Page 195 of A Flame of the Phoenix

There were few times Faythe had felt this alive. Unchallenged. This kind of magick, if not careful, could corrode her soul.

When they plummeted back to their reality, Faythe was breathless but reforged.

“You chose death then,” Reylan snarled, furious with her rebellion.

“Not today,” she said, right before her hands collected a gale of light that she threw at him.

Reylan brokethroughthe wall of the cabin this time.

Faythe didn’t waste a precious second—she raced out of the hut.

Reylan or the world. Reylan or the world. Reylan or the world.

How was she to make such an impossible choice? One was selfish. Completely, villainously selfish. But she wanted him so badly, clinging to a thread in her being that screamed at her tonever let him go; that once they were together, they could figure out how to right all that Faythe had wronged.

Only the moon illuminated the night enough for her to make it out of the tree line. She didn’t have a plan as Reylan’s chase stormed over the snow. Her mind whipped between the two choices Reylan left her with. Both were so detrimental Faythe struggled to accept either.

Her time was running out.

Faythe felt him following. Lightning pricked her fingertips, and she turned to send a strike toward Reylan. He took the power from her effortlessly, sending the strokes of amethyst parrying right back. Faythe narrowly avoided their paths by ducking behind trees.

The timber behind her split with the next blast Reylan sent into it, and Faythe shrieked, her heart choking in her throat as the tree began to fall. She had to dive out of the way to avoid being crushed under it.

Faythe had barely managed to scramble back to her feet when a sense raising the hairs on her nape made her whirl around. Light magick surged from her glowing palm as a natural defense. It collided with a stroke of dark power of the likes she’d never seen nor felt before. Faythe’s other hand joined the strain to hold steadfast against Reylan when the dark was winning against the light. Their collusion fused, so beautiful yet deadly, and Reylan stood just as mesmerized as the world around them began to gild in her vision.

Pushing harder, the strength of their powers became so much for them that it erupted in a flare that sent Faythe soaring back. She slammed into a tree, and the pain that impacted her head threatened her consciousness. Faythe’s senses lapped back slowly to feel the snow melting under her face, turning her skin numb. She was so tired, barely able to angle her arms to lift herself from the freezing ground.

Faythe cried when she was flipped onto her back suddenly, and Reylan straddled her, pinning her hands by her head. Even with the loathing and rage sharpening his features, he was so beautiful against the moonlight, with the snow falling around them.

“It’s okay,” she breathed. There was nothing left to do but accept peace. This moment she had with him. “I found you. I will always find you. In every realm and in every time, Reylan Arrowood.”

Reylan only stared at her, searching her eyes with confusion but struggling against the demand in him against her.

“Why do I feel this way?”

Her heart skipped a beat. “What way?”

Reylan’s eyes scrunched shut. He was slipping. There was a glimmer of hope he could come back to her, and it was slipping away.

“Like I have to kill you but I don’t know if I have the strength to do it.”

Faythe’s eyes dropped to the glowing ruin in his chest. “Me neither,” she whispered. Tears slipped down past her ears.

Their time was up.

Faythe had totry.

A shrill caw broke over the silent night. Faythe had felt Atherius moments ago. The flaming beauty soared up from the edge of the mountain like the sun rising blazing and triumphant against the night. She landed, melting the surrounding snow instantly, and her chest heaved, ready to blast toward them.

It distracted Reylan long enough that Faythe’s leg hooked around him, flipping their positions.

Her vision blurred, her heart cleaved in two, and her soul wailed as she said, “Please come back to me,” and pressed both her palms to the ruin.

Their souls…transcended.

They touched the beginning of time and the end of it. She saw the birth of stars and the chaos of constellations. The first light and the last darkness.

A voice echoed to her through the void she drifted in.

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