Page 331 of A Flame of the Phoenix

But she was too late.

Reylan stood poised, an arrow nocked in his bow, ready to release.

A second arrow.

The first had already made its mark in Maverick’s chest, and what was worse, as she flew closer, she felt the hideous sensation of the Niltain steel the arrow heads were made of.

She flew faster. Faster. Faster.

The second arrow fired, striking close to the first. Maverick fell to his knees, coughing black blood.

Reylan nocked again.

Zaiana dropped down in front of Maverick with a scream. “STOP!” Her chest heaved, staring off with the frightening loathing and rage of Reylan Arrowood.

“Get out of my way, or this goes through you both.”

“Wait—please.”Gods,she sounded pathetic, but her desperation didn’t care.

“Move…Zai-Zaiana,” Maverick said through labored breaths.

“You’re a damned fool,” she seethed at him, but it lacked its usual malice when she beheld the weakened sight of him.

The two arrows weren’t in his heart—there was still a chance to remove them and find a healer to stop the Niltain poison from killing him. Nerida would do it.

“I don’t want to kill you too,” Reylan said, not yielding.

“We’re fighting as one people,” she said, scrambling to make sense. “You forgave me. I’m not asking you to forgive him for killing your king and Faythe, but just let us flee. We’ll never come back to this continent again.”

Reylan’s eyes narrowed. “We?”

She swallowed hard. “I don’t expect you to forgive me for betraying you like this. You’re owed this kill, this vengeance, for what you lost—I know that. But I am asking you, as friends, if that’s what we found in all the twisted treachery and battles we faced against each other, to let us go.”

“What about Kyleer? You made him care deeply for you, only to abandon him forthat,” he seethed, his arrow finding a precise path to Maverick’s heart this time.

“You know Kyleer deserves better than me. When he remembers everything, he’ll know it too.”

Zaiana didn’t know what she was saying. What she was doing. The thought of never seeing Kyleer again was tearing her apart in places that had never been touched before. But so was the thought of Maverick dying.

Reylan’s jaw worked, contemplating both their lives in the tip of his arrow. She listened to her heartbeats like they were a countdown to the last.

Then, to her immense relief, Reylan lowered his bow, and all the tension that had built in Zaiana’s body deflated. “I don’t do this for either of you. Mercy is not what I know for the crimes he committed. But Faythe does. It’s because of her you live.”

Reylan stood a moment longer, rigid and still furious. Zaiana held her breath, knowing he could change his mind in a second.

Only when a flare of light engulfed him and a white eagle took off, flying around the mountainside and out of sight, did she finally relax.

Zaiana’s anger returned, however, when she turned to Maverick and kneeled to assess his wounds.

“Why did you do that?” he growled.

Her hands stopped just shy of touching him. “I just saved your gods-damned life,” she snapped, incredulous at his tone.

“I didn’t ask you to do that. It means everything was fornothing.”

“What are you talking about?”

Their bickering and resentment was familiar, inspiring both comfort and irritation.

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