Page 5 of A Flame of the Phoenix

He remained still when the Spirit unfolded something in her lap before draping the material around him. Threads caught in the scabbing wounds of his back, and his teeth clenched at the itch. She clasped the cloak, and despite his lacerations protesting at the friction, it gave him relief from the frozen chill circulating the cabin she was keeping him in.

Her hand lingered, and she fixed her sight on his chest. He didn’t move at her touch, which felt so vile and wrong, fingers tracing his right collarbone, down over his pectoral muscle.

“She remained with you this whole time, yet you never remembered,” Marvellas said distantly, but he didn’t understand. “She was powerful then but succeeded in erasing your memory, while I can’t, only because your mind and soul were entwined with hers. That trust you yielded, the heart you surrendered, she used it against you. Don’t you see? Love will always be betrayal.”

Marvellas straightened, and Reylan tried to calculate her words—what she meant. More games, trying to make himsurrender his mental barriers enough that she could slip inside and steal more of Faythe. He guarded her fiercely in his thoughts.

“Come. We have much to do.”

Though he was weak, he shrugged off the guards who closed in to haul him up. Reylan forced his stiff legs to rise from the position he’d been kneeling in for so long. It was like standing with broken bones. He didn’t give any of them the satisfaction of seeing his agony as if glass shards sliced through his muscles with every movement.

Outside, his body tensed against the brutal beating of the weather that seemed to be in alliance with his enemy. Ice chips carried on the sharp wind to cut his flesh and lasso his body, dragging him back as if the thick snow weren’t enough to slow his miserable trek.

Against possibility, Marvellas was nearly untouched by the winter storm. She glided ahead, a flame against the ice.

His punishment from the weather eased when they entered a cave. He followed, because there was no merit in fighting while weak and outnumbered.

Instead he mapped everything. The way Marvellas moved; the way she talked. Every habit and quirk. He searched for weaknesses should he get his moment to end her. He observed the cavernous walls: warped and winding but with no alternative direction. Getting out would be a one-way sprint. That was the easy part. Stealing the right moment would be the challenge.

The cave opened to a wide, cylindrical space, and they wound their way down a spiral staircase attached to the wall, with no railing to protect them from the fatal drop.

Down and down.

On the ground level, through the shadows, Reylan understood where she’d taken him.

The familiarity of the door made dread clench in his gut. He’d seen it first in High Farrow, adorning Aurialis’s mark. Then on the Niltain Isles, in the cave, adorning Dakodas’s mark.

Now…

“A bond is the key to touch the sky.” Marvellas recited the poem just as he found it in his memory.

Faythe had shown it to him: the locations of the Spirit Temples.

He knew she’d been containing him on some high mountain range, and now it seemed foolish he hadn’t thought of this sooner. They were in the Sky Caves of Lakelaria.

Reylan’s spine straightened with foreboding.

Muffled cries carried down a passage before two forms were dragged in. A fae male and a fae female.

“It used to only require a true bonded pair to visit my temple. They had to be willing to draw blood from one another,” Marvellas said, so detached and distant she wasn’t really speaking to Reylan.

The couple were brought to the door before being roughly pushed to their knees. His body stiffened against the instinct to intervene.

“But I needed to be sure no one would make it through those doors, so I added my own protection. Blood is not enough.”

With a dip of her head, the guards reached for a dagger. Reylan got one step before the invasion in his mind stole his will to move. His teeth clenched, fighting the ache that amplified to a drum in his head, trying to defy Marvellas’s control.

“It now requires the life of one mate from a true pair, and you get to choose, Reylan Arrowood.”

The Spirit came around to stand in front him, leaning in close. Her flaming red hair spilled over her shoulder with the elegant tip of her head up to him. Her red-painted lips curled with cruel amusement.

“Which one shall we allow to live?” she coaxed.

Marvellas slipped a hand around his arm, leaning her head against him to watch the tragic souls on their knees as though she owned him. Reylan had never experienced a touch so revolting his blood boiled beneath his skin. He wanted to tear her arms from her body to be rid of it.

“I’m very patient, Rey, but when the solution is only one small decision away, I can become very impatient.”

There was nothing small about what she was asking of him.

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