Page 55 of A Flame of the Phoenix (An Heir Comes to Rise #6)

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

Zaiana

“ I need your help,” Zaiana called into the void of her subconsciousness.

The male wasn’t here, but she couldn’t stop imagining him, as if she could will him here by her desperation alone.

She didn’t know how to Nightwalk when their lessons so far had all been in aid of taming her storm and finding her magick.

“Please!” she cried out of frustration.

Her mind was starting to collect its anger again. While it was still bleak colors of black and gray, at least it had calmed its fury. Until now. The clouds gathered, and electricity hummed over her skin in anticipation for the thunder and lightning to break.

“I didn’t know you missed me so much.” The male voice eased into her mind.

A weight of relief lifted.

“Where have you been?” she ground out irritably.

“I have things I’m dealing with too, you know. I don’t exist at your beck and call.”

“I need you to teach me Nightwalking.”

“It’s not something you’ll learn in a day. It’s very volatile, and you can end up hurting someone. Besides, we don’t even know if you’re fully capable of it yet.”

“I don’t have time ,” she pleaded.

That shifted the energy around them.

“What happened? Are you in danger?”

“It’s nothing I can’t handle.”

He seemed to read her bravery was bullshit. Gods, she was slipping her steel composure so easily it was becoming to exhausting to even try to convince anyone she could still lift it.

“You don’t have to do everything alone.”

Zaiana pressed her lips together. A natural defense rose against admitting she was out of her depth.

“Have you ever Nightwalked through someone with lost memories?”

“In all my centuries, not that I was aware of, actually.”

“Do you think you could find their memories, help them remember, if you tried?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“If I can’t Nightwalk to them, could you try?”

The male deliberated for a moment. “I can’t Nightwalk through someone I haven’t seen before.”

For a second, she questioned her trust in him again.

“Search my memory for him,” she blurted.

She could practically feel his surprise.

“He must be important.”

“Just…do it,” she grumbled. “His name his Kyleer Galentithe.”

That seemed to invoke a reaction.

“You know him?” Zaiana concluded with disbelief.

“The name is familiar,” he said quickly. “Show me, just to be sure.”

Zaiana let the image of him surface, but it wasn’t without the male’s help that it unfolded for both of them to see.

“Shit,” he said, stepping forward, and Zaiana shivered at the panic slipping through the shadows. She was becoming accustomed to untangling what feelings triggered him or herself in here. “What in the Nether happened? Who else was turned?”

She eyed him carefully, not expecting the rush of urgency.

“How do you know him?” It came out as an accusation. Suddenly, she was overcome with the sense she couldn’t trust him.

“Was this your fault? Did you hand him over to them?” he snapped.

Zaiana flinched. “No.”

The smoke shifted at their conflict, circling them. This was the first time she’d truly feared he might turn on her when something dangerous rang through her. Though this was her mind, he was far more powerful here.

“Tell me who else, or I’ll look for my damned self.”

“You swore you would never do that.”

“This is the exception.”

There it was. Everyone was capable of betrayal when their end justified their means.

“I shouldn’t have asked for your help,” she said coldly. “I’ll figure it out myself.”

“To cause more harm than you already have? I don’t think so.”

A weight pressed down around her like a phantom cage. The pressure in her chest expanded.

“Get out of my head,” she warned.

He said nothing, and the anticipation was a helpless sickness as he prevented her from doing anything. She couldn’t push him out—she wouldn’t be able to overpower him.

“You called for me .”

“I won’t forgive you,” she said, slipping her panic. “If you take a single thought without my permission, I will never forgive you. And I will come for you. Don’t doubt I will figure out who you are just to kill you.”

Their stand-off intensified. She had his memory of a particular woodland she could scout for across the kingdoms if she had to figure out his identity. Now she had something else, as he’d let slip that Kyleer was someone known enough to him to invoke such an angry reaction to what had happened to him.

Her thoughts were already trying to piece together more of him, but she needed him right now.

“No one else went through what he did,” Zaiana said. “I’m locked up just like him. You can see that for yourself if you must.”

“Your heart,” he said.

Zaiana’s hand naturally rose to her chest. The feel of it was becoming more tolerable, so she was beginning to forget the new beat she carried.

“I have my lightning again too,” she confessed.

The male was silent. Considering.

“You broke your own chains. Well done.”

She didn’t feel deserving of congratulations when, despite it all, Kyleer had lost.

“Actually, I was put in them for my defiance.”

Zaiana might have mistook the faint smirk from the shadows of his hood.

“I’m sure you’ll figure those out far easier.”

“Will you help Kyleer?”

“I’ll Nightwalk to him. Don’t bother waiting here—it will take some time.”

Zaiana wanted to argue, too on edge for answers with this budding seed of hope he could unlock Kyleer’s memories.

“You won’t harm him?” she added like a question.

How could she be certain he didn’t know Kyleer as an enemy instead?

Though she couldn’t see his eyes, she felt them upon her.

“No, I won’t.”

