Page 175 of A Flame of the Phoenix

“Then you’re already falling for the easiest way I could kill you.”

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Faythe

Faythe couldn’t stare at her hollow reflection. Instead she picked at the pearls of her skirts while Marvellas combed her hair. The nausea turning within her hadn’t stopped since she’d been brought to this room, the same as before, when the young servants had bathed and dressed her before Marvellas arrived.

It was the act she was forced to endure that troubled her. Because every tender touch was like poison, every comb though her hair like betrayal, every sweet smile the Spirit gave her like pure manipulation, trying to convince Faythe that Marvellas could replace her mother and should not be her enemy.

She might have pitied Marvellas for the tale she tried to spin around them. An alternate reality she tried to force. It was tragic, and Faythe was nothing more than a trapped doll in her delusion.

Faythe’s sight kept catching on Nyte in the corner of the room, standing poised and quiet while he posed as Captain Daegal. He’d been the one to bring her here, and now he wasforced to be in close proximity with his mother and couldn’t do a thing.

“You used to enjoy your hair in braids,” Marvellas said. “You would sit for hours and let me decorate your beautiful locks. They were lighter and shorter back then. Would you like me to cut it?”

The fact Marvellas was giving her the choice was jarring but just another seed of delusion, trying to convince herself Faythe would surrender in her fight to stop her.

I’m not her,Faythe wanted to say.I am not Aesira.

How she kept referring to Faythe as Aesira was starting to confuse her mind. Every time Faythe was weakened enough, Marvellas had been planting fond memories of herself and Aesira, which was starting to break apart Faythe’s right to retain her own identity. At the same time, she’d started to pluck Faythe’s most treasured parts about Reylan out.

Faythe couldn’t remember

She couldn’t rebel against Marvellas’s attempts to slip Faythe into the role of Aesira in the past. She had to learn more about Marvellas’s true history.

“Agalhor never mentioned his brother’s name before,” Faythe said.

Marvellas drew in a long breath, so lost in her task.“That’s because I wiped it from existence when he left me and took my son.”

“Not even I know my father’s name, because he doesn’t know it himself,”Nyte said—a loud thought projection meant for Faythe to catch.

Faythe blanched at the power that would take. To erase his name from the minds of everyone who knew him as the Prince of Rhyenelle.

“You forsook your duty as a Spirit for him?” Faythe posed it as a question.

“No. It was for a human.”

Faythe was slammed by that admission, realizing she was about to understand Marvellas’s hatred toward humans. It began with the reason she’d bound herself to a mortal form on their lands…forlove.

“He visited my temple as nothing more than a wandering traveler with a thirst for knowledge on the three Spirits that balanced your world. There was something charming about him—blond with brown eyes and a kind face. He kept coming back, and I grew to enjoy his company. The way he talked, complimented me—I grew feelings I’d never had in all my eternity of watching over your lands. We both wanted more. I’d never known what it was to want something for myself—it is not what we Spirits are supposed to be capable of. But I did…and my want grew into an obsession. I confided in Dakodas to help me find a way to bind myself into a mortal body.”

Faythe swallowed hard, watching Marvellas lose herself in her own tale as she absentmindedly tended to Faythe.

“We lived nearly a decade together, and I had a human daughter. Then everything changed shortly after. I was ambushed by a dozen men who bound shackles on me that stole my power.”

Faythe’s heart skipped.The Aetherbonds, she thought.

“I waited for my human lover to come for me, and he did…because he was the one who’d orchestrated my capture. I couldn’t understand. I thought someone had gotten to him, a Nightwalker must have warped his thoughts…but it didn’t take long for the reality to shatter my delusional hope. He told me it was all a lie…his love for me was a lie. He knew all about the Spirits, every legend, every God. He knew my blood could be used to turn humans into fae. That was always his goal, and all he had to do was bide his time until the manacles were forged.”

Faythe couldn’t believe the story, but with the melancholy that kept Marvellas using the same lost tone, she did.

Nyte came a little closer, watching Marvellas with deeper attention as she told her tale.

“So you see, your books tell some truths, but they are never the whole and only truths. My love for a fae warrior came after my human lover’s betrayal.”

“How did you escape?”

Though her irises moved like the sun, she met Faythe’s stare in the mirror for a single pause that was so cold Faythe almost feltpityfor what was to come.

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