Page 3 of A Flame of the Phoenix

The stranger took slow steps forward, and she locked eyes with him, not his blade. “I promise you, from this day, I am yours. To protect you.”

She could have spluttered at the blatant lie.

The male pulled down his hood, and he was striking, with hazel eyes and dark raven hair so long it was half-tied in a knot. It didn’t stop the strands from framing his firm face, his jaw shadowed with coarse hairs.

She shook her head. Having only just broken out of her cage, she couldn’t allow this male to fashion new bars around her before she’d tasted freedom.

“There is always a price,” she said.

“May you ask mine?”

“No.”

Her hand lashed out for the knife, slicing through his glove, cutting flesh. He clenched his teeth but made no sound or movement. Her stance was clumsy as she slipped through blood in her backward stride, angling the blade with false bravery.

He didn’t react in anger, though her pulse thrummed to brace for his wrath. He didn’t do anything but watch her steadily.

“What is your name?” he asked calmly.

She blinked. It didn’t seem arrogant to assume he would know who she was. Everyone did, or at least…

It was in that moment her world shrank so small that air became nonexistent. She had once been all-powerful. Her name had been a prayer; a blessing. Then she’d taken flesh, and when she’d been tricked and trapped here, the world had slowly forgotten about her.

“Marvellas,” she said, but her own name made her swallow with regret.

“Let me rephrase,” the male offered gently. Everything he did was in consideration of the spooked deer she clearly was. “What would youlikeyour name to be?”

That question crumbled her anger. Stole all her revenge and pricked her eyes.

It was a chance to be free. To leave behind the tragic, fallen, humiliated Goddess she was. To be someone else entirely. Yet she couldn’t let go. Her failures were as much a part of her as her triumphs.

“Marvellas,” she repeated, sure now.

She wouldn’t let the vile greed of mankind make her shun her identity. Hide from it. No. She was Marvellas, the Spirit of Souls and Goddess of the Stars. And she would make the world pay in that name one day.

“Marvellas,” he echoed as though testing it against his tongue.

“And yours?” she asked with a confidence she could only credit to her defiance.

“Mikhael,” he said, the name accompanied by a twitch of his mouth that if held might have passed for a smile.

It was just a name. Just a word. Maybe it was the unhesitant way he offered it to her that made it settle like a token of trust as sure as his dagger.

“Mikhael Ashfyre.”

PART I

Ashes of Dawn

CHAPTER ONE

Reylan

There were infinite ways to break a person. Flesh was fragile, easily torn, and fear was a relentless accomplice, twisting the mind until it fractured.

But for Reylan, there was only one way to truly destroy him—one weakness that could shatter his soul completely.

And she was safe.

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