Page 49 of A Flame of the Phoenix

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Faythe

Faythe had passed another birthday. She was now twenty-one years old, and as she stared over the thick winter hills, her cheeks nipping and an icy breeze blowing through her hair, she wondered if she would get to see the hundreds more birthdays her fae immortality should grant, or if that were a cruel illusion. A promise turned to deceit if this war should freeze her years like the winter froze any new bloom.

Nik had been the one to remind her this morning, otherwise she wouldn’t have noticed the day. It didn’t really matter—she’d barely been able to surface a smile for it. He’d tried to insist they enjoy a night of drinking and forgetting, but Faythe couldn’t—not even for a moment.

She fiddled with the gold star necklace Nik had given her for her birthday last year while he sat opposite her. He’d shown up at her tent with a hearty breakfast and an apology he couldn’t get her a gift this year. The necklace was all the treasure she needed form him for a lifetime. Something she could use to reach him through Nightwalking anywhere.

“You said you needed to tell me something,” Nik said, tossing a grape up and down.

Recalling she’d said that at the inn, Faythe figured now was as good a time as any.

“Do you believe in past lives?”

“I should have known it wouldn’t be something mundane.”

His lightheartedness was always something she’d valued about Nik. He was the first to believe in her abilities, and just…her.

Nik said, “I guess in some ways I think we could come back. In a different form, perhaps only as an energy.”

“What if there was a Spirit or other Gods that could meddle to bring one back in mortal form again?” She slipped him a tentative side-glance for his reaction.

“Just tell me what you’re trying to tell me before I jump to the wildest conclusion.”

“I think…”Gods,her heart was racing. She’d thought these things over, not really having whole truths, only assumptions she’d only told Kyleer so far since fleeing Ellium. “I think Marvellas might have brought me back. She’s the Spirit of Souls after all. I get flashes of visions sometimes, and I think they’re from long ago, around the start of the war with Marvellas. When I met you and Tauria, something always felt frustratingly missing. I would train with you as if I should be able to contend. As if Ishouldbe like you. I think it’s because my soul was fae all that time ago.”

She took slow breaths when it felt like confronting a lie—that her whole existence asFaythewas false, and this past she did not know wanted to shroud her in helplessness.

Nik said gently, “There are so many things that have tried to make you see yourself differently. You’ve combated them every time. If this is true, then what does it change, really?”

“I knew him, Nik,” she confessed. Tears swelled. Her thumb twisted the golden butterfly ring on her other hand with a growing ache. “Reylan. I knew him then—I’m sure of it. I think I took his memories before I died, and I don’t know if he’ll ever forgive me.”

“He will.”

“How can you say that?”

“Because it won’t matter to him. When you’ve spent so long waiting for that one person to take on the world with, everything that came before them becomes insignificant.”

“I betrayed him.”

“You saved him. If you’d died, Reylan would have followed. That, I’m certain of. He has nothing to lose, Faythe. Nothing as great as you. Then Marvellas would have carried out her plan, and he wouldn’t have been here, waiting for you to return, even if he didn’t know it.”

Faythe hadn’t considered that. Though she wanted to deny Reylan would follow her to such an extreme, she knew in her heart he would. It killed her to be so sure of his devotion, butGods,was she overwhelmingly grateful to have him.

“How are you so calm about this?” Faythe asked, wiping the stray tear that began to fall.

Nik gave a chuckle, throwing the grape into his mouth and chewing. “I found a human who could Nightwalk. Who turned out to be the unknown daughter of one of the greatest kings of our time.” He cast her a gentle smile, and Faythe’s chest warmed for her father. “We discovered a dark extinct species is, in fact, not so, and that they’re out for vengeance with a back-from-the-dead high lord. A second almighty Spirit entered our realm. I don’t think there’s anything out of the range of possibility anymore, nor do I think we’re done being faced with challenges. Acceptance is the only way it won’t shock us beyond being able to figure out what in the Nether we do next.”

Faythe absorbed everything he said. Treasured his wisdom. Her eyes slipped closed with liberation. She couldn’t imagine more perfect company right now.

“Maverick…” Faythe shuddered involuntarily at speaking his name. “Callen—that’s what you called him when I showed you my memory of the fire mountains.”

Nik’s expression fell, vacantly studying the table. “As Callen Osirion, the Prince of Dalrune, he was my friend. Not close in the ways people expect. I didn’t see him often, and then the Great Battles happened, and his kingdom was collapsed completely. High Farrow, Olmstone, and Rhyenelle sent scouts to see if any of the royal family had survived, but all they found was the kingdom in worse wreckage than Fenstead. No one could have imagined Callen…” Nik trailed off, pain written in his features.

“Maverick isn’t that person you knew.” Faythe tried to console him.

“Does he remember who he was?”

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