Page 50 of A Flame of the Phoenix (An Heir Comes to Rise #6)
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Zaiana
Z aiana awoke to a sound that consumed all others. A blast that boomed loud and left an eerie silence in its wake. The ground beneath her rumbled, and Zaiana felt in her core the split of something dark and damning. An imbalance that cracked through their world.
Faythe did it. She broke the ruin.
There were no Gods to save them now.
When the rumbling stopped and her senses returned, Zaiana jolted up at the foreign sensation that slammed within her. She couldn’t survey her surroundings while her trembling hands rose to her chest, hoping it was just a taunting illusion. It couldn’t be real.
But there it was. A precious life beating too fast under her palms, and she didn’t know what to do with it. Her vision blurred. How often had she fantasized about owning this fluttering, uncontrollable beat in her own body? She knew the symphony of a thousand others, what it took to make them speed and slow, but this one would take so much more time and care to figure out. Perhaps she never would and that was the true curse of having a heart—its ever-changing movement and the helplessness to fight against what disrupted it, good or bad.
Zaiana’s knees pulled to her chest, and her hands cupped over this new delicate thing as if it were cradled in her palms. It felt so vulnerable. Like her flesh and bone wasn’t enough to protect it and she didn’t know what else would be.
With the only sound coming from her, she realized she wasn’t alone when she took a long inhale and a familiar scent filled her. Snapping her head to the side, she saw a bundle through the thick iron bars beside her. The last memory she had lurched the beat in her chest, and she didn’t know it could choke in people’s throats like this. Her balance swayed as she crawled across the short space. Zaiana wept silently, completely numb to the Niltain steel around her wrists as she curled her hands around the bars.
Kyleer lay so peaceful. A few locks of brown hair fell over his eyes, and she yearned to be close enough to brush it away. For those moss-green eyes to open and tell her he was going to be okay.
He had no wings. Yet. Maybe not ever.
Zaiana searched for the cadence of his heart.
It was gone.
All she wanted in that moment was to rip out the one she now owned and give it to him. It was an impostor in her chest. Something Kyleer deserved to have, not her.
“Ky,” she barely croaked.
No response.
The despair that grew inside her could kill. Zaiana didn’t care. Of all her failings in life, she bowed her forehead to the icy metal, accepting this was the worst of them.
“If I hadn’t tried to stop you, she would have killed you if she didn’t get what she wanted.”
A hot rage clenched her fists to a white-knuckle grip at the sound of Maverick’s voice.
“I should have known your loyalty would always be with them. Always their precious, obedient pet.”
“A thank-you would suffice,” Maverick said.
“I’m going to get out of here, and you’d better not be within reach, because I will kill you,” Zaiana promised. Words so sharp and lethal.
“At least you’re alive to do so.”
She glanced at him where he stood with arms crossed, leaning against the wall, cloaked in shadow.
“Did Marvellas call for you to come here for this? You had no hesitation in killing Faythe, nor Agalhor, and she knew it would hurt Faythe more seeing you take her friend too.”
“Perhaps. But I had no hesitation in killing Faythe nor Agalhor only because you did.”
“You wanted the glory, and you got it.”
“Believe what you want,” he said coldly. “It makes no difference to me.”
“How can you do it…?” Zaiana got to her feet, stalking to the side he faced. “Betray those who were once your friends, like Nikalias?”
“Nik is no one to me.”
“Let’s not play games, Callen.”
He flinched at the name. Barely, but Zaiana had made her mark.
“Congratulations,” he said. “You may have brought back the heart of Callen, but it is too tainted by the deeds of Maverick. It means nothing.”
She heard it then. His heartbeat. It stunned her completely, making her forget everything for a moment. It knocked around behind his ribs, the song of a broken soul. Zaiana buried the notes of tragedy that fluttered in her own heart for him. She despised him.
“How many others have their hearts?” she asked.
“All of them. Somehow, you broke a curse none of them knew they were under. I have a feeling you’ve caused something, Zaiana. Something that could shift the tide of war.”
“How—?” She couldn’t process what was happening. How it was possible. All she’d done was try to save Kyleer.
Her magick was back too. Despite the heavy weight of the steel, it was distantly there, and she knew she could drag it forth to strike Maverick now if she so desired. She wouldn’t out herself just yet to give away that upper hand.
It didn’t matter right now. She wanted to kill Maverick, and she despised that she had to ask him for anything.
“When did you remember your past as Callen?” she ground out.
It had been puzzling her this whole time, how Maverick could have his memories when the Transitioned were said to lose them. But if Kyleer didn’t remember anything when he woke…she had to find out how he’d done it.
Maverick came closer, giving no emotion through his steel features. “I remembered…” he said, his tone so detached and icy her skin prickled, “the day I held my mate as she died, and I looked down to see my hand around the hilt of the blade in her heart.”
Zaiana held her breath for a second. She didn’t want to feel the slither of remorse for the wicked fallen prince.
She didn’t want to feel at all.
“So this is how villains are made,” she said.
Maverick looked down at her from his height, and she saw it: his black irises like a mirror.
One and the same.
They were two sides of the same coin, tainted by irredeemable sin.
