Page 228 of A Flame of the Phoenix

Marvellas heard the voice of her loyal Captain Daegal; Zaiana saw Nyte entering.

He escorted Reylan—or rather, threatened the general with a blade to his back into the ruined throne room.

Zaiana glanced down at what Reylan gripped tightly. He’d risked himself to retrieve Faythe’s sword, Lumarias. It held theRiscillius stone they required to access the Spirit temples in its pommel, but Zaiana knew that wasn’t why he’d recklessly gone to claim it for his mate.

Her hip felt suddenly too light, and she wondered with a pang in her chest if she would ever get her own back,Nilhlir, which was taken from her when she was locked away.

Marvellas blazed at the sight of him, shocked and suspicious. “Faythe Ashfyre?”

“She’s not here,” Nyte informed her.

Marvellas took that information as a trick, eyes darting around as if her heir was lingering in the shadows waiting to strike.

“I wanted to spare you, Reylan Arrowood. Now I’m forced to make such a tragic waste of power,” Marvellas seethed.

Nyte pushed Reylan to his knees, and Zaiana should have been tense, concerned, but Reylan was too calm as Zaiana studied him…bracing for something she didn’t know what yet.

“Kill him,” Marvellas ordered.

Nyte’s eyes shifted to his mother, contemplating. The tension of the room thickened with a battle frozen in time.

“You don’t want the satisfaction of doing this yourself?” he asked chillingly. Nyte lifted the common blade to Reylan’s throat, and the Firebird outside gave a piercing wail.

Izaiah, Zaiana realized. It had to be.

Marvellas schooled her expression. “I will reunite him with Faythe Ashfyre piece by piece.”

Nyte stalked around Reylan with the blade resting on the general’s shoulder. A mere second of movement could take his life, and Zaiana didn’t know if she should act to prevent it…or trust Nyte.

His chilling, tilted-down gaze never left the Goddess of Stars. “No, you won’t,” he said. His blade slipped from Reylan before he dropped it lazily. The clang rebounding around the deadlysilent hall was like a declaration, and it was then Zaiana didn’t know who she was more fearful of. Nyte embodied more sinister energy than she’d felt even from Marvellas herself.

“What are you doing?” Marvellas hissed.

Nyte slipped a hand into his pocket, so calm and composed it was frightening. How he moved like a predator and looked withpeaceat the death and bloodshed he walked around.

“The Oracle you killed showed me what would have been my alternate path of fate in this realm. Should I have never been taken, had I been raised here with you,Iwould have become the villain of this realm.”

Zaiana couldn’t believe he was exposing himself now. She whipped her gaze to the Spirit, who blazed at who she believed was her captain, but the confusion of his words began to settle in the deep fold of her brow.

Nyte continued before she could interject. “You had to lose that which was most precious to you, your son,to break the Aetherbonds and regain your power all that time ago, and you would have done it. Even if I had always been here. The greatest irony is, you would have killed me to stop me. A heroic act, but in your grief, you would have carried on down the path you’re taking now, believing your plan of genocide is liberation. With all the power I was born into, with the drive for supremacy you and my father harbor, my path would have been inevitable. I would have conquered this continent far easier than you.”

Nyte paced the hall, gripping everyone’s attention.

“In all the endless loops my fate travels on, there is only one that shows me a path beyond villainy. A path with a chance to begood. I had to follow the brightest star. Only Astraea could find the light in all my darkness. Only she could love a monster and show me freedom isn’t in conquer or power—it is in loving and being loved in return. So, you see, though I will kill him, my father saved me by taking me away from here. Or I wouldhave ended up just like you now. A tyrant on the brink of true madness.”

He poured that world-shifting revelation at the Spirit’s feet with the confidence and ease of any weapon. Zaiana’s heart thumped hard, waiting for the tension to break. She didn’t know if what Nyte had done in revealing all to his mother now could trigger something even more unhinged and volatile in the Spirit.

Marvellas didn’t speak right away, but her expression contorted, slipping that hint of madness Nyte probed at through the cracks of her mastered composure. “You don’t know a thing about my son.”

“Iamyour son.” Nyte’s voice rose to declare it. “You know all about Gods and curses,Mother.This isn’t exactly my vessel of choice to possess, but it has served me well.”

“Impossible.”

Just like that, it were as if Marvellas forgot who she was. The battle, theworld,around her. Zaiana didn’t think the Spirit was capable of wearing the kind of terror she inflicted on others, but there it was.

“Rainyte.” Marvellas took three steps toward him before she cried out.

Zaiana stepped back out of nothing more than shock at what she was witnessing. Nyte had infiltrated her mind, stopping her from getting closer. Zaiana was sure Marvellas could easily break past his influence, but she didn’t. Pure heartbreak split her features, slowly absorbing all Nyte claimed as truth. This was the desperate yearnings of a mother forgetting everything else she was in the presence of her child.

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