Page 209 of A Flame of the Phoenix

“Marlowe, she…she’s?—”

“No.” That single word of refusal cut deep within her. “No, she’s not.”

A high-pitched ringing filled her ears as if protecting her from hearing the truth that would shatter her into a million pieces. Faythe couldn’t breathe right. Her heart couldn’t move right. The world…it no longer spun right.

There was only one reason Izaiah would have come to her this speechless. Neither his words nor his expression held any reassurance, not a flicker of hope, which couldn’t mean anything else but the worst of her spinning conclusions.

“Where’s Jak?” Faythe whispered.

A numb sensation spread over her body. A stilling calm waved over her mind.

“High Farrow.”

She didn’t register anything but her need to get to him. Faythe was running toward Atherius, her steps battling the snow. The Firebird rattled her cry through the night, mirroring Faythe’s charge of anguish. Reylan called her name and tried to follow, but he was too injured. She had to leave him behind right now for her friend.

Atherius took flight, soaring over the mountain edge and dipping just as Faythe leaped off it and was caught on the Firebird’s back.

Just before she’d left, she’d stolen images from Izaiah’s mind. Faythe had never felt such a concoction of rage and heartbreak turn her so icily cold, so calm, collecting her storm.

Her grief crystalized to shards of glass she would aim at the world to make them feel her pain. Her fury burned deep and sinister. This time, when Faythe Ashfyre let out her rage, there was no telling what would be spared from the ashes in her reckoning.

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

Zaiana

Zaiana startled at the awareness of a nearby presence. She winced, retracting her arm, which was caught awkwardly between the bars with her chains.

When her heavy lids peeled open, her eyes widened, and she pushed up to her knees.

“Ky,” she breathed.

A stiff tremble that had nothing to do with the cold shook over her body.

He was examining his hands, face drawn in confusion as he huddled in the corner, and towering behind him…

Wings like none she’d ever seen before.

Zaiana stared unblinking. They were the most beautiful things she’d ever laid eyes on. Dark with feathers, giving a moon-spilled gleam. How could it be possible?

“What happened to me?” he mumbled, so terrified and detached it cleaved her.

“You’re going to be okay.” The words ached up her dry, tight throat. She didn’t have the right to tell him that.

“I’m a monster,” he said in disgust.

Zaiana winced. She’d never heard him use the term so truly. He teased her with it, but this was something he believed about himself with the wings he had now.

“You’re not,” she tried to say, but she didn’t know how to make it convincing. Didn’t know what sequence of words could possibly get him to believe nothing had to change.

Kyleer reached behind himself, but he stopped shy of touching his wings, as if it repulsed him to acknowledge they were real.

“What do you call this?” he snapped.

“I have them too.”

He finally looked at her, and the fear she knew she would confront stole the air from her all the same.

No recognition. He didn’t know who she was.

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