Page 151 of A Flame of the Phoenix

She shouldn’t care. Her mind tore itself apart over that question that only served to distract and delay her from advancing her own goals.

“How can we get your magick back?”

Maverick’s tone turned softer, and she despised it. The topic made her fists clench, with her now useless iron guard cutting into her palms. Even though she couldn’t conjure her lightning, she couldn’t leave them off.

“Stop using the termwe,” she hissed. “I’m only telling you this since you already know half of it. Our plans aren’t the same.”

“I want Marvellas dead as much as you do.”

“Then why have you been her willing soldier all this time?” Zaiana snapped, her voice rising. She straightened off the wall, which brought them closer. “All this time you’ve been aware of the life she stole from you, yet still you did her most heinous bidding. You killed Faythe and Agalhor when you could havejoinedthem to stop Marvellas. They were your people long before I was.”

Maverick didn’t speak right away. He watched her with a deep, studying frown, and she could hardly stand to be caught in it. She couldn’t understand him, and something told her she never would.

“Someone had to.”

That stung the wound of her failures. He’d done what she’d failed to.

“It didn’t have to be you,” she said.

“Yes, it did.”

Maverick pushed off the wall, pausing with only a slither of space between them. He wore nothing on his face as he stared down at her. His black eyes were so vacant, so…dead.

“This was a very insightful chat,” he said calmly. “I think we both need time to figure out the best move forward with what we know.”

He brushed by her, and light spilled into the small room when he opened the door.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“Play my part in this show, as always.”

He left without another word, leaving her in this cramped space where her thoughts began to suffocate her. There were too many wheels turning in the war that was heading to a climax. She could feel it. The familiar aura of death hung in every new dawn. The building crescendo of battle hummed in every twilight. Only, this time, there was no telling when each battle would come.

Zaiana walked the foreign halls of Lakelaria’s castle, and if it weren’t for how cold the island was, she would have said the kingdom was the greatest in the continent. After being suffocated under so much rock all her life, there was no other place indoors like this, with so much glass, that invoked a similar sense of freedom to what she felt standing atop open mountains.

“Zaiana, my child.”

Her next step paused at the unexpected caress of her name from within the room she was about to pass. The door was slightly ajar, and Zaiana had no choice but to answer the Goddess’s call.

Slipping inside, for a second it was jarring to watch Marvellas so…peaceful.She sat in a large reading room, a book splayed between her palms, but she wasn’t reading. She stared intently into the fire blazing in the pit beside her, so lost in thought or something else that she didn’t react to Zaiana’s presence.

“Join me,” the Spirit said, gesturing with a graceful hand to the gold velvet chair opposite her.

Zaiana really didn’t want to, but she obliged. Refusing would only rouse suspicion or anger.

When her sight fell to the book in Marvellas’s lap, Zaiana read the title:An Immortal Heart of Vengeance.

“Everyone wants to be remembered, but history seldom tells the right story,” Marvellas said, catching her observation before swinging her golden eyes toward the marching flames in the fireplace.

She propped one of her elbows on the arm of the chair to rest her chin against her knuckles. Right now, the Spirit who’d started a war and become the greatest villain in centuries appeared so soft, with the gentle glow of the fire over her features, and sotired.

“You’ve been alive all this time—why let them tell your story any differently from the truth?”

Marvellas’s head tipped back against the tall seat. “Because it wouldn’t make a difference. There’s no amount of truth or sympathy that could atone for all I’ve done now.”

Marvellas didn’t talk with regret for what she’d done, but there was something displaying right now that Zaiana didn’t think the Spirit harbored anymore: humanity.

Zaiana asked carefully, “Why do you want all the royals as dark fae? Why not just kill them and replace them?”

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