Page 51 of A Flame of the Phoenix (An Heir Comes to Rise #6)

CHAPTER FIFTY

Faythe

F aythe sat in front of Reylan, wishing she could take some of his pain as she plucked at small pieces of the ruin crumbling in his chest. She winced for him, pulling another sharp serration, but Reylan sat there like steel, his breathing measured and controlled, enduring it.

“We need a healer with magick. It’s like it’s dissolving.” Faythe was panicked but tried to maintain her outward bravery for him.

The tan of Reylan’s skin was washed pale and slicked with fever. Atherius’s magick wasn’t helping with the punishment the ruin had inflicted on him. She’d thought rest might bring back some of his strength, but his condition had worsened overnight.

Faythe gathered the pieces she could retract in a piece of cloth, but what remained now looked like broken coal buried deep in his flesh, turning his skin gray.

“I’m fine,” Reylan said.

“You’re not fine. Nothing about this is fine.”

“I have you back. I’m more than fine.”

He absentmindedly stroked her thighs, straddled on either side of him, as if she were the one in need of reassurance. His head tipped back against the wall of the hut. It was their second night here, and Faythe was aware of how much they risked by staying should Marvellas come. But at dawn this morning, Reylan could hardly move, and they wouldn’t survive the temperature outside to find another shelter. Faythe’s magick constantly hummed in her veins in anticipation, making her jittery and antsy. She could hardly be still for a moment.

The Firebird lay curled in a tight ball, having not moved since she’d blocked the hole in the hut wall to keep them warm within.

Reylan’s hand ran up her spine while his lips leaned into her neck, distracting her. Faythe sighed with the bliss of his touches, but her mind remained stern.

“You need to rest,” she whispered, willing herself to push him back.

His eyes never left her though they watched her through hooded, tired lids. She wished he would try to sleep, but it was like he was too afraid. As if those hours of vulnerability in his sleep could give his mind back to Marvellas.

Faythe leaned over, cupping his cheek. “Please.”

Reylan almost smiled. “I would drop to my knees and tear apart cities if you asked like that. But I’m not letting you out of my sight so soon after getting you back.”

“You have to sleep.”

He tucked her loose hair behind her ear. “I shouldn’t have left you in Rhyenelle when the battle first broke.”

That confession slipped out as barely a pained murmur through his lips.

“You had to lead. It was your duty.”

“I should have taken you with me.”

Faythe shook her head. “Don’t do that. Don’t try to rewrite the past for an outcome that will never be. This is where we are now. And despite the Nether we had to go through and that is still open around us, we’re together now.”

He inhaled a long breath, heavy with burden. “You’re right.”

“I always am.”

Reylan gave a light, tired chuckle. The sound spread warmth through her. He drew her close.

“I’m terrified,” he whispered against her mouth—a secret passed in a shared breath. “I remember everything from the time she had me at her will, and I’m terrified I don’t have the willpower to refuse her influence when we see her again, even without the ruin in me.”

“You do,” Faythe said fiercely. Her fingers threaded through his silver hair. “She won’t get the chance to be close to you anytime soon. We’ll train. If what you’ve been through has weakened your mental barriers, we’ll train with me. I’ll try to infiltrate your mind, and you’ll block me each time. I’m just as strong as her.”

At least, she had to become as powerful. Believe she could contend with Marvellas when the time came.

Faythe was afraid to ask, “Where did you hide Marvellas’s ruin after you switched it with Dakodas’s?”

Reylan stiffened under her. “I gave it to Zaiana.”

Faythe’s eyes widened. “Why in the Nether would you give it to her?”

“She knew. The moment we were alone, she asked why Marvellas would plant Dakodas’s ruin and not her own if you were to break it. I had to tell her what I’d done, and then eventually…I don’t think I trusted myself not to tell Marvellas the ruins were switched. I feared she would figure it out, and something about Zaiana felt trustworthy .” He said the last word as if, in his right mind, he now refused that idea profusely.

“She fought for him,” Faythe said, slashed brutally with flashes of vision from the horrifying night in the dome. “She fought Marvellas and Maverick to try to save Kyleer like I would for you.”

Reylan’s brow creased. “What happened to her for that betrayal?”

“I don’t know.”

“I can’t say I’d mourn for her.”

“She’s important. I know she is.” Faythe paused, contemplating her thoughts. “Aurialis once said I had to find the teacher who tames the storm. It has to be Zaiana. She’s the only one who can wield the ruin safely. She can teach me.”

Reylan groaned, pulling her with an arm around her waist, until she was sitting sideways against him and he could rest his head on hers. “I wish that weren’t so.”

“Well, I wish you would rest and stop worrying about anything else but yourself right now.”

His body relaxed, and Faythe thought he might actually be caving in to his fatigue.

“Promise you won’t leave for a second without me.”

“So clingy.”

He squeezed her thigh, and Faythe giggled softly, nestling into him more with a contented sigh.

Reylan said, “I can’t tell you how sorry I am. Everything I did to you…”

“It wasn’t you.”

