Page 16 of A Flame of the Phoenix

A spear of air sliced her throat. Zaiana’s whole body jerked with a pain that shot through every nerve and clenched her teeth. She panted, snapping her lids open when it eased, but her breathing wouldn’t tame as she recalled her dream—no. It had turned to a nightmare twisted from her reality.

Her skin was slick and hot, and one glance to the side stilled her at the person she found in the chair across the room.

“You mumble in your sleep, you know?” Maverick drawled, flipping through a book.

Zaiana tried to prop herself up, but her movements were agony.

“Here,” a soft, feminine voice said to her on her other side. Amaya.

Zaiana’s senses were stuffed with cotton—she could hardly detect a thing. The fright caused another wince Amaya shared. The darkling extended a glass of water, which Zaiana immediately reached for. Her throat ached with every gulp.

Wiping her lips, she dreaded to ask, “How long have I been asleep?”

“Six weeks,” Maverick said, thumping his book shut in one hand. “In and out, but I’m going to guess you don’t remember any moment of consciousness when you were hardly present.”

She couldn’t have heard that right. No—it wasn’t possible she’d lost that much time since the Battle of Ellium. Her breathing picked up. Scanning outside, glimpsing the crimson peaked mountains, confirmed she was still in Rhyenelle. They’d won. Except…

Zaiana flung back the covers, but she couldn’t twist out of the bed as quickly as her mind wanted her to. Her entire body seizedtight, with sharp pain shooting through every muscle like she’d never felt before…because she’d never lain so still for so long in her life.

They weren’t lying.

Maverick stood from the chair, lingering his eyes on Amaya expectantly.

The darkling rose from her crouch by the bed Zaiana was in, obeying Maverick’s silent order. Zaiana’s thoughts were too scrambled to even object.

Her memory came in flashes.

Trembling, terrifying slices of vision that almost could have been mistaken as movement in her dead chest with how fast the adrenaline coursed through her.

“Kyleer,” Maverick said. That name was like a whip that drew her bewildered eyes to him.

“What?” she breathed. He couldn’t possibly have found out what she’d?—

“You said his name a few times over the weeks.” Maverick stared her down, and Zaiana had never before felt her cheeks heating, flustered over how to explain that. “Did he hurt you?”

Zaiana blinked, not expecting that would be his conclusion, but she supposed it was her own guilty conscience that had thought it was evident why the commander was plaguing her mind. “Something like that,” she muttered. Her thoughts were frayed strings trying to find something to tie onto.

The battle. Faythe hadwings.They’d fought in the sky.

Zaiana had lost.

No—they both had.

“What happened?” She tried to recall, but all that stunned her mind was a final bright flare before the impact of power she should not have survived.

“There were moments when…” Maverick trailed off as though he were tormented by his own memories. He paced awayfrom the bed. “We didn’t know if you’d pull through. But I shouldn’t have doubted. You’re far too stubborn to die.”

Zaiana tried to study him, and while she would usually want to cast him out, say something wicked as the language they’d crafted between them, she was momentarily caught by how vulnerable he looked.

She’d fallen from that sky, her wings…

“You caught me.”

A muscle in his jaw flexed, but he didn’t meet her eye.

“You’re not in the clear yet,” he said vacantly, heading for the door. For the first time, a calling for him to stay lodged in her throat.“I’ll let Dakodas know you’re finally awake and lucid but still recovering.”

The mention of the Dark Spirit sent a chill down her spine.

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