Page 342 of A Flame of the Phoenix

He saw…

Faythe’s gold eyes fluttered open. Her hand rose to touch his arm.

“Reylan,” she whispered. “Did we make it?”

A breathy, delirious chuckle left him, and he kissed her. Faythe managed to straighten and stand in the water with him, but he held her in a tight embrace.

“We made it,” he mumbled into her neck.

“I thought…I thought I wouldn’t. I don’t think I’m supposed to be here.”

“You’re supposed to be with me.”

Her weak arms tightened. Then she released him to rest her head against his chest. Faythe’s fingers swirled over the surface of the water.

“The yucolites…”

“Know you belong here too.”

He scented the salt of her tears as they mixed with his. He couldn’t stop them. There were very few moments that invoked tears in him, but this joy was worth them.

Faythe stared into his eyes and he found the world in hers. Every day of misery, every hour of torment, it was all worth it to reach this moment with her.

Reylan braced his hands on her waist, lifting her out of the water to sit her on the edge. He looked up at her with the sun glowing behind her and the pride growing in his chest was abeautiful ache. She ran her fingers through his damp hair and the silence they basked in tender touches felt sacred.

“I love you,” he said. “I love you more than those simple words could possibly convey. There isn’t a language that translates what I feel for you.”

Reylan lifted himself out the water and Faythe moved like they were magnets until she lay back and he hovered over her.

“There is,” she said quietly. “There’s a language that exists only between us that is louder than words.”

Reylan’s lips crashed to hers and Faythe’s body arched into him as he pressed tighter to her. This was infinity. A vow to find her in every lifetime because what they had couldn’t be lost or broken by time.

They might have won the war but their battles weren’t over yet. He was ready to face everything that came next so long as he was by her side. To be whatever she needed him to be to begin tolivethe life she deserved.

CHAPTER NINETY

Faythe

Had the cost been worth the win? So much life was embedded in the wounds of a battle that would scar the land for ages to come. So many futures had become unreached dreams, so many faces existing now only in the memories of those left behind.

Faythe, battle-tired and devastated, walked like a ghost through the ruins of the outer town in High Farrow. She passed collapsed buildings, still smoking from extinguished fires. She took in the bodies buried under debris; the crimson stains over the cobbles. With so much tragedy in the wake of their triumph, there was no celebration to be had.

When she made it to her destination, it took everything she had left not to crumble as easily as the stone around her.

Because of everything that had collapsed in ruins…it still stood.

Right in front of her, wedged between two lost homes with their roofs caved in, the cramped hut of her childhood with Jakon still lived.

“Stubborn thing,” she muttered, but her emotions threatened to flood all over again.

She was so exhausted.

The door creaked open at her push—a familiar sound that broke her first sob—and she paused, head bowing. For just a few seconds, she wanted to pretend he would be inside. That Jakon would be waiting for her to come home at that small benched kitchen table. She held onto that memory when his voice in greeting came so clearly in her mind she had to grit her teeth, nails drawing blood from her palms to keep back the tears—but it was no use. Her first tears fell, and she looked up into vacancy.

He wasn’t coming back.

Faythe could hardly drag herself inside, but she did this for him.

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