“It was me. I can’t explain how that ruin touched the darkest parts of me and dragged them all to the surface. Marvellas may have commanded me to do things, but in that frame of mind I was willing. She stole the parts of you I loved, but no one could erase the pull I will always feel toward you. It made going after you something I wanted more than anything. When I found you, I became obsessed. I could hardly stand it. Every time you were near, I wanted to claim you. I bit you…”

Faythe angled her head back, brushing her lips against the edge of his jaw. “I’ve asked you to do that before.”

“It’s not the same thing, and you know it.”

“I don’t care. I plan for you do it again—on our terms. I’m rather looking forward to it.” She kissed below his ear, delighting in the low sound of desire in his throat.

“You don’t need to bury all that happened. You’re allowed to be angry with me.”

“With you? Never. I’m furious with Malin. I’m livid with Marvellas. I’m going to tear them both from their positions of borrowed power, along with Dakodas and Mordecai.” Faythe shifted up to straddle him again. “And in fact, the way you kissed me with all your darkness hasn’t left my thoughts for a moment.”

Passion swam in the pools of his sapphire irises. “Is that so?”

She spread her thighs wider to feel him beneath her. Reylan made a pained sound, curving his palms over her ass and gripping tight.

“How I wish I could devour you right now,” he said huskily.

Faythe ground her hips against him slowly. “If I can’t convince you to sleep, there are other methods to tire you.”

“This is completely unfair.”

His hard length beneath her sparked pleasure through her core with every pass, but this was about him. With her eyes locked passionately on his, she began to unfasten the ties and button of his pants.

His face twitched in protest and pleasure, but he didn’t stop her. Faythe reached for the length of him, stroking tightly and watching a sleepy lust overcome him as his eyes slipped closed and his head tipped back against the wall.

“You don’t have to,” he groaned.

“I want to,” she said, shifting down before adding playfully, “It’s a thoroughly proven method to aid rest.”

Faythe woke to an alarm piercing her within. She shot up, haven fallen asleep against Reylan. Just as he sat up too, the early warning she felt from Atherius turned to a piercing wail.

They both scrambled to their feet, but Faythe was aware they had no weapons, only her magick, and if Reylan was strong enough, he could use it too.

“Do you feel anything?” Reylan asked.

“Something’s here, but I don’t know what.”

“Marvellas?”

“I don’t think so.”

Atherius moved, and the harsh air whipped into them from the gap in the wall. It was the thick of night, and Faythe couldn’t see anything beyond the radius of the Firebird’s glow, which traveled away from them. Reylan curved an arm around her, and she felt him touch the well of magick inside her, preparing to use it with her.

“Do you sense anything?” Faythe asked.

The wind howled through the deep, ominous dark of the surrounding forest, rattling the bare branches like bones.

“Yes,” he said, turning more rigid.

Every hair on her body stood on end.

“What is it?”

“The shadows,” Reylan said with a chilling realization. “They’re alive.”

Just then, Atherius shrieked, a sound of distress, and Faythe launched into action, jumping through the broken wall and out into the night. She could hardly see through the depthless black between the scattered timber bodies. She followed the direction of Atherius’s glow and darted toward it.

Faythe found the Firebird in the clearing where she and Reylan had battled. Atherius was afraid , backing away from creatures that only vaguely had a form resembling an unnaturally tall, slender human made of pure shadow that rolled off them in sinister waves, blending into the dark.

Reylan took steps away from her, and she followed where his attention led him.

A rift crackled violently, the sound a mix of roaring flames and grinding metal, muffled by the oppressive night. It hovered in the darkness like a wound torn into the fabric of reality itself, a thin vertical slit that pulsed and shimmered faintly. It resembled an eye, its jagged edges glowing faintly with a strange, unearthly light that flickered erratically, as if alive and struggling against its own existence. Despite its faint glow, it was barely visible in the black void surrounding it, but Reylan appeared compelled to it.

Faythe reached out a hand, which snapped him out of a trance.

“That has to be what’s conjuring them,” he said. “A rift opened by the breaking of the Death Ruin.”

Oh Gods. These new foes unleashed into their world were her fault.

“How do we close it?” Faythe asked.

“I have a feeling…it requires a life sacrifice.”

Faythe looked at him, stunned and terrified, but for some reason, she knew to trust his intuition on this.

“We don’t need to think about that right now. Let’s just get rid of these creatures before more emerge.”

Faythe nodded vacantly. All she had was her magick, and with Atherius retreating, fear pounded in her chest that it wouldn’t be enough.

Reylan’s hand grazed hers, and she felt his gentle touch within, reaching into her magick with her. “You try lightning, I’ll try fire,” he said, tracking the half-dozen foes that were fixated on Atherius as if she were food, not a threat.

Atherius puffed her chest, splaying her wings, then heaved a blast of Phoenixfyre toward the creatures. Faythe had believed the fire of a Phoenix was the most potent form of the ability, but these shadow beings mocked it, dissipating as the fire surged, only for their shadows to crawl through the air like a deep inhale to resume their animated shapes.

“I don’t think either is going to work,” Faythe said in horror.

