Page 215 of A Flame of the Phoenix

“I’m so sorry I wasn’t with you,” she whispered.

Jakon’s jaw tightened, and Faythe braced for the resentment that flashed in his eyes.

“No. You weren’t there as she stared bravely into the face of her death and did not waver. You weren’t there as your cousin snapped her neck in the heat of his rage, as if she meant nothing. My wife, yourfriend, was murdered, and you weren’t there.”

Faythe whimpered sharply. “We’re going to make him pay.”

“Death and more death. Yes, I want him to pay, but in the end, it doesn’t change nor heal anything. She’s gone… Marlowe is gone, and she’s never coming back.”

What broke her more was how emotionless Jakon stayed as he spoke. How alone and in agony he’d been in the thick of his grief to have not shed a single tear now.

He broke her stare. “You need stop by the Greens’ mill. Then I’ll meet you back on these hills to go to Rhyenelle.”

With that, he slipped by her, heading through the trees and leaving Faythe in the heart-wrenching silence this place now held.

Faythe turned back to Marlowe’s grave.

Marlowe’s grave.

The sight, the reality she stared at… Now she was alone, Faythe let herself drown. Unrelenting agony surged up—a tide that dragged her under. Despair gathered in her knees, buckling them again, sinking her into the scattered bluedrops as tears blurred her vision, spilling unchecked.

A hollow ache clawed at her chest as if her heart were tearing itself open piece by piece. She gripped the edge of the gravestone, fingers pressing into the cold stone as if it might anchor her, keep her from slipping away entirely. But the sorrow was relentless, pouring through her, filling every empty space, until she was nothing but pain—a vessel for all the words left unsaid; all the moments they would never share.

Faythe couldn’t stop wondering if Marlowe knew she was going to die. If she’d been burdened with that possibility through her ability as an Oracle.

“Oh, Marlowe,” Faythe choked. “We need you.”

Faythe had seen the spirit of Freya, Reylan’s lost love, at her grave before. Yet now, Faythe wanted to see Marlowe so desperately, but her friend didn’t come. A scream tore fromFaythe’s throat in place of her friend’s greeting, which she tried so hopelessly to summon.

Was it because of what Faythe had done in breaking the Death Ruin? She’d seen Aurialis briefly…had watched the Spirit of Life dissolve and leave her.

What had she done?

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there to protect you.” Faythe could hardly squeeze out words from her tightening throat. They were all meaningless anyway.

Faythe would carry this failure as the greatest of her existence for the rest of her days.

When her tears ran dry, Faythe’s sight cast toward the temple as she rose slowly. A clam started to take over her. One of icy detachment, which she would need to move a step beyond the gravesite of her dearest friend.

She couldn’t get inside without her sword, Lumarias, needing the Riscillius stone in the pommel to see the hidden symbols on the doors. Her fists clenched at the absent weight at her side. She wondered if she’d even be able to retrieve her sword, which had been taken from her in Lakelaria, with Marvellas still dominating the island.

Shewouldretrieve it. Lumarias was more than her sword—more than the key to enter the Spirit temples. Now, above all, it was a token of Marlowe, who’d crafted the blade with her brilliant blacksmiths’ hands. Faythe had to carry her friend to the end of this war.

Marching up the steps to the temple doors, Faythe didn’t know why she wanted to get inside. Why she jammed her fingers into the crack where the doors met, straining to pull them apart until her brow beaded with perspiration and her muscles tightened in protest, her scream tearing free as her magick surged to the surface. Gold essence blasted from her palms andsplayed over the stone, rebounding off the structure in powerful waves.

Her efforts weren’t futile. She felt the web of thin cracks splitting at the velocity of her magick. Faythe attacked, with the magick of Aurialis still left within her.

With one final push, the stone gave way. The resistance against her faltered, but she caught her balance before she tumbled in like the wall.

Panting, Faythe’s boots crunched over the debris, entering the temple now in ruins at the front, with only the back wall and partial sides still intact. She wandered in until she stood over the symbol of Aurialis on the floor, staring down at it with such anguish and resentment she could hardly contain it.

Faythe thought of what the primordial of Death had said. How he’d made her question whether Aurialis was ever on their side at all, or if she was just another self serving entity who wanted to win against her sister Spirits and was using Faythe as her pawn.

Using all of them.

“Haven’t I given enough?” Faythe’s question wouldn’t receive an answer, but her mind was spiraling with her own conclusions. Those words repeated in a scream of anguish as she kneeled, slamming her palm, charged with the Spirit of Life’s power, to the symbol that matched her palm. Both glowed brightly, connecting like a fuse that exploded the world around her.

Faythe was no stranger to these experiences that took her mind from her body and transcended her soul. They reminded her how fragile her world and existence were. How inconsequential everything was in the vast expanse of the infinite web of universes.

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