Page 8 of A Flame of the Phoenix

Instead of retreating, Faythe embodied his merciless, cold detachment, letting it become instinct that seized his mind and shattered it in a breath. She wouldn’t have outlasted him in combat with the amount of human blood heightening his physical strength.

Those who’d been chasing Faythe closed in behind her as the one she’d killed slumped to the ground. The woman fell too, but Faythe was too far gone to check on her survival right now, and the threat wasn’t over.

Three rushed in at her back, one in the sky.

“Nowhere to run now,Heir of Marvellas.”

They taunted that title, and Faythe’s fists flexed, ready to unleash all she’d built in the ten minutes she’d been entertaining their chase. The only luminance to break the pitch-darkness they cornered her in was from the glow in her palms.

One dark fae took the lead, chuckling in mockery of the display of magick.

“I only need one of you alive,” she said. “Though death might be kinder.”

“We can’t kill you. But we can certainly have fun with you before taking you to her.”

Faythe only focused on the one closest, and as he stepped forward, she slipped into his mind. The surges of negative auracircled her, pushing back. It had taken some practice to remain inside against the nauseous force.

With a strangled sound, he crashed to his knees by her influence.

Keeping him there, Faythe thrust a hand skyward. Her ability was manifesting stronger every day, able to grip the hovering creature with a lasso made of burning gold essence. When she felt her snare around him, she poured in all her strength, amplified by the anger shaking from her, to bring him careening to the ground.

His wail cut off with a quick, revolting crack, and Faythe wasn’t immune to the note of disgust at what she’d done this time. But she never felt regret.

Another advanced, and her head pulsed to split her focus, but she seized his mind too. Then shattered it. The exertion was catching up to her, laboring her breaths and slicking her skin with a dangerous warning.

“Where is Marvellas?” she asked the one she held at her mercy.

“Burn in the Nether,” he spat.

The third dark fae charged for her, and Faythe twisted around the vertical swipe of his blade. Her own dagger plunged through his back in the same maneuver. She yanked it free, letting his body drop.

One less obstacle to Reylan.

One less creature to pose a fatal danger to her people.

It was all she could console herself with. Grappling with threads of humanity that were fraying with each passing day.

“I’ll meet you there,” Faythe answered. She took a fist full of dark hair, yanking his head back, and he gave a venomous hiss. “Where is she?”

Silence.

It was a cold calling to her volatile rage. Every beat of silence darkened in her soul. It felt like wasted sand in an hourglass measuring Reylan’s life. Faythe didn’t know herself in his absence, while they were hurting him. It was all she could think of, and she didn’t know the limit to what she was capable of anymore as she approached every barrier to him not only with a determination to knock them down, but to make them suffer just as she was.

“Valgard?” Faythe prompted, flipping her dagger.

Turning back to her kneeling victim, she pressed the slick blade against his cheek.

The Niltain steel clawed a shriek from the dark fae’s throat.

“We don’t know where Marvellas is,” he hissed through clenched teeth.

Faythe cut from his cheekbone to his chin, collecting beads of black blood against his pale complexion, before pointing the tip to the hollow spot of his neck.

A headache cleaved her head, twisting her thoughts and warping reality as she delved into his mind for answers. If she wasn’t careful, Faythe thought it could drive her to madness if she lost herself too far. Their minds were always so, so desolate. Part of her wondered, maybe even hoped, she would come across one who didn’t seem like a lost cause.

If she had to annihilate them all—achieve what had been failed in history to eradicate them—she believed she could.

Faythe was their villain. And she was losing patience.

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