Reylan sensed the attack behind them before Faythe did. She jumped in fright at his sudden movement, watching a dart of blue flame expel from his palm, casting up into the tree canopy. The piercing cry from the shadow creature he’d struck made Faythe wince with the pain in her ears.

The being dissipated, and it didn’t reform.

“If they anticipate the strike, they can easily avoid it,” Reylan concluded. “But fire will always consume the dark if you can make the hit while their shadows are gathered. If one person distracts, the other can attack.”

“How did you know that one was up there?” Faythe hadn’t felt anything.

Reylan didn’t get to answer before hisses caught on the wind. The wail of the one he’d killed summoned the attention of the half-dozen others.

“We just lost that element of surprise,” Faythe said, bracing for their advance.

They raced toward her. All toward her .

Faythe threw out lightning, then blue fire, then she even tried to stop or slow them by manipulating the snow with the small grasp of Waterwielding she’d acquired from Nerida. Though it was the wrong time to discover she could no long feel that particular ability.

Nothing worked since their shapes expanded before impact, only to rapidly reform while advancing closer.

She gasped when the first reached her, circling a shadowy hand around her throat, strong enough to choke her. It had bloodred eyes that captured her like stunned prey the moment she met them. Faythe couldn’t fight…then she began to forget why she was fighting in the first place. Her soul had been touched by this creature—that was what it fed on. Part of her mind was screaming to protect herself, but it was distant compared to the serene calm that overcame her in the shadow’s trap.

That calm illusion was severed like a broken limb, and Faythe stumbled back, gripping her throat with pure terror when she realized what had happened. The creature that had held her died in a plume of black smoke with a piercing wail from Reylan’s fire.

Faythe sparked blue flame to her palms in a panic when more shadow bodies raced for her, passing Reylan, with their full focus on her. Reylan struck them through the back one by one as they passed him, and Faythe couldn’t understand how it was as if they couldn’t even see him in their path to her.

When he destroyed the last, Faythe blinked into the still night in confusion while her adrenaline calmed. Reylan’s moan of pain snapped her out of her thoughts. She moved toward him quickly as he hunched, bracing a hand on his thigh.

“How did you do that?” Faythe asked, puzzled.

“I’m not sure…” he said through a labored breath. Even that small round of attack was too much for him right now. “When I was…dead, I think I went somewhere. Ever since waking I’ve felt strange. I can’t explain it.”

“So they can’t see you?”

“Or they recognize me as one of their own.”

A chill slithered down Faythe’s spine. She recalled the faceless, cloaked depiction of Death itself, chipped scythe in hand. Had that primordial bestowed a gift or a curse on Reylan? A final meddling before sending him back to her?

It had helped them this time, but a sense of worry crept over her that they could discover more repercussions.

A caw broke the eerie silence, and Reylan straightened immediately, folding an arm back around her and scanning the area. But Faythe looked up, finding an eagle flying overhead before it swooped low.

Her stomach flipped, and she gasped.

“Izaiah,” she said, right as she had to shield her eyes against his burst of light as he transformed back into fae and landed on his feet.

Faythe’s brightening expression faltered completely when she beheld the desolation in his. A look of pure ghostly shock she’d never seen on his usually bright face.

The most stomach-churning dread of her existence punched at her core.

“What happened?” she asked, already struggling to breathe with how fast her heart had picked up.

“Faythe…” He said her name like an apology, and Reylan’s arm tightened around her.

Faythe shook her head, denial building, though she didn’t even know what for yet.

Izaiah swallowed hard, straining to find his words. His skin was pale and clammy, as if he were recovering from some kind of wound too, but he’d had to make it to her regardless.

“I wanted to come sooner, but I was injured badly, and…”

“What happened?” Faythe snapped this time, dizzy from the anticipation.

“Marlowe, she…she’s?—”

“No.” That single word of refusal cut deep within her. “No, she’s not.”

A high-pitched ringing filled her ears as if protecting her from hearing the truth that would shatter her into a million pieces. Faythe couldn’t breathe right. Her heart couldn’t move right. The world…it no longer spun right.

There was only one reason Izaiah would have come to her this speechless. Neither his words nor his expression held any reassurance, not a flicker of hope, which couldn’t mean anything else but the worst of her spinning conclusions.

“Where’s Jak?” Faythe whispered.

A numb sensation spread over her body. A stilling calm waved over her mind.

“High Farrow.”

She didn’t register anything but her need to get to him. Faythe was running toward Atherius, her steps battling the snow. The Firebird rattled her cry through the night, mirroring Faythe’s charge of anguish. Reylan called her name and tried to follow, but he was too injured. She had to leave him behind right now for her friend.

Atherius took flight, soaring over the mountain edge and dipping just as Faythe leaped off it and was caught on the Firebird’s back.

Just before she’d left, she’d stolen images from Izaiah’s mind. Faythe had never felt such a concoction of rage and heartbreak turn her so icily cold, so calm, collecting her storm.

Her grief crystalized to shards of glass she would aim at the world to make them feel her pain. Her fury burned deep and sinister. This time, when Faythe Ashfyre let out her rage, there was no telling what would be spared from the ashes in her reckoning.