Page 203 of A Flame of the Phoenix

“How many others have their hearts?” she asked.

“All of them. Somehow, you broke a curse none of them knew they were under. I have a feeling you’ve caused something, Zaiana. Something that could shift the tide of war.”

“How—?” She couldn’t process what was happening. How it was possible. All she’d done was try to save Kyleer.

Her magick was back too. Despite the heavy weight of the steel, it was distantly there, and she knew she could drag it forth to strike Maverick now if she so desired. She wouldn’t out herself just yet to give away that upper hand.

It didn’t matter right now. She wanted to kill Maverick, and she despised that she had to ask him for anything.

“When did you remember your past as Callen?” she ground out.

It had been puzzling her this whole time, how Maverick could have his memories when the Transitioned were said to lose them. But if Kyleer didn’t remember anything when he woke…she had to find out how he’d done it.

Maverick came closer, giving no emotion through his steel features. “I remembered…” he said, his tone so detached and icy her skin prickled, “the day I held my mate as she died, and I looked down to see my hand around the hilt of the blade in her heart.”

Zaiana held her breath for a second. She didn’t want to feel the slither ofremorsefor the wicked fallen prince.

She didn’t want to feel at all.

“So this is how villains are made,” she said.

Maverick looked down at her from his height, and she saw it: his black irises like a mirror.

One and the same.

They were two sides of the same coin, tainted by irredeemable sin.

“No,” he said at last. “You don’t get to blame something for that choice. If the villain is what you want to be, thenown it.Not for some past that has wronged you, even if time and time again. Or you are no better than Marvellas.”

“And what are you?”

Maverick leaned away. “Nothing,” he said.

She watched his back as he left, raging with so much turmoil she didn’t know how to handle it.

So many wounds inside her strained toward bursting, and if she let it all go…Zaiana didn’t know who she would be if she bled from all the open scars.

She lay back down, so close to the bars, next to Kyleer. Zaiana reached through, slipping her fingers over his limp hand until her restraints met their end. His skin was as cold as the dead.

Her brow crumpled, and her eyes slipped shut.

Zaiana lay with him, and if he didn’t wake in that moment, she didn’t think she wanted to either.

But hours passed in torment. Sleep wouldn’t find her to offer her some reprieve from the miserable wait of knowing if Kyleer had pulled through his Transition.

“Your lover, I presume?”

The new voice that crept over the cells tightened her body with a mix of anger and irritation. Zaiana sat up, slipping her lazy, dark sight to Captain Daegal.

She didn’t like him in the slightest, and she’d grown to hate him even more since the day he assaulted Faythe. Not for what he did—that was pathetic, and she would have cut him down before he got to fulfill any sick fantasy—but after he awoke, Zaiana had been unable to shake a new sensation that crawled over her,within her,when he was near. She could hardly stand to look into his brown eyes that she believed had somehowbecome brighter too, luring her in, and if she dared to get close enough, she was sure to drive a blade through his heart to sever the hypnotism he invoked.

“Has she sent you to see if he’s alive?” Zaiana asked bitterly.

“No. Marvellas is more livid about you, in fact. And that Faythe Ashfyre is missing.”

The heir had broken the ruin and got away. Zaiana had stopped underestimating Faythe long ago, so anything less than this news would have been disappointing.

“Have you come to take me for punishment?”

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