Page 79 of A Flame of the Phoenix (An Heir Comes to Rise #6)

CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

Faythe

F aythe jolted awake, believing from the adrenaline coursing through her that she’d fallen asleep in the midst of a battle.

Strong hands took hold of her shoulders, and Faythe’s frantic search for danger was quelled by the soothing waves of comfort in Reylan’s eyes. She recalled what had happened. Marvellas was here.

Faythe’s legs swung over a chaise she lay on. They’d gathered in this reception room during the ball before Zaiana announced a battle threat on the town’s outskirts.

“What happened?” she demanded, standing but swaying on her feet.

“Marvellas shattered your mental barrier. You needed to recover.”

“How long has it been?”

“Only a few hours.”

Reylan filled her in on the rest, and Faythe grew more frustrated and terrified for her friends who were in action while she’d been incapacitated.

When Faythe’s eyes fell on Jakon watching her in the corner, her sharpness eased. “Hey, Jak,” she said, anticipating that one wrong move would make him shut her out.

He stood, coming a little closer. “I’ve never seen you out like that. I worried…” He trailed off, but she didn’t need him to continue.

Faythe risked closing the distance, and when he didn’t reject her embrace, she hugged him tighter. Jakon’s face burrowed into her neck, and she almost whimpered.

“Don’t scare me like that again. You have to live, Faythe. Promise me.”

“I will,” she said. “We both will.”

Jakon’s arms tightened a fraction before he let her go too soon for her heart. But she clung to that returned thread of their friendship with everything she had.

They were snapped from their moment when people rushed into the room. Nerida, Tarly, and…

“Nyte?” Faythe had to blink consciously, believing for a second he was a manifestation of her concussion.

“You haven’t filled her in yet?” Nyte asked Reylan.

“She just woke up.”

“Nik and Tauria are gone,” Nerida cut in loudly.

Faythe’s heart skipped a beat.

“What do you mean, ‘gone’?” Reylan demanded.

Fear so all-consuming seized Faythe. She stood there vacantly, hand to her mouth, hearing of her friends being pulled into an infinite void with the only way they knew to follow being shattered afterward.

“Tarly and I are going to Olmstone now,” Nerida said.

Reylan had gone so silent, pacing and calculating. This was a detrimental blow to all of their plans and strategies without the rulers of High Farrow. All that kept Faythe from crumbling was the small dose of hope there could be another passage to try to get Nik and Tauria back.

“There was a mirror passage in Rhyenelle,” Faythe informed them. She told them how she’d shattered it and freed the Dresair there too. It added further merit to the creature’s claim there could be one in all kingdoms.

“Go immediately—we need Nik and Tauria back,” Reylan instructed them.

Nerida and Tarly nodded, leaving swiftly, with the two wolves following.

Faythe had been concluding her own plan while hearing of all that had happened when she’d allowed Marvellas to slip by her. She couldn’t forgive herself.

“I’m going after her,” Faythe said.

Reylan stopped his pacing by the fire. “I’m coming with you.”

“We need you here. The battle is still moving forward, and we need a leader in High Farrow, as well as one on the mountain fringe, where the biggest mass of their foot soldiers will be in days.”

“We have plenty of generals and commanders.”

“It’s not the same. No one knows the enemy like we do. Nik and Tauria were to be the ones guiding our forces around Farrowhold, but that’s not an option anymore.”

Reylan crossed to her, pulling her by her waist into him. “We don’t separate. Not now. Not when any day might be our last and we stand against our greatest enemy.”

Faythe conceded. Selfishly, she wanted him fighting by her side.

Nyte cut in. “I’m the crucial part of killing Marvellas, remember? She’s not going alone.” He didn’t look at either of them, leaning against the far wall while he absentmindedly traced things on the side console, lost to his own thoughts.

Jakon said, “I might not be much help, but I want to fight.”

Faythe feared for him greatly, but she nodded. “The forces that broke through the outskirts will just be the beginning. We have to anticipate more will reach even as close to the outer town as they try to divide and conquer.”

Jakon understood, standing with a firmed expression. He left, and Faythe fought the urge to go after him for some reason. To not let him out of her sight.

Faythe, Reylan, and Nyte switched to the drawing room, where they pondered over a map for the next hour, reorganizing their plans while waiting on edge for the hopeful triumphant return of Zaiana, Kyleer, and Izaiah from the battle on the outskirts.

One hour turned to two, then three. Faythe bit at her fingernails as she watched the clock, about to suggest she fly out with her wings of Phoenixfyre to see what was happening.

She was saved from doing so by their return, which deflated her sharp tension. Yet the ominous weight they carried into the room between them had Faythe bracing her emotions. Zaiana, Kyleer, and Izaiah were accounted for, but something was wrong.

“Edith was there,” Zaiana announced, but her voice was stripped of any emotion. She pulled the jeweled dagger free from her side, the steel now unpolished, with speckles of dried silver blood on the edges. Zaiana had done it: killed Edith and retrieved Nerida’s power.

“Nerida just left. Maybe we should catch up?—”

“Mordecai was there too.” Zaiana cut Faythe off.

Faythe was beginning to suspect they’d won the battle, but the cost…

Her eyes caught on Tynan, who slipped into the room silently, his head bowed. Faythe waited for the dark hair of Amaya, who always followed, but it never came.

