“I see you too, Reylan. I see you, and I hear you.”
The words crushed him with elation, and he released a long breath. Both of them focused and reeled back their abilities, slowly letting it dissolve until it was no longer a life-threatening force. He was close to burning out and knew she was several steps closer.
All at once, Faythe let go completely.
The guards around them fell, spluttering for air as the hold on their minds was released. Reylan didn’t register any of it, keeping his strength and attention on Faythe as the power within her slowly fizzled out to no longer consume her body. Her golden eyes dulled of their ethereal brightness as she held his stare.
Then she fell limp.
Reylan gripped her tighter, lowering them both to the ground until they were on their knees, forgetting all about the room full of spectators who watched in utter silence. Her forehead rested against his chest as she gasped for breath. Reylan also felt the exertion of the short pulse of all-consuming energy, and he couldn’t stand to think what it would have felt like for her. In a human body.
“You came back,” she said through a short breath.
He broke at the disbelief in her voice, smoothing his palm over the hair at her nape. “I never left.”
Faythe peeled her head back to look up at him. Exhaustion trembled her breathing, and sweat gleamed on her too-pale face. Her brow pinched in confusion, but when she opened her mouth to speak, coughing from behind stole her attention and brought them back to the scene of chaos and destruction in the throne room.
With a sharp inhale, Faythe whirled, swaying sideward. Reylan flinched to catch her, but she regained her own balance before shuffling over to the fallen fae guard. He knew Caius vaguely from his time in High Farrow. The guard was always kind to Faythe, but their relationship clearly went deeper at the complete heartbreak on her face. Reylan was torn about leaving her to have her last moment with him. He wanted them to have as much privacy as the situation would allow, but he felt compelled to be at her side. He stood, making the short steps in silence before kneeling down again beside her.
Faythe held Caius’s hand. Her soft sobs pulled at something within Reylan, and he wished he could console her. The prince also dropped to one knee to watch in painful silence. Then the Fenstead princess came to stand behind Nik with a hand on his shoulder. Finally, Faythe’s human companions came to be at their fallen friend’s side, all of them grief-stricken in their own separate ways.
Caius kept his gaze on Faythe. Despite everything, despite the minutes that counted down to his last breath, the young guard smiled at her.
“I can take away your pain,” her voice croaked. Reylan had to clench his fists at the noise.
Caius managed a slight shake of the head, knowing if she pushed herself to use her ability now, it would cause her harm. Reylan wanted to thank him even though he hardly knew the fae. His unfaltering courage was rare. He’d saved Faythe—then he’d saved them all.
“Did we win?”
Faythe nodded as a tear rolled from her face and dropped to the floor.
“You saved me.”
Caius huffed a weak laugh, wincing in pain as he clutched his abdomen. “I don’t know what I was thinking.” His head began to drop to the side. Faythe tugged on his arm with a high-pitched whimper, and his tired gaze snapped back to her. Blood still flowed over his blanched skin. He was fading fast.
“Can you promise me something?”
Reylan saw it then. A fear that only crossed the eyes of the dying. A fear he had felt himself before and consoled in so many others who hadn’t been so lucky to have been pulled back from death’s door. Cruel taunts of an unfulfilled existence, unsated desires, and lost dreams. Reylan saw and felt it as he gazed over Caius’s haunted face. His chest pained for the fae while death gripped him with that tragic terror.
Faythe’s broken voice sliced right through him. “Anything.”
“I don’t want to be forgotten.”
“Never.” Her answer was fierce but tight as if a shard of glass had cut up her throat. “I promise.”
“It’s okay,” Caius whispered slowly, seeing the devastation on her face.
Faythe shook her head. “It should have been me.”
Reylan’s panic rose at the mere thought.
Caius squeezed her hand weakly. “No, it shouldn’t have been. Make this world the one we all dream of. Make it rise.” His breath spluttered, and he rasped, “Make it rise from the ashes, Faythe.”
“I need you with me to do it, Caius—please,” she begged, but her voice broke, casting her eyes skyward with the desperate plea.
“I’m right here.” Caius pointed to her chest with the hand she held and tapped weakly over her heart. “I’m always right here.” His eyes started to drop and flutter.
Faythe choked a sob and gripped his hand tighter as if it would somehow tether him to their world a little longer. Caius’s lids fell over vacant eyes and did not open again. His breath shallowed until it became almost undetectable. Then his body stilled.
Caius was gone.
Faythe buried her face into him. Her cries—Gods, her cries—were the only sound. They echoed heartbreakingly around the hall while everyone stood still in desolate, palpable silence.
Reylan looked up, stunned by what he saw.
