Page 339 of A Flame of the Phoenix

Its limbs twitched after the Shadowfyre dispersed, and Faythe watched with grim fascination as the dead lifted itself off the ground, animated in stiff, horrifying movements. It looked right at her, and Faythe’s magick became a dying wick, but she prepared herself to tap into it. With a second cry from Izaiah, the dead dark fae snapped its head in an unnatural way toward the opposing side. Then it took off in a frantic, terrifying run.

She spied many more racing in the same manner, and when she saw them launch into the enemy sides, she found Nik and Tauria relieved of their relentless fighting as Izaiah’s army of the dead plowed through the front lines.

A sharp tug within her silenced her world.

Faythe’s gaze instinctively swung toward the direction she’d felt it. Felthim.

Without missing a beat, Faythe sprinted, leaping over rocks, twisting through bodies. Occasionally, her magick cast out to eliminate anything in her way.

When Faythe rounded a giant rock, she skidded to a stop.

Dakodas was restraining Reylan on his knees, a hand gripped in his hair, pulling his head back, a blade already embedded dangerously in his throat. One second was all it would take for her to kill him. If Faythe so much as blinked, she might miss it. She noticed blood trickling down the sides of his mouth.

“He’s not a royal by blood, but he’s one of the chosen. Strength,” Dakodas said. Her black eyes drifted up, and Faythe looked too…at the full moon. “I think he’ll survive Transition just fine.”

“No!”

Faythe’s eyes flew wide, and she lunged as Dakodas’s hand moved to kill him. She raced time, knowing it laughed with every feeble step she took.

Though it wasn’t Faythe who screamed. It was Dakodas. The blade clattered to the ground, and Faythe beheld the manacle Reylan had managed to secure. Her other hand released his hair, and her face twisted with such frightening wrath that Faythe braced for her attack.

It never came.

“Now!” Zaiana yelled. Having dropped from the skies, the dark fae secured the second Aetherbond around Dakodas’s raised wrist.

Faythe’s adrenaline roared to life at the opportunity as the Aetherbonds fully nullified Dakodas’s magick. All at once, the power of a God flooded through her, and Faythe let it become her for what she had to do. To save the world. To save her friends, shehadto do this.

Summoning the force of the sun inside her, Faythe’s palms thrust against Dakodas’s chest, and both of themdetonated.

Waves of otherworldly power blasted through the mountains as Faythe drained every piece of Aurialis’s power into Dakodas.It incinerated the darkness, torching the very fibers of what made Dakodas.

The light cancels the dark.

Marvellas had given her this idea to eradicate Dakodas when she’d told them of her plans to place the Light Ruin into the Temple of Darkness. Then, before she died…Marvellas had made sure Faythe understood it was possible.

Gods were prideful creatures—Death had told her that. Despite all Marvellas’s wrongdoings and losing, she hadn’t wanted Dakodas to triumph either after her betrayal.

Through the light and gales of wind, she saw Reylan as if Dakodas no longer existed between them.

“In every realm,” she said to him.

Devastation stole his expression. Tears stood in his eyes.

“And every time,” he answered.

He reached for her and when their hands clasped, Faythe’s power climbed to a new pinnacle before she plummeted. The life drained out of her as Dakodas’s skin started to crack. Piercing rays of light broke through. With a cry to defy Gods, Faythe pushed all she had one last time and felt something in hersnap.

She lost her connection to Dakodas, falling back and not knowing what came next. Faythe didn’t feel the ground nor any of the excruciating pain that had torn through her body at wielding that velocity of power.

Faythe was floating or flying—she couldn’t be sure. Her body was weightless and her mind content.

Hands touched hers, returning a sense of gravity with a pull. Faythe opened her eyes, which she didn’t even realize were closed, and at who she saw she broke out in a sob.

“Marlowe,” Faythe croaked.

She really was dead then. She had to be, but this was a gift with that miserable fact.

Marlowe smiled, floating with her in this void of white and misty silver. Her blonde hair weaved around her porcelain face, and those light blue eyes showered her with a love she didn’t deserve.

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