Zaiana met her eye, and it was all the confirmation Faythe needed in her cold stare. Amaya was dead. Faythe didn’t know the younger dark fae well, but what was clear for all to see was the unfairness of another pure heart and gentle soul lost to the viciousness of war.

Faythe closed her eyes, settling the loss within herself for all it represented. She barely registered the wooden figure in her hand before it went careening into the wall, exploding into splinters with her force.

So much senseless, tragic loss.

Zaiana said, “I don’t think the arrow to Mordecai’s heart would have killed him, but Amaya saved my life. Or, at the least, she saved my power. It’s what Mordecai has been after all this time. Why he kept me alive and prized my Stormcasting ability. He has no sentiment for me—he’s been waiting for the day he had that dagger he’s been actively seeking, just to take back the ability he was resurrected without.”

“Where is the dagger now?” Reylan asked.

“Mordecai has it,” Zaiana said.

The gravity of the disadvantage weighed heavy.

Faythe’s teeth ground together. “It doesn’t matter,” she said firmly. “We’re in the thick of the war now, and we cannot falter.”

“Position me where the worst of the battles will be. I have to keep fighting,” Zaiana said.

Faythe understood. If she slowed for a second, her grief would pull her under too.

Reylan said, “We want to intercept them on the mountain fringe. That’s where the biggest stand will be. They’ll no doubt have forces that make it into High Farrow from the other pressure points, but if the numbers coming from the fringe make it through…High Farrow will be lost.”

Zaiana nodded, accepting that she would lead on the front lines there until they could all make it to join her. Faythe didn’t doubt the dark fae’s ability to hold the lines until then.

“I’ll go back to the sky caves,” Izaiah said. “In case Marvellas succeeds in putting Aurialis’s ruin in Dakodas’s podium before you can stop her. Her final step is reaching her temple in the caves to sacrifice herself to end the world, right?

“You need this to stop her,” Nyte reminded him, flipping the Ruin Dagger idly.

“Then give it to me.”

“Not a chance,” Kyleer growled.

Though he didn’t have his full memories of his brother, his deep-rooted protection over him could never be erased.

“You’ll both go with Zaiana,” Reylan interjected firmly. “We need our best on the main battlefield. We’ll stop Marvellas.”

Izaiah’s jaw twitched like he wanted to protest, but he didn’t.

Reylan said, “The other generals and commanders have their orders. In Nik and Tauria’s stead, we have the lords of High Farrow deploying a steady warning to the people to stay indoors, arm themselves, and stay vigilant. The next few nights are Ungardia’s darkest hours. It all ends now.”

This moment had been building for some time, but it didn’t make confronting it any less of an ominous burden.

Everyone shifted to leave for their station, but Faythe said, “I’m proud to be standing by all of you.”

They turned back to her, and though some of her friends were absent right now, she felt their spirits in this room too.

“No matter where we began. As enemies.” She glanced at Zaiana. “As friends.” She skimmed over Kyleer and Izaiah. “As incredulous long-lost family.”

Nyte shifted, not expecting a mention from her.

Faythe took Reylan’s hand. “As soul mates,” she whispered, meeting his eyes for one brief moment. She drew a long breath. “I would lay down my life for any of you, and I know you would do the same, though some might find it harder to admit than others. I wouldn’t be who I am without all of you. And Nik, Tauria, Jakon, Marlowe, Nerida, Tarly. It is my greatest honor to fight by your side. For a better world.”

No words were needed in exchange. As she watched her friends leave, Reylan slipped an arm around her waist, pressing his lips to her temple.

“I’m so proud of you,” he said, turning her to him. His eyes mapped her face, reminiscing. “From the moment I met you, a human with audacious wit and a steel will, I always knew you were destined for greatness. And it is my honor to stand by your side, Faythe Ashfyre. I hope to be here, right here, for many centuries to come.” He held her face, and his smile lightened the heaviness on her heart for this fleeting moment. “To watch you reign triumphantly as the Phoenix Queen you were born to be.”

Faythe sniffed, forcing back the tears that threatened to spill.

“Thank you for always seeing me, when I couldn’t always see my own potential.”

His lips pressed to her forehead. “That’s why I’m yours.”

In her rooms, Faythe equipped herself with more weapons and better attire, preparing to depart. She was lost in a reel of thoughts, pondering over the many situations that could arise in trying to stop Marvellas, so she didn’t feel Reylan approach until his large hands took hold of her waist from behind. He kissed down her neck, flicking his tongue over his bite wound, which roused her lust.

“This isn’t the time,” she said in a partial moan.

“It is. I want to you think of this—coming back to this. You stay alive for me to show you over and over how spectacular you are. How incredible and brave and selfless my mate is.” He teased her more with each declaration, running his hands around her body and his mouth over her neck. “You stay alive to take the throne you were destined for.”

Faythe turned to face him.

“Promise me one thing,” he said. “I don’t want to forget. No matter what. I know you’re capable of taking my memories—you’ve done it before, haven’t you?”

Faythe’s mouth opened, stunned and wondering how long he’d known.

“I…I don’t remember the past.”

“Neither do I. Nor do I care to. All that matters is that I have you now, but promise me we’re doing this together. I don’t choose forget. I choose to follow you into the next world if our fate is to leave this one behind.”

Faythe’s brow drew together. She pushed up on her toes to kiss him deeply in promise.

She said, “Let’s give everything we have to this world. One last time.”