Page 232 of Dirty Hit

The only thing that reeled her back from becoming a force that could collapse this castle with one wrong thought was Reylan’s influence within her. The ice to her fire, taming the inferno. She had done reprehensible things to get here, but she didn’t want to destroy her kingdom.

The winter air blew across them and Faythe discovered the right wall was almost completely crumbled. She stared at the wreckage caused by Izaiah’s escape in Phoenix form and her chest tightened with heart-obliterating grief, tormented that Marlowe hadn’t made it out of this room alive with them.

She turned her lethal edges to her cousin in a stare that sentenced his death.

He hid behind more guards arranged in an open triangle, which left a path to him. More of her people he was using as pawns. More of her people he was forcing her to kill.

Faythe’s resentment grew more dangerous with every calculated step she took toward him. She hung the silence deliberately, letting the growing suffocation of it declare her arrival as his reaper.

“You expect this kingdom to bow to you when you demonstrate how coldly you would kill your own people to get what you want?” he said bitterly.

Faythe laughed, the sound bordering villainous. “How bold of you, to condemn me with breath still warm from your own traitorous lies.”

There was something unhinged about Malin Ashfyre. The angle at which he sat, the crookedness of his crown, the bloodshot eyes lined with dark circles. He’d been consumingPhoenix Blood so much it had become a detrimental addiction, spinning his madness faster.

She said, “My people wouldn’t protect their king’s killer.”

Malin’s wild eyes twitched and darted around in a way that wasn’t natural. “You are the reason Agalhor Ashfyre is dead,” he seethed, pushing up from the throne with an unsteady balance that kept him leaning on the wide stone edge.

“Tell them how it was you who let the enemy inside our walls,” Faythe yelled.

She wanted to kill him so badly, but he’d turned this kingdom against her, and she would be damned if he died a hero in their eyes.

“Tell them,” Faythe said icily, “how Agalhor raised you like a son—the bastard of his brother—keeping your illegitimacy a secret. Tell them how he loved you,trusted you, and you betrayed him!”

Faythe slipped the tether of her control, casting out a hand that sent a flare of light pummeling into his chest, sitting him back on the throne.

She advanced through the lines of soldiers. At the first flinch to stop her, their movements were seized. Not by her. Reylan took a kernel of her ability to make sure no one could stop her while she kept focused on the only target she’d come for.

Someone entered through the back. A lord she recognized. Seeing her, he stumbled to a halt, ready to turn and race out of here.

“Wait,” Faythe said, straightening as she reached the top of the dais. “Gather the council. Now.”

The fae glanced at the back of the throne, then back at her.

“You have ten minutes,” Reylan announced.

He nodded, scrambling from the room, and Faythe gave her attention back to Malin. When she did, he finished tippingback a vial of Phoenix Blood. Then Faythe felt his attempt of infiltration in her mind. She saw white.

Her hand wrapped around his throat, pinning him to the back of the throne.

“You think you can contend with me?” she said daringly. “You are nothing but a poor imitation of what I am.”

Faythe shattered through his mind barrier easily despite the Phoenix Blood. She let him go physically, but mentally he was hers to command. Faythe made him remove his crown, and only then did fear begin to widen his eyes.

She commanded him to stand while Faythe lowered on one knee. Malin resisted her influence, trembling violently, with his face contorting furiously as he reached out with the crown between his hands. He placed her father’s crown on her head, then Faythe rose slowly, unblinking, as they stared off with powerful hatred.

“I told you that you would yield all to me.”

Malin had never looked so deranged. His desperation for power, to prove himself, had driven out such a corrupt pursuit she didn’t think he even recognized himself anymore.

“This is him?” The voice that echoed through their tense stand-off made Faythe turn around.

She didn’t know how Nyte was here, but he’d come to see the half-brother he never knew he had before Faythe killed him.

“Unfortunately so,” Faythe said. “I wish I could say there was a better version of your half-brother that once existed, but he has always been spineless.”

“I have no brother. No family,” Malin snapped.

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