She knew he could be lying; could tell her whatever she wanted to hear and betray her. But somewhere along this unexpected path they’d joined, she’d given her trust to him, the kind that formed without effort—and that was most frightening.

Zaiana woke peacefully, but her head ached with her first movement from leaning against the iron bars. A warmth circled her, and she drew a shallow gasp, remembering Kyleer.

She didn’t have to look far.

Kyleer was already awake, but he’d stayed still and close, not waking her to take back the wing that had curved around her through the bars separating them. Her fingers curled around the iron.

“Do you remember anything?” she asked, assessing him for the answer in recognition.

Her small flicker of hope died out with the shake of his head.

She leaned back against the wall with him again, their heads turned to each other, and part of her was glad for the bars separating them that prevented her from doing something pitiful.

“Can I be honest with you?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I don’t remember what you did to me to make me hate you. Nor I to make you hate me.” Kyleer looked off for a second as if he wondered whether his words were worth saying.

“I hated you…only for making me want you so much,” Zaiana said. This tentative way of conversation was foreign to her and itched with vulnerability.

This had to be trust. Trading truths one by one like shards of a soul.

She didn’t know how, but the distance continued to erase fractions between them where they sat side by side.

“With you…” he said, “it’s like the pictures are gone but the feelings are left behind. Minute by minute they’re coming back. I don’t remember what we had before. What we’ve done to each other. But I don’t harbor resentment or fear or anger toward you. Truthfully, I’m confused by just how much I’m glad you’re here. I’m terrified, but it’s not for myself. And I know that if they came and tried to take you, I would fight with everything I had left.”

Zaiana fought against the defense inside her that was brewing a storm to snuff out any candle he could light, the voices that wanted to twist the words and find the trick.

She was too tired, and that wickedness couldn’t thrive as harsh as it once did.

Not toward him.

“You didn’t deserve to fall for a monster,” she said.

Kyleer reached a hand through the bars, and though her body tensed with the siren to reject it, she couldn’t. When Kyleer’s palm slipped over her cheek, Zaiana wanted to bow in defeat. Lay down her weapons against fighting what he invoked in her.

“Can I try something?”

Kyleer inched forward, and it was like her body had already responded. She wasn’t used to this tenderness between them, but it was necessary for what he’d lost.

Zaiana knew the patience of a precise kill. The patience of revenge. This… She didn’t know this kind of patience that was not to harm but to cherish. It terrified her. She couldn’t see an end to how long she was willing to wait for him.

“You shouldn’t,” she said, a note of panic slipping through when their lips came shy of meeting.

“Do you want to?”

“Yes.”

He needed nothing more.

Kyleer kissed her, and it was like the world didn’t exist anymore. Not her revenge. Not this cell. Just them in a slow, searching connection like nothing she’d known before. Didn’t know it was something she would crave for him, yet she wanted him to take his time with every piece of her. To see things she couldn’t show, and she would do the same for him. As long as it took, she wanted to give him the time.

Her mouth opened for him, and he kissed her deeper, gripped her tighter, like he was trying to find himself in her, and when that didn’t come, passion took over.

Zaiana cursed the awkward position of the cell bars that refused the demand her body craved to be so much closer. His hand trailed up her thigh, but he couldn’t pull her to him. Her hands threaded and tightened in his hair, but it wasn’t enough.

They seemed to realize they wouldn’t get what they wanted. Kyleer pulled away first, staying close, and she delighted in his rugged breathing. Her leg had slipped through, and he didn’t let her go, keeping it hooked over his and beginning an idle caress of her thigh.

“Any luck?” she asked.

“Still no pictures,” he said. Kyleer took her hand in his scarred one, mapping the lines that marred them both. “But I feel…alive with you. Something tells me my past made that difficult.”

“I never got the chance to find out every name that stood by and watched as that happened to you,” she said, resting her head to the stone, perfectly content in their tangled closeness. “But if I don’t die taking down Marvellas, I will find them all.”

“You can’t defeat her yourself.”

Zaiana huffed a laugh. “You really don’t remember anything.”

“I don’t mean you’re not capable,” he said, turning more serious than she was in the mood for.

What they’d created felt like a sphere of shelter from the cruel world she was to face. She wasn’t ready for it to shatter so soon.

“Don’t concern for me,” she said.

“I can’t do that. With or without memories, I know I can’t.”

“Listen to me, Ky.” She tried to maintain the composure that threatened to waver to get him to listen. “They’re going to come for us, and the only way either of us survives is to not think of the other. If there’s a moment for you to kill them and flee, you take it, and you don’t think of me. Past this cell, I won’t think of you.”

She was a lie with skin and darkness with bones.

Kyleer drew a long breath. “Good.”

Still, he didn’t take the hand from her thigh or gain a fraction of distance from her. They had to live in each moment, not thinking of the next minute or hour that could turn them to enemies once more. He had to remember everything for his friends, but once he did, he wouldn’t want her the way he did now.

So Zaiana joined him in this moment, letting the silence welcome the fantasy that this was it. Him and her. This moment was a glimpse of belonging that could never be.