Page 124 of A Flame of the Phoenix

Reylan was helpless to watch, but he kept trying to fight off the fae to reach her.

The battle of fire and ice from the Magestone being clamped around his wrists, then his neck, was nothing compared to the ear-splitting cries from Faythe that brought him to his knees. Reylan wept, utterly broken at that sound, this sight, he would let haunt him for the rest of his days.

“Reylan.” Kyleer was here. His rage targeted his friend, his brother in everything but blood, and though part of him wanted to feel sympathy for his capture, all he harbored was resentment. Ugly, perhaps unfair resentment that Kyleer had failed Faythe just as much as he had by being caught here with her.

Kyleer’s face was desolate. Pleading and straining to say something else.

Marvellas approached, and he snarled, animalistic at the sight of the flaming beauty that torched a rage so scorching he thought it could set fire to the world to watch her burn within it.

“Come back to me, Rey,” she cooed. As if she couldn’t hear Faythe’s torture. The scent of her blood tainted the air, and Reylan wished it were his. Would bleed every drop to this floor now if it would spare her.

Marvellas’s touch hovered over the dark thing she’d sunk into his flesh, and the world turned absolutely silent. Every sense was stolen by the power that consumed him. Every scream, every image, every memory. Reylan was nothing.

Nothing but her servant.

When he blinked and found the world around him again, he didn’t know why he was here. Only that he belonged to her. This creature of triumph and conquer.

“There you are,” she said, pleased.

Reylan bowed his head. His ears rang with a high pitch though everything was soundless. He got to his feet, not remembering when the manacles around him had been placed there.

“Take her to the tower,” Marvellas instructed him, walking away as if boredom became her. She added to other guards, “And take him to the cells far below.”

Two dark fae began to drag away a fae male. “I’m sorry,” he said in Reylan’s direction over his shoulder.

Two words that meant absolutely nothing.

Reylan found a beautiful fae on the ground, so still and quiet. Peaceful, were she not bleeding so much, lying on crimson-painted stone that made the sight of her devastating. Reylan took her into his arms, not knowing why there was a nagging within him at the harm done to her.

Reylan walked and walked; he didn’t want to reach the tower cells. He didn’t want to let her go. But he had a duty, and his Goddess wanted this.

He set her on the small bed. It wasn’t enough. Her form was so vulnerable in the bloodstained, thin white undergarment. He unfolded the feeble blanket and laid it over her. It still wasn’t enough. So he unclipped his cloak and draped that over her delicate body too.

“You’re not to give her anything,” a guard outside the cell warned.

Reylan didn’t think twice—the power that was too much within him rejoiced at any flicker of emotion it could strike out to. He wasn’t sure what the entity was, only that it was an ending to everything it touched. A silent delivery of death, though not a painless one. All it took was a look from Reylan, a thought, and the guard barely made a sound as the life drained from him. Hollowing his cheeks, turning his skin to paper, revealing hisveins that dried out slowly. Then he fell as nothing more than a skeleton barely given flesh.

He turned back to the sleeping fae, reaching to brush the hair from her face.

“Faythe,” he whispered. The name came to him as a distant star in the darkness of his mind. He decided to keep the small flicker of light alive.

Reylan left, closing her cell, but the twist of the key was like a knife in his chest for a reason lost to him. He pulled up his hood, grabbing the back collar of the dead dark fae to drag him out.

Every step away strained something within him—a tether he should sever to be rid of the madness it grew in his mind. But for some reason, he didn’t want it gone. He wanted to protect it.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Izaiah

Izaiah thought this might be it. The end of him.

He lay on his back, hanging onto his consciousness by a final thread. The roof of the catacomb flickered with the amber from the torches he’d lit, but it was his own skin that felt set aflame. He’d even taken his jacket and shirt off after the fourth attempt at merging with the ruin’s power—the most he’d tried in a single session, because he was running out of damned time.

Izaiah was about to give in to the pull of darkness. Maybe some rest would replenish him enough to try again. A hand slipped around his nape and yanked him up, making his eyes fly back open. He was met with a frightening intensity in the familiar brown eyes of Tynan.

“What in the Nether do you think you’re doing?” the dark fae snarled.

Izaiah was too shocked to speak, and still held in the soft clutches of death.

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