Page 194 of A Flame of the Phoenix

All this time, there hadn’t been even another consideration, another reason to believe the ruin embedded in Reylan was any other than Marvellas’s.

“Dakodas found me in Rhyenelle,” Reylan said. He cupped a large hand around her nape, pulling her up and holding her. “Before we all ended up on that courtyard. She offered me a choice. We were backed into a corner. Marvellas was always going to implant her ruin in one of us, and Dakodas wanted me to swap them before she did. I agreed then to be able to give you Marvellas’s ruin to kill her once and for all. I didn’t care what happened to me. So when Marvellas took me to retrieve hers, I switched it with Dakodas’s before they embedded it in my chest.”

How could she not have seen it sooner?

“Now I have Marvellas’s ruin to kill her, and as I’ve come to learn, there are manacles—Aetherbonds—which can seal away the power of the greatest being, and then I can stop Dakodas too. You don’t happen to know where they are, do you?”

Faythe’s mind was racing too fast for her comprehension right now.

Reylan switched the ruins.

Reylan has the Death Ruin inside him.

“That ruin is corrupting you,” Faythe said desperately.

“Do you know why I wanted you to break it? Because if you do, it will split a void for shadow creatures to emerge.”

Horror flooded her veins.

“Why would you want that?”

“Because they will purge this world of sinners.”

“Everyone is a sinner.”

Reylan’s smile spread, wickedly triumphant. “Exactly. Death’s realm will begin to thrive again.”

“No…”

“Yes, Faythe. There are two choices for you. I kill you here, then I kill Marvellas with her ruin she thinks is in me, then I find the Aetherbonds to lock away Dakodas’s power. This realm will be mine.”

It wasn’t him in the slightest. He was a vessel to this ruin that wanted conquest in death and darkness, perhaps a worse fate than Marvellas had planned in her course of genocide.

If Faythe broke the ruin…she was enlightened to the creatures she would unleash that would begin devouringeveryone.

“The other choice?” Faythe asked, keeping her voice steady as she stared into his beautiful alive eyes.

“You break the ruin. We kill Marvellas together, lock away Dakodas together, and watch the world burn from its sins.”

Two choices, both damning to the world. The second would give her Reylan back, but he would be horrified with what she’d done to have him.

Faythe held his eyes with such desperation, as if his true self would surface to tell her what to do.

Unexpectedly, he kissed her, and Faythe gave in to it. Just for a moment.

Then she braced herself…and splayed her palm over the ruin, opening herself to its power.

His fist tightened in her hair, pulling her close as surges of magick tore through them both, raw and electric. The pain that had once racked her body faded. She forgot why she had been crying. Everything dulled to nothing under the overwhelming rush of power now flooding her veins. For the first time she felt unstoppable, a fierce strength blazing within her, hot and boundless.

Faythe seized that newfound power, feeling it pulse under her control, and channeled it through her palm pressed firmly against Reylan’s chest. Her hand glowed with intensity as the energy surged forward, flowing into him with a force that made the air crackle around them.

But she couldn’t make such a detrimental choice yet.

Reylan flew back from her force of magick, crashing into the wall. Faythe flipped herself onto her hands and knees, but before she could scramble up, Reylan was already upon her again, dragging her back by her ankle.

Flipped onto her back, Faythe kicked his chest, connecting with the ruin again. Every time they physically connected through the ruin, together they skipped through so much color and space. Towns and cities. Paths of endless possibilities.

An entangling inferno of darkness and fire raged through her, and Faythe turnedstarvingfor it.

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