Page 141 of A Flame of the Phoenix

“Your magick is still there, but yes…something is blocking it.”

Zaiana was always cautious of hope, but a wick caught flame inside her before she could stop it. “How do I get it back?”

The shake of Nerida’s head sank in her gut. “I’m not entirely sure. It’s all you.”

“What is?”

“The resistance.”

Zaiana closed her eyes as if it she could search within herself with the healer’s help, perhaps draw out what was stifling it. Her throat began to tighten with the memories that flashed to the surface. Tight walls. No light. No air. She was helpless.

Nerida ripped her hands from Zaiana’s with a gasp, which made her eyes fly open too. The healer’s expression became ghostly, searching Zaiana’s face as if someone else was sitting there instead.

“You can’t…seethings?” Zaiana asked, horrified.

Nerida shook her head. “I’m not Faythe. But I canfeel…what—what happened to you, Zaiana?”

Her shoulders deflated. Once, she would have raised a shield against such a question. To speak of it was to acknowledge how damaged she was.

“Many things,” she whispered, sitting to hug her knees.

Nerida picked up a small kettle, filling it up in the dainty kitchen before returning and setting it over the fire.

“It’s possible the suppression you’ve built all these years is causing it,” Nerida said gently. “Something terrible happened to you. Not just once—you have centuries of trauma you’ve hidden from all this time.”

“Why would it be an issue now?” she snapped, only in frustration at her own self.

“I think it’s what happens when the body and mind go through drastic change.”

“What do you mean?”

The healer’s look was thoughtful, and Zaiana resisted the urge to shrink away from it.

“There’s something different about you,” she said. “I think the only way you’re going to find your lightning…is if you find yourself first. What you want to be.Whoyou want to be. That choice has never really been yours.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” It came out like a plea. How was she supposed to do that?

“It might not right now, but you’re not alone to face it. Not if you don’t want to be.”

Zaiana was tired of being alone. Tired of only depending on herself. Trusting herself. Her walls were crumbling, and she was being buried in the debris. Maybe she would find her lightning when the final wall tumbled, and then she would die under the rubble of her past life.

“I know you can’t trust me,” Zaiana said. “But Marvellas cursed me, and I want retribution for that.”

Nerida squeezed her hands before letting them go.

“I did trust you. I wouldn’t have stayed with you on that quest if I didn’t.”

“We would have had to kill you if you didn’t.”

Nerida only smiled at that, and Zaiana was beginning to wonder if she’d severely underestimated the gentle healer.

“If you want my trust now, you’ll tell me why you’re still helping people who have done nothing for you.”

“I’m not,” Zaiana said, but she realized how weak that sounded. “At least…I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.”

The healer reached with a cloth to pull the whistling pot from the hook. “If you want revenge, one thing that would infuriate Marvellas most is having someone she thought she’d conquered side with her enemy instead.”

That word was a blow to her existence:conquered.Zaiana had been in denial to believe it, but now, spoken so easily, she was beginning to realize how much of a fool she had looked all this time as Marvellas’s puppet.

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