Page 56 of A Flame of the Phoenix

The stillness that lingered for a few seconds began to tremble his hands, and they clamped tighter around the leather-bound book. He hoped Tynan would reject?—

“When can we start?”

Izaiah’s tension released at his response. He shouldn’t want this. He should be keeping his distance.

“I’ll let you know,” was all he could offer for now since the storm of his mind had begun to rebel against the time together this arrangement would force. He had to divert the conversation. “Why has Malin taken a liking to you?”

It had become an irritation not to have figured it out.

Tynan slipped his sight from the book he’d splayed in his palms, leaning against the desk. “You sound jealous.”

“Not even remotely.”

Tynan smirked. “He’s desperate for someone to listen to him. I just happened to be there. He’s highly insecure. It’s a pattern for people like him to attach themselves to one person to confide in.”

“Yet you’re betraying him.”

His shoulder lifted, flicking through more pages. “I wouldn’t say that. I’m as intrigued about him as you are.”

“I’m notintrigued,” Izaiah bit out. “He killed my king and turned this kingdom against my queen. I want him dead.”

“Is that why you betrayed her and your brother? You hope to kill Malin alone, and she’ll forgive you for it?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

Izaiah’s jaw shifted. He couldn’t make sense of this frustration inside him when Tynan was around. A desire to kill him, if only to end the torment. Yet without the plague in his thoughts, the vacancy didn’t sound desirable either.

Izaiah shifted the topic. “Why do you follow Zaiana? Is it nothing more than forced duty?”

“Of course not,” he said instantly. Tynan thumped his book shut, not watching Izaiah as he seemed to tunnel in thought. “Zaiana was the first to ever see potential in me. I wasn’t notable in my training grade, but only because I didn’t want to be. Show yourself as the strongest, and you’re a target. Excel at the tasks, and those around you want to see you fail. You have no idea what it was like to grow up as a dark fae.”

For the first time, Izaiah didn’t shy from the guard who slipped toward him. A guard who wanted to hear more. He leaned against the desk with him, folding his arms.

“Yeah, well, out here wasn’t all that great either.”

Izaiah tensed, unable to meet Tynan’s eye.

“I don’t believe that,” he said lightly. “You seem to have everything. Well-respected, free to be yourself…”

“I didn’t always.”

Gods, he shouldn’t say anything more.

He was glad when Tynan didn’t push.

“Under the mountains, it was all a competition. A game of survival every day. We don’t have parents, just ourselves. Some would form groups for the illusion that they had someone to have their back, but usually, they’d be the first to strike a daggerthe moment you turned around. It was no secret Zaiana was not someone to contend with. No one even tried to best her. When she became Delegate, I didn’t realize how much she’d been watching me. How she saw me on some deeper level I didn’t think our kind was capable of. When she asked if I would be her Second, I could have gone to my knees. Not for the respect or the protection it would grant, but because it was the first time I truly wanted tolivewith a purpose.”

Izaiah clenched the desk tightly at the story. For the feelings he didn’t want stirring within him. And for his own past, which threatened to claw its way from the grave he’d buried it in.

Tynan’s hand went over his, but Izaiah’s impulse won, tearing the comfort away. And maybe it was selfish, but he couldn’t go down the path that had started to emerge with Tynan.

“I’m glad to hear she’s not entirely coldhearted,” Izaiah said, pacing away to swallow past the tightness in his throat.

“What happened to you?” Tynan asked. It was careful, yet a battering ram to the gates of his emotion.

Izaiah shook his head. “Don’t do that.”

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