It started with the guards in royal blue—Caius’s companion soldiers. One by one, they dropped to a knee, heads bowing low in grief for their fallen comrade. But it didn’t stop with High Farrow. The kings stayed standing, but behind them, waves of deep purple and crimson joined them to pay tribute. In mutual loss. As allies. The battle between their kings didn’t change the righteousness in their hearts.
Faythe’s trembling began to ease slowly, and she pulled back to stare at the peaceful fae, still gripping his hand. Reylan didn’t disturb her for a long moment, letting her say her final goodbyes. Then, when everyone rose again behind them, he placed a hand on her back without thinking and spoke softly.
“It’s time to let go.”
He watched her forehead crease with an unfathomable pain as she fought another drowning wave of grief. Faythe closed her eyes, inhaling deeply, before gently placing Caius’s hand over his chest. With one last lingering look of despair, she straightened her back.
Along with her posture, the expression on Faythe’s tear-stained face turned to steel. Her eyes filled with an ice-cold glaze. She went to rise and didn’t protest as he helped her. Then she turned to the hall of onlookers, golden orbs blazing like tangible flame in her sorrow and anger.
“This is senseless,” she said, her voice low but compelling, striking everyone to listen.
Reylan should have stopped her before she could continue, knowing she was about to address the kings in a manner that would warrant her execution. Yet she had every right to direct her hostility their way as it had resulted in the death of an innocent. A friend. He knew then he would stand by her side if any of them, including his own king, thought to punish her for it.
“You all hide behind high walls, yet you have already let the enemy inside. The seed of destruction has been planted, and you watered it with your revenge and greed. Without this alliance, the war is already lost. Without the strength of unity, we will all fall.”
Reylan watched her in awe. He wasn’t alone—all eyes fixed on her. Not with outrage or disgust, but in stunned agreement, floods of crimson, blue, and purple all brought to common ground by a voice of reason. By Faythe. She didn’t seek revenge, only unity. To fight a far greater evil that was still to come.
A wicked voice cut through the thick tension. “Who do you think you are to speak out, girl!”
Faythe turned to look down on the King of High Farrow, but she didn’t get a chance to unleash the wrath that flashed in her eyes at his words when another voice answered for her from across the hall.
“She is her mother’s daughter.” Agalhor stared wide-eyed at Faythe. The uncanny resemblance was enough to erase any doubt about who she
was. It wasn’t only her mother she took after in appearance. “My daughter,” he little more than whispered.
Faythe heard it clear enough, and he saw as much as felt the clash of emotions that lapped over her. The revelation must be sending her already tired-out mind into a wild frenzy.
Reylan knew before she turned her head to catch his gaze that this news would finally call upon the darkness that begged her to rest. Her look was a simple, silent plea for help, and he caught her before she had the chance to fall.
Chapter 56
Faythe
Faythe sat by the warmth of the fire in her rooms. It was the first time she had been able to sit up for long enough leave the confines of her bed in days. A healer had visited multiple times, and her physical body was near healed from the abrasions of her shackles and aching bones from her nights in the stone cell.
Jakon and Marlowe occupied the rooms beside Faythe’s and frequently checked in on her. More than she liked sometimes. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see them, but as with Nik and Tauria’s visits, Faythe had very little to say. She refused to address the world-shifting revelation that had been thrown down at the worst possible moment. She even refused to see Reylan at all following the events in the throne room.
Since then, she had all but made herself numb to everything. Pain, grief, shock—she was overcome with it all and just one thought away from shattering internally. She couldn’t think about the Rhyenelle king’s claim—didn’t want to believe it. So she let heartbreak become the overbearing emotion. Grieved the loss of her friend.
Faythe was doused in guilt. In all her twisted thinking that she should distance herself from her friends and push Reylan away to prevent the Dresair’s foretold dire events from coming to pass, she had failed to include the young guard in her worries over who would be taken from her. She could have said more to get him to leave. She could have tried harder. Caius was a dear friend and ally, a dreamer of a better world, and his loss was unbearable. Faythe couldn’t help but think he deserved to be here far more than she.
The door behind her opened slowly without a knock. She didn’t need fae senses to know the pattern of entry was not consistent with any of her friends’. Or perhaps she was gathering a sixth sense for the general. She felt him approach hesitantly, giving her the chance to cast him out as she had done already—three times. But not this time. She knew she would have to face him sooner or later.
Later would be Caius’s funeral. She didn’t want the weight of anything else bearing heavily down on her for that. So she let Reylan walk all the way up to where she sat, but she didn’t turn to look at him. Instead, she chose to watch the dance of the flames in the fire pit. A sight that once comforted her, strengthened her, now filled her with unease at its resemblance to the firebird—to Rhyenelle.
