. Her breathing picked up. Scanning outside, glimpsing the crimson peaked mountains, confirmed she was still in Rhyenelle. They’d won. Except…

Zaiana flung back the covers, but she couldn’t twist out of the bed as quickly as her mind wanted her to. Her entire body seized tight, with sharp pain shooting through every muscle like she’d never felt before…because she’d never lain so still for so long in her life.

They weren’t lying.

Maverick stood from the chair, lingering his eyes on Amaya expectantly.

The darkling rose from her crouch by the bed Zaiana was in, obeying Maverick’s silent order. Zaiana’s thoughts were too scrambled to even object.

Her memory came in flashes.

Trembling, terrifying slices of vision that almost could have been mistaken as movement in her dead chest with how fast the adrenaline coursed through her.

“Kyleer,” Maverick said. That name was like a whip that drew her bewildered eyes to him.

“What?” she breathed. He couldn’t possibly have found out what she’d?—

“You said his name a few times over the weeks.” Maverick stared her down, and Zaiana had never before felt her cheeks heating, flustered over how to explain that. “Did he hurt you?”

Zaiana blinked, not expecting that would be his conclusion, but she supposed it was her own guilty conscience that had thought it was evident why the commander was plaguing her mind. “Something like that,” she muttered. Her thoughts were frayed strings trying to find something to tie onto.

The battle. Faythe had wings. They’d fought in the sky.

Zaiana had lost.

No—they both had.

“What happened?” She tried to recall, but all that stunned her mind was a final bright flare before the impact of power she should not have survived.

“There were moments when…” Maverick trailed off as though he were tormented by his own memories. He paced away from the bed. “We didn’t know if you’d pull through. But I shouldn’t have doubted. You’re far too stubborn to die.”

Zaiana tried to study him, and while she would usually want to cast him out, say something wicked as the language they’d crafted between them, she was momentarily caught by how vulnerable he looked.

She’d fallen from that sky, her wings…

“You caught me.”

A muscle in his jaw flexed, but he didn’t meet her eye.

“You’re not in the clear yet,” he said vacantly, heading for the door. For the first time, a calling for him to stay lodged in her throat.“I’ll let Dakodas know you’re finally awake and lucid but still recovering.”

The mention of the Dark Spirit sent a chill down her spine.

“Did anyone…?” Zaiana shouldn’t care, and she hoped it came off as an inquiry about their triumph. “Did everyone make it?”

Maverick paused with his hand on the door. “For now,” he confirmed. His black eyes lingered on her like he was yearning to stay and explain, but something was dominating him to leave. “Faythe escaped, Marvellas has the general though. Truthfully, I don’t know what they’re planning for now, but I think we should all brace for the Nether that’s about to be unleashed by that one.”

Zaiana’s gut twisted at the notion. If they captured Faythe’s mate…

A dizzy spell threatened to collapse her back down, but Zaiana couldn’t rest another moment.

She’d wasted too much time.

“They don’t expect anything from you until you’re fully recovered. If you were smart, you’d consider drinking human blood to heal faster despite your long abstinence.”

Zaiana’s mouth fell open with a denial she didn’t get to voice, because Maverick didn’t look back as he left. How did he know she hadn’t indulged in human blood for a long time? Or was he merely guessing, since she’d refrained on their quest together?

It didn’t matter. She had far bigger problems to face, and she would prove she didn’t need the help of human blood.

Zaiana clenched her teeth, maneuvering to sit with her legs off the bed. Bracing a hand on the headboard, she forced stability through the sharp pains to stand.

Her footing stumbled at the tilt of the room. Zaiana caught herself on whatever object she could. The bedpost. Then the dresser. Where were her clothes? She only wore a black silk nightgown.

She decided to try the closet. Within it, she found suitable combat attire and had to wonder who’d left it for her. Now her mind had started to come back, she gathered the right sense to be irritated by Maverick watching over her like he cared.

He’d saved her. Zaiana’s fists clenched with the notion it could hang over her, a life debt owed.

If he’d let her die, she would have been out of his way as the most favorable dark fae in the ranks. She didn’t want to believe it was out of his own will, his want. No—she couldn’t allow him, or herself, to fall into a trap of caring whether the other lived or died.

With the world cracking into war, and with their fates to lead on the front lines, entangling their emotions with each other would only get them killed sooner.

Fully dressed, she found her metal guards on the nightstand and slipped them onto her middle and pointer fingers. Her body ached, adjusting slowly with small movements she hardly had the patience for, and she despised her short, lethargic breaths.

Zaiana’s brow slicked as she paused to lean her back against the wall. To distract herself, she watched her fingers flex, adorned with the metal weight that felt more natural than her fingers did when they were off. Though she didn’t have much strength right now, she had to feel it—her magick.

She reached within herself, touching around for the hum that would rake over her skin in answer.

Zaiana felt…nothing.

She quelled the spike of panic before it could waver her focus. Reaching again, she searched, diving deeper for the vibrations of her lightning, but it was so still. Zaiana retreated in horror.

Her skin was pale and cold yet beaded with sweat. Her chest remained as silent as always. Her magick…

“No,” she breathed, clamping her eyes shut.

Zaiana braced on her thighs with the sickness roiling in her stomach. Then, with a groan of frustration, she straightened, though it was painful to do so. She walked a few paces and rolled her shoulders.

Her exhale shuddered from her as she felt the weight of her wings expanding from her shoulder blades. Relief flooded her, though it exerted her of far more energy than it should to release her glamour.

She still had her wings.

Zaiana dropped to her knees, clutching a hand to her chest. Her magick couldn’t be gone.

She was just recovering.

Even as she chanted the assurance this had to be a block, a temporary torture, clouds of anxiety filled her mind and taunted her existence. Who would she be without it? It didn’t bear thinking about.

Zaiana was her lightning. Its strength, its unique beauty. If she didn’t have that…

She would be nothing at all.