Page 95 of A Flame of the Phoenix

A strip of moonlight pouring in from the single window kept the bottom half of his face in view.

“Go to sleep,” he ordered.

“Aren’t you going to?”

“I’m not risking you attempting something foolish.”

“I’m certain you’d wake up before I could try.”

He huffed, pushing off the wall and coming closer. Conflict raged in her. The trick of this mask while knowing it was Reylan inside wrecked her.

Reylan sank a knee onto the bed, watching her with those icy sapphire eyes. Their stare grew with tension, as if he anticipated she’d break, to provoke him into something that would be catastrophic in here.

“Release the mask,” she said.

“Why? Do you want to pretend?”

“You’re the one pretending.”

He eased more pressure onto the bed, leaning closer. Then, to her surprise, he did as she asked. Faythe’s ribs rattled watching the strands of his dark brown hair spill with silver, as if ice had formed along each strand. His eyes shifted shape, and she realized it had been a mistake to provoke him when she was overwhelmed with delusion now. Her mind had fooled itself into believing she could break through Marvellas’s influence on him with the yearnings of her heart alone.

By the time the last of his features had turned back, he’d eased all the way over, and Faythe couldn’t resist the hand she slipped across his face.

“Come back to me. Please.”

Reylan’s body hovered just shy of pressing into her. His face came down inches from hers, and for a second, she thought…

“You’re so pitiful it’s no wonder she will win without resistance.”

Faythe went to snatch her hand back, but his lashed around her wrist, and before she could struggle, she was on her back. Fire and ice blazed against each other in their battling stare, passing the same breath of anguish back and forth.

Her impulse and defiance won. Faythe lifted her head, pressing her lips to his. She didn’t know what she was doing, only that desperation and heartbreak were responsible for all that followed.

He answered with equal anguish, deepening the kiss in an instant, and Faythe almost lost herself to the passionate wrap of him. He let go of her bound wrists, and she gripped the front of his jacket, needing him closer in any way she could muster. The taste of him, the scent of him, it wanted to draw her into the clutches of a painful delusion. All that kept her from falling for it completely were the dark whispers that amplified in the heat of their anger and their hopeless need for each other. The shadows of the ruin circled them with glee, wanting Faythe to give in to its power as it held Reylan.

Their kiss was a clash of tongues and teeth, feverish grasping of hair and clothing. The cold was now forgotten with the heat of his body pressing her into the mattress.

She didn’t want to stop. Her resolve was slipping away under the familiar weight of him, and she wanted to pretend a little longer. Faythe didn’t know when he retrieved the key to her shackles—she was too focused on him and what to do next—so when they came free, she moaned into his mouth with the relief, giving over for a few more seconds. He hooked a hand under her knee, drawing her leg around his hips to push against her tighter.

So familiar. So much lust and yearning. So much pain and longing.

She drove her hands into his soft silver locks as his groan vibrated along her neck, scattering pleasure across her body. Faythe had allowed her desire to cloud too much. The pinch of his teeth against her neck shocked her back with a gasp.

Before he could fully bite her, Faythe’s hand slipped up his chest, and she wasn’t thinking straight when she forced her palm to encase the ruin embedded in his flesh beneath his leathers.

When she did, the world around her ceased to exist, and all she explored beyond was death and darkness. The dark at the end of everything.

Faythe grappled control within herself, remembering who she was. Threads of the real world started to weave her surroundings back. Shadowy power engulfed the room, hissing and flowing like she’d opened a world of dark beasts clawing to be free.

Reylan’s hand gripped her throat, and that dragged forth her instinct to survive. She had no discipline nor experience to wield a ruin and could feel it threatening to claim her instead.

She had to break it.

With both of them attached to the ruin, Faythe was more powerful than Reylan. They’d both always known this. She was a descendant of Marvellas, with Aurialis merged within the core of her magick, and with this amplifier, she could destroy the world in a few heartless thoughts.

AndGods,did this dark power whisper such temptation for it.

Faythe cried out, hooking her leg around his waist and managing to flip them. She pressed both palms to the ruin now, trembling with the fragile grasp she kept on her humanity.

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