Page 6 of A Flame of the Phoenix

“You want blood? You’ll choose it yourself,” he snarled.

Marvellas pushed off him with a bored groan. “I expected your refusal, of course,” she crooned. “It only makes it more satisfying to craft you into my willing soldier so very soon.”

She lingered a twinkling gaze of admiration over him before turning to the guards. They gave a nod of obedience, both dropping a dagger. Metal clanged against stone, declaring a challenge that taunted death.

The two fae on their knees glanced with terror between each other and the blades dropped in front of them. Reylan’s skin began to crawl.

“Love is only a delusion,” Marvellas said, standing beside him and waiting. “You’ll see.”

The male lingered a longer look at the dagger closest to him, contemplating. The female could hardly contain her sobs. He reached for his.

“Stop,” Reylan snapped, realizing what was about to happen. “You prove nothing by having them kill each other.”

Marvellas turned her head to him curiously. “I am giving them a choice,” she said.

The female reached for her blade with a choked cry, and they both stood with trembling balance. They clutched their weapons, ghostly stares targeting each other.

“They can take the blade to their own heart or each other’s.”

The choice seemed easy. As barbaric as this portrayal was, Reylan waited for the point of steel to turn from each other toward themselves.

“In their minds, I have shown each of them a life of wealth, of finding love again, if they choose to save themselves. Being mates is merely a recognition of equal power and potential.”

Reylan’s head shook vacantly. It didn’t matter. There wasn’t a single thing in this realm, or in any, he could ever want more than Faythe. Every material thing, every living being—it all became insignificant and hollow in a world where she didn’t exist.

Yet to his incomprehensible horror, the pair didn’t redirect their blades from pointing at each other.

She had to be tricking them with something else.

“I may be wicked in my methods.” She answered his desperate, disbelieving thoughts. “But I am no cheat. Why should they sacrifice themselves when their dream life is one act away?”

Reylan wanted to avert his gaze from the scene he couldn’t fathom. He pictured Faythe, his Phoenix, and perhaps Marvellas was right. Lovecouldkill, for there was nothing he wouldn’t give for her. Even himself.

They moved in unison, lunging for each other, but the female seemed to waver in her choice right before they met. It became her end when the male’s blade plunged into her chest. His arm circled her as they fell to their knees, and Reylan witnessed their wide stares turn to regret in an instant.

“The action can be hard to bear in the moment, but time will bury the guilt,” Marvellas said.

“What have I done?” the male whispered.

Reylan tried to find pity for him through the outrage at what he’d chosen over his own mate. He wanted to believe Marvellas was a liar and had orchestrated this play.

“You proved nothing,” Reylan said coldly.

Marvellas sliced him a bored look before her hand rose and a sickening crack cut off the male’s sobs.

He stared at the two tragic fae, watching their love spill in a crimson pool around them. It might have been selfish only to think of Faythe as the devastating scene changed from two strangers to him and Faythe. It slammed into him, the gravity of what Marvellas was capable of. If she broke his mind, she could force him to do something unforgivable toward Faythe.

“You don’t have the Riscillius,” Reylan said vacantly.

Marvellas liked proximity. Perhaps she felt a person’s emotions more intensely with physical touch and she loved to manipulate them.

“Do you want to know a secret, Rey? One I have not even exposed to my sister,” Marvellas said with a note of pride. “It will remain just between us. I had the Riscillius once, and when I came here, I made sure I would never need something so easily stolen to get to the only weapon in this realm that can kill me. You see, Faythe has been told I can be sent back to the Realm of the Gods and face my penance there, and that can be done. So all I have needed is to find someone with enough strength to break a ruin.”

The Spirit glided over to the fallen bodies, bending to swipe her finger through a pool of blood before reaching the temple door. “It took three oracles to break the binding of the Riscillius and forge my own. I haven’t told my sister, because when it becomes a matter of life or death, one might find betrayal lies in the thickest blood. I want Aurialis’s ruin because it is a powerful tool on its own, but more importantly, I have been searching endlessly foryou,Reylan. I commend you for keeping the extent of your abilities from me all that time ago, making me believe you were like any ordinary Mindseer. It took seeing you in action with Faythe to realize how wrong I was.”

After her blood tracing, the door groaned inward with a familiar, daunting crawl. Marvellas looked to Reylan expectantly, and the uncanny resemblance to the first time he’d followed Faythe to the Light Temple in High Farrow made his heart race.

Gods,he missed her with such agony there were days he thought it could end him.

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