Page 117 of A Flame of the Phoenix

“Marvellas has many talents, doesn’t she? The abilities may be Spirit-blessed, but they can borrow each other’s,” Faythe tested.

He tugged the strings a final time, meeting her gaze in the reflection. “Many skills, many faces.”

Faythe’s heart skipped. Reylan finished tying the back of her dress, and her stomach sank with the absence of his warmth when he stepped away. She turned around, debating in her mind how to gain any small insights she could before this dinner with the queen.

“You retrieved her ruin from the Sky Caves, didn’t you?”

Reylan folded his arms, taking up a lean against the bedpost. “Yes.”

“You couldn’t break it, so she planted it in you, knowing I would break it to save you.”

“I believe so.”

“But you feel nothing for me. So maybe I won’t bother.”

“If I had the choice, I wouldn’t want you to.”

It would have hurt less for him to have carved a blade into her chest.

“You do have a choice,” she ground out. “You have the power of a ruin in you—enough to contend with her. Why not take over?”

“She is my queen.”

Faythe resisted the urge to double over with the tightening in her gut. The betrayal those four words winded her with.

They’re not his words.

She approached him, a careful doe toward the lion. He didn’t move, but his eyes tracked her every step, debating whether to strike before she could get too close. Faythe dared to reach up a hand, slipping high up his jaw, until her fingers brushed his temple.

Faythe tried to enter his mind, but immediately she was slammed with so much dark resistance she almost buckled.

“Stop,” he warned, but he didn’t pull away.

Faythe searched deeper through his sapphire eyes and touched their bond to aid her. All she wanted was to show him one thing. One reminder. The shadows invading his mind hissed and wailed, and misery spilled across Faythe’s features. So much pain and darkness anddeath.

“Oh, Reylan,” she whispered.

She found a space to throw a light. A memory.

“My Phoenix. My Queen.”

Reylan’s touch brushed her cheek, and Faythe thought for a second that tenderness flickered in his eyes. Until ice froze over his irises the same second his hand wrapped around her throat.

“They’re hollow words to me now. Those of a past fool I am no longer. You mean nothing to me, Faythe.”

The loathing poured into her name sounded so torturously wrong from him. She stumbled back when he pushed her. Faythe’s eyes burned. She bowed her head to the ground and collected herself while heat flushed her skin.

It was no use. She wasn’t enough to reach him. Worst of all, Faythe drowned in the misery of failing him, but she wouldn’t give up. That was why she was here.

“Let’s go,” he said flatly.

All Faythe could do was follow with her hollow heart.

Despite everything, Faythe was glad he was here with her. Even if only to hurt her, she didn’t want him to slip from her sights again.

The banquet hall of Lakelaria’s castle was a picture of vulnerable beauty. Faythe’s shoes clicked across glittering white floor—a flat, smooth imitation of the snow that encompassed them from the walls on either side and in front of her, made of glass. The pillars in the room dominated like proud icicles thrown down from the Gods in the heavens. Guards in black littered down each side stood out starkly. Faythe briefly met one set of hazel eyes, while the rest of them were clad in a hood and a face covering, hiding their identity from the sins that might be asked of them at any moment.

The air hummed with a fragile peace as Faythe slipped her sight to Iana, who was already seated at the head of the banquet table. Faythe accepted the chair at the opposite end that was pulled out for her.

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