Page 125 of A Flame of the Phoenix

Tynan growled, setting him back down, and Izaiah felt no more useful than a sodden stick. Next thing he knew, ice shockedhis system, animating his body against his previous thought of incapacity. Now sitting upright, with both hands against the floor, Izaiah blinked, some clarity returning as he watched the droplets from his hair gather in a puddle.

“Did you just throw ice-cold water over me?”

“I’m surprised it didn’t turn to steam hitting your scorching flesh. Do you have a damned suicide wish?”

Izaiah rubbed his eyes, shifting with a groan to his knees. His muscles barked in agony.

“I don’t expect you to understand. How did you follow me? Dammit, I was careful.”

“Zaiana told me before she left.”

His eyes scrunched shut, internally cursing her for divulging this when he’d explicitly conditioned her not to. Then the second part of his answer registered, and Izaiah slid a look at Tynan.

“Left? Where has Dakodas sent her?”

Why hadn’t she told him? He wasn’t done learning from her, even though their sessions had started to consist of her merely watching his failures, claiming she’d provided all the information she could.

“Zaiana left on her own to track down answers about our still hearts since Malin planted the idea of a curse, not a birth defect.”

Izaiah leaned back on his knees, his breaths finally starting to feel normal again. “Did she? Good for her.” He meant it, glad the dark fae was taking her own initiative for once.

“Before she did, she told me of your own plan of stupidity. Honestly, it’s like running a daycare here sometimes.”

“I told her not to tell you.”

“And why not?”

Tynan stood cross-armed, staring him down. Izaiah pitied the emotion that slipped through the dark fae’s anger toward him.

“For the reason you’re looking at me now. I told you not to care about me.”

“Too late,” he snapped.

Izaiah knew he’d done wrong by Tynan in letting him attach feelings to their moments of lust. In his defense, he hadn’t expected Tynan to be capable of caring. Everything they thought about the dark fae, all the sinister tales of their history, it was not a linear truth. It seemed so ignorant and desperate upon reflection, an easy way out, to pin blame out of fear and condemn an entire group of people by letting the heinous acts of a few be loud enough to define them all. Perhaps the good in their history was merely hidden in the shadows.

“I didn’t know Zaiana cared so much about me to send a watcher.”

With unstable balance, Izaiah rose to his feet, taking a moment to brace on his thighs. “She doesn’t. But what she won’t admit is that she cares for me, and she foolishly cares for your brother. So by association, you have more care than you damn deserve.”

There was no arguing with that.

Tynan said, exasperated, “What are you hoping to achieve here anyway? What could you possibly want with more power?”

“The power of a crown is just an illusion. True power is worth everything.”

“You’ve never struck me as one to desire a throne.”

“I don’t. But the ability to take one for someone else, to stop tyranny before it can warm another seat of influence—that’s worth everything.”

Tynan took a pause for thought. “You’re doing this for her? For Faythe Ashfyre?”

“She’s my queen.”

“The second she gained that title, her kingdom was stolen right in front of her. That’s who you’re giving your life for?”

Izaiah straightened, challenging Tynan with a dark stare-off. “The first half of my life I was a coward. I let my father tell me who I had to be. He didn’t like my preference for males, and I wasn’t a fighter—not back then. I didn’t want to be. I let him take his anger toward me, the world, and himself out on Kyleer,” he confessed. There was no reason to hide his failings. “Agalhor was the best ruler of our time, and he saved me from the mines my father sent me to. But Faythe has it in her not only to make a change for Rhyenelle but also the world. She falls, she gets back up, and she fights. But it’s more than that. She sees, she hears, and she understands. In her, I see a world where fewer of those like me have to fear being themselves, because she will lead by example, as human, as fae, as a commoner, and as a royal. And I’m going to do my part to see her rise.”

Tynan’s harsh expression had relaxed while Izaiah talked. “Believe it or not, I actually understand. For I see the same in Zaiana.”

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