Page 36 of A Flame of the Phoenix

CHAPTER NINE

Zaiana

Zaiana had slept well. It should have been a relief, but the fact kept her on a prickly edge.

Her dream had been real.

The sleep demon had promised to lull her into a deep rest, and he’d done so. She didn’t know what he wanted. Worst of all, she wouldn’t be able to stop him infiltrating her mind again if he truly wasn’t finished with her.

Zaiana marched Rhyenelle’s halls as if they were the warped, cavernous walls of the Mortis Mountains. She’d allowed herself to soften too much with the kernels of weakness that had begun to plague her. Not anymore.

Maverick turned the corner toward her, and Zaiana was torn between wanting to kill him or demand what game he thought he was playing.

Zaiana intended to walk right by without engaging, keeping her eyes locked ahead and away from him. The bastard was dancing with death by sidestepping into her path.

“Get out of my way,” she snarled, lifting her eyes to his dark irises, which narrowed at her reaction.

“Where are you going?”

Zaiana placed a hand to his chest to push him, but he didn’t back down. His hand wrapped around her wrist, twisting to pin her to the wall, and she turned livid.

She only realized it wasn’t a wall he’d pushed her against when he leaned in and the next second it was falling away from her back. Her focus dropped from him only to spin and avoid an embarrassing tumble through the door.

Hate boiled in her. Turning back to him, she couldn’t see fully, as darkness engulfed them when the click sealed them in the room. The unknown tightened in her throat—only for a second before a blue flame ignited, and Zaiana breathed lighter with the illumination allowing her to map her surroundings.

Not a tight confinement.

They were in a small sitting room.

Maverick’s expression was disturbed under the glow of his flame. Then he passed her, stopping at the table, and lit the two lanterns there.

“I’m going to kill you,” Zaiana promised.

“I have never once doubted you’ll be the death of me,” he said, so calm in contrast to her fury.

“Why did you save me?” she snapped.

It had been tormenting her—how he’d caught her in the sky when she would have plummeted to her death.

Maverick took a long, bored breath as he leaned against the table and folded his arms. “Iam very adamant youstay alive.”

“So you can be the one to kill me?”

“Something like that.”

Zaiana’s nostrils flared. What had been reeling through her mind since she’d awoken came surging to the surface to use as a weapon now.

“I must commend you for playing the fool all these years, Maverick.” The energy charged between them, growing with his slow steps toward her, which she stood unyielding against. “Or should I say,Callen?”

His gaze sharpened at the name. She hadn’t been able to stop recalling Faythe’s cry of it during the battle, and Zaiana had finally remembered why it was familiar.

“That person died a long time ago.”

“Thatprince.”

“Does it matter?”

“You pretended not to know.” Zaiana despised the fact shehurtbecause of it. That during their time in the cave, he’d led her to believe he’d been robbed of his fae life completely.

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