“No,” he said at last. “You don’t get to blame something for that choice. If the villain is what you want to be, then own it. Not for some past that has wronged you, even if time and time again. Or you are no better than Marvellas.”
“And what are you?”
Maverick leaned away. “Nothing,” he said.
She watched his back as he left, raging with so much turmoil she didn’t know how to handle it.
So many wounds inside her strained toward bursting, and if she let it all go…Zaiana didn’t know who she would be if she bled from all the open scars.
She lay back down, so close to the bars, next to Kyleer. Zaiana reached through, slipping her fingers over his limp hand until her restraints met their end. His skin was as cold as the dead.
Her brow crumpled, and her eyes slipped shut.
Zaiana lay with him, and if he didn’t wake in that moment, she didn’t think she wanted to either.
But hours passed in torment. Sleep wouldn’t find her to offer her some reprieve from the miserable wait of knowing if Kyleer had pulled through his Transition.
“Your lover, I presume?”
The new voice that crept over the cells tightened her body with a mix of anger and irritation. Zaiana sat up, slipping her lazy, dark sight to Captain Daegal.
She didn’t like him in the slightest, and she’d grown to hate him even more since the day he assaulted Faythe. Not for what he did—that was pathetic, and she would have cut him down before he got to fulfill any sick fantasy—but after he awoke, Zaiana had been unable to shake a new sensation that crawled over her, within her , when he was near. She could hardly stand to look into his brown eyes that she believed had somehow become brighter too, luring her in, and if she dared to get close enough, she was sure to drive a blade through his heart to sever the hypnotism he invoked.
“Has she sent you to see if he’s alive?” Zaiana asked bitterly.
“No. Marvellas is more livid about you, in fact. And that Faythe Ashfyre is missing.”
The heir had broken the ruin and got away. Zaiana had stopped underestimating Faythe long ago, so anything less than this news would have been disappointing.
“Have you come to take me for punishment?”
The captain smiled with cruel amusement, taking a step closer to the bars of her cell. “I can see why she despises you. Even before your grand rebellion in the dome, you were completely untamable. Something tells me many have tried to tie a leash around you.”
“Many things tell me you’re a powerless, low-life piece of shit. So get on with what you came here for.”
Daegal smirked, then his face turned unnervingly serious. He scanned her from head to toe, and she wanted to claw his eyes out. Then, when he shifted his attention to Kyleer, Zaiana rose to her feet.
The captain lifted a hand, curling his fingers around one of the bars. His eyes pierced into her, gripping her attention. “I need you to listen to me very carefully,” he said, hushed, in a tone unlike him. “I am not Captain Daegal. He’s dead. Faythe killed him to give me control of his mind.”
He carried on explaining an outlandish story of Realm-Walking and his collusion with Faythe. The most incredulous part that made her laugh out loud…
“You expect me to believe you’re her long-lost son?”
His eyes narrowed to a warning, casting a brief glance at the exit. “We’re alone for now, but you’d be wise to keep silent,” he hissed.
“Rainyte.”
“Just Nyte.”
Zaiana huffed—a humorless sound this time. She paced her cell, spinning his tale around in her mind. It was too outlandish to be believable.
Yet her instinct, which had always served her well, wouldn’t dismiss his claim entirely.
Her eyes roved over him again, taking in what seemed to have changed from the vicious captain she’d been in the displeasing company of a few times. His irises were lighter, as if the dark brown they previously were was struggling to contain the ethereal gold they should be if he was Marvellas’s son. His demeanor too seemed changed, less rigid and defensive, more lax, borderline arrogant now. The way he talked was smoother and confident.
“Even if I believe you, I want no part in whatever you’re up to with Faythe,” Zaiana said at last.
“That’s too bad. You’re very much a part of everything—you have been for some time, I believe.”
“Then what is your objective?”
“Getting you out of here seems like a good start.”
“I don’t need your help. Go find Faythe.”
“You’re an invaluable ally to her, and you’re in a cage.”
“I’m not her ally.”
His gaze shifted again to Kyleer as if that were proof of the contrary.
Zaiana amended. “I’m not anyone’s ally.”
“Taking on the world alone isn’t as noble as you think it is.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“I doubt there are many who know about you truly.”
His mere presence crawled her skin, and the way he spoke, like he resonated with her, was growing her intolerance.
“What do you want from me?” she snapped.
“Cooperation,” he said flatly. “I have a deal with Faythe Ashfyre to help where I can in exchange for her helping me to discover a way back to my realm. From your epic display to save your lover, her friend, I’d consider you an asset to the cause to stop my mother.”
Part of her still held onto reservation. This could be a trick. The tale he spun was elaborate, but what if it was an attempt to get her to lure out Faythe?
“I want you to do something to prove what you say is true—that you’re not Daegal, and you’re not working for Marvellas.”
“I’m all ears. It’s been getting dull around here without Faythe, and I don’t particularly enjoy the awkward presence of my unsuspecting mother while I’m in this body.”
Zaiana’s request could work against her if Nyte betrayed her. But she had little left to lose anyway.
She said, “You’re going to need to find someone with wings who can deliver a fast message.”