Page 149 of A Flame of the Phoenix

“I have to do this,” Faythe said. Her soul tore to hurt him.

She hugged his physical body tighter. At least, she thought she did, but her tether to the real world was slipping fast. Faythe might have the power to break the ruin, but she had no skillto navigate this fight for dominance. The ruin was a force that could not be defied or controlled easily. It was fighting to take over, and if that happened…Faythe would be no more than a vessel for the deadly power.

It wasn’t something whole she could target. It circled her, evading her, mocking her. Faythe was too overwhelmed and frightened, and she didn’t know how to stand against it for a chance.

An arm of smoke grew around her, growing in size, until she kneeled helplessly in a raging tempest of wailing souls and furious darkness. The sound…the beating wind, it was familiar.

Like hundreds of crows.

Faythe gasped when a thick tendril of smoke surged down from the eye of the tempest, ready to devour her?—

Faythe’s eyes flew open though she didn’t remember closing them. An eruption of pain in her shoulder tore a scream from her throat. When she found Zaiana straddling her, a Magestone blade dripping crimson in her hand, she understood it had been the dark fae’s last resort to snap Faythe’s attachment to the ruin.

She slumped against the floor, panting and sweat-slicked.

“How long did I try for?” Faythe asked, trying to get her vision to stay focused on the brown roof flickering with firelight.

“Two minutes.”

Horror doused her. Two minutes had felt like hours on her body.

Zaiana got off her as she said, “We knew you weren’t going to achieve it on the first try.”

“That almost sounds like you have faith in me.”

Faythe had never heard the particular huff of light amusement from Zaiana. “Your name is ironic.”

Her head lolled to find Reylan, head bowed again, but he was breathing with more exertion now. His skin was paler, with a sheen the flames glowed over.

“Are you okay?” she barely whispered.

Reylan’s head lifted a fraction. He took a pause of silence before he spoke. “So long as you remain afraid of the dark, it will always hold power over you.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Zaiana

She didn’t want to be here, cramped in a dark servant’s supply room with Maverick Blackfair. They leaned against opposite walls, mirroring each other, with crossed arms and a foul stare, but the space between them was barely a wide step.

“The easiest way to test this theory is to kill you,” he said plainly.

Zaiana’s mood soured. She’d told him everything she suspected about the curse on dark fae hearts, and how she believed herself to be the anchor for it somehow.

“I’ll give you one attempt to try,” she answered flatly.

Maverick almost yielded a half-smile.

“It makes you wonder, doesn’t it…? In history and now, the fae and the dark fae have been at war with each other. Marvellas merely took advantage of what was already a simmering conflict. But no one wants to admit evil isn’t born, it’s made. And the fae are just as susceptible to it.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does. This changes everything.Youcan change everything.”

“I may be powerful, but I’m not enough to take down Marvellas. Nothing but her ruin can do that, and it’s embedded in Reylan Arrowood’s chest.”

“Then we retrieve it. We have the one weapon that can kill her, and I’ll rip it right out of him for you to wield.”

She didn’t doubt he would hold true to that.

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