Page 174 of A Flame of the Phoenix

“I assumed Faythe managed to wake you before that,” he said, devoid of emotion.

“She arrived too late.”

“Faythe was against what he did to you. As was I.”

Zaiana didn’t want to hear it. The damage was done.

“It doesn’t matter. I was going to kill the king for what he did. I would have, if Maverick didn’t get to him first. If I didn’thesitate.”

“Don’t hate yourself for your hesitations,” Kyleer said. “If anything, it may be the last thing you have to remember you can feel anything at all.”

“I don’t want to feel.” It slipped from her mouth like a plea.

Around him, she was alwaysslipping.

“Why?”

Because it hurt too much. No matter what she did or who she tried to be. It always cut and tore, and she bled.

When she didn’t answer, Kyleer said, “If you don’t feel, they win. It’s what they’ve always wanted. An army fighting to a vicious degree because they have nothing to lose. They made you kill your past love to claim back your full attention. They’re afraid of you, Zai. Of what you could become in the name of something you love, rather than on their side by hate and vengeance. They could have just killed him themselves, but in having you do it, believing as strongly as you do now that he betrayed you, they win again. I’ve seen it—there is not a piece of you that will ever fully trust again.”

“Finnian made his choice to betray me,” she seethed.

“It’s not a choice if it’s forced.”

He was wrong. So, so wrong.

“You weren’t there.”

“Zai…the dark fae have been under the command of a Spirit with the power to commandminds.”

That slammed into her worse than anything physical. So hard she didn’t feel anchored to this gravity anymore.

Marvellas had never visited her under the mountain. To her kind, she’d been all but a fable growing up.

Then she remembered the dream, a memory, that had been plucked from her subconsciousness by the male who’d visited her. Had that been real?

Zaiana couldn’t be sure.

She was spiraling.

Through time, space. She didn’t know where she was anymore.

“Zai.”

She only heard his voice when it was accompanied by a touch on her hand. Zaiana glanced at his fingers against hers, and she ripped them free.

“I know it must be difficult to believe?—”

“Difficult?” She mocked the word. What a silly, insulting word for the weight of the world that was crushing her.

Your love is deadly.

Agalhor had been right. And staring into those moss-green eyes that had shifted to sympathy, she couldn’t bear it.

“I won’t come back here again,” she said.

“What if I want you to?”

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