“How are you feeling?” Reylan’s voice was soft and concerned.
How she felt… No words existed to convey the depth of her guilt and heartache. She didn’t respond.
Reylan wordlessly took up the armchair opposite. Neither of them spoke for a long moment. She was conflicted about what she wanted to say to him.
Eventually, she settled on, “How long have you known?” She looked to him then, needing to see the truth on his face as he answered.
Reylan’s brow creased into a frown. Faint dispute filtered into his expression as if the question had him pondering two things at once. He didn’t meet her eye, only stared with steely features into the amber sparks. He chose his words carefully.
“Since the day I met you.”
Faythe wanted to be angry he kept it from her. She deserved to know. As they came to know each other, started to get close, he still chose to harbor the secret. Yet the emotion failed her when their gazes locked and pain glittered in the night sky of his eyes. She couldn’t bring herself to add to it.
“I guess it doesn’t matter anyway,” she muttered.
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Wouldn’t you want to give Rhyenelle a chance—to learn where you came from?”
“I have everything I need here. I don’t wish for more than that,” she said, but she hated that it felt like a lie, weighing heavier as she voiced it.
“That’s bullshit, and you know it.”
She flinched a little as he bounded to his feet.
“You can try to fool everyone else, but I see you, Faythe Ashfyre. What are you so afraid of?”
His passion stunned her for a moment. Then his use of the foreign name struck her like an awakening. Her breathing stilled, and she felt a surge of something…something that kindled like a proud flame in her chest. She quickly doused the shallow fire with the waves of her guilt and grief. She didn’t deserve to have her ordinary name coupled with that of a mighty house. She wasn’t worthy of it.
“This isn’t a fairy tale, Reylan. A human doesn’t just get given a crown and a throne because of some claim to a name she wasn’t even raised with.”
“You may not have been raised with the Ashfyre name, but you were born with it. By rights, it is yours. And you will rise to it. I’ve seen it, Faythe. You don’t need a crown or a throne or a damn thing to tell you who you are.”
His words left her conflicted. Humble pride fought with a hideous seed of doubt that grew the longer she pondered the prospect.
“I have no place in a foreign kingdom. No one will accept me there. I don’t belong there.”
“Yes, you do. I think you’ve known that for some time now. And I think acknowledging that is what scares you the most.”
Against the pain that ached in her dormant bones, Faythe rose to her feet. “What scares me the most is that I am nothing!” It came out as plea of defeat to get him to understand why she was not worth his determination. “I am nothing but a half-breed nobody with an ability that should never have come to exist. Caius is dead! He died to save my abominable existence! I have no claim to anything, no place, and it’s better for everyone if I remain here, silent and hidden. This is where I belong.”
To her surprise, Reylan looked quietly furious at her outburst. “Is that what you really think?”
“It’s what everyone will think.”
His eyes flashed as he took a step closer. “Let me tell you something, Faythe. This idea you’ve created that your worth is somehow merited by your blood is wrong.” A muscle in his jaw flexed. “Who you are, who you become—that’s all on you and what you choose to make of the life you’ve been given. Don’t make yours a waste. Don’t throw away your chance to live beyond merely existing.”
Faythe’s argument faltered. Her face wrinkled at hearing the words she so desperately needed to counter the demons inside her mind. “He won’t accept me.” The fear escaped her lips in a traitorous whisper.
The despairing thought had tormented her for days. A thought so painful it made her shrink back into her confused and vulnerable child-self whose only wish was to know what it was like to have a father. Being confronted with it now, knowing what she was, Nik’s words replayed in her head and taunted her mercilessly. Fae fathers who refuse to tarnish their name with a half-breed…
“You’re wrong.” Reylan’s hard look softened, and he took another step until he was close enough to touch. “By announcing who you are in that throne room…he has already accepted you, Faythe.” His hand came up to hold her chin, forcing her to stare into his searching blue eyes. “Now, it’s your turn.”
All she could do was hold his gaze of encouragement, wanting so desperately to surrender; to believe his words and take the leap with him. But all she could see was the burden she would become. To him, to Rhyenelle, and to Agalhor.
“This is my home,” she said firmly.
Reylan’s expression twitched with the protests he refrained from speaking. His hand dropped, coldness embracing her whole body in its absence.
“When you leave to go back to Rhyenelle, I won’t be coming with you.”
He shook his head as he paced aw
ay from her, and she tried to ignore the twist in her gut at his obvious disappointment. “I can’t tell you what to do, but I knew your mother, Lilianna. She was Rhyenelle’s queen even without the marriage to Agalhor. Not because of what she was to him, but because of her love and devotion to the kingdom and its people. She knew where she belonged.” Reylan burned as bright as the Phoenix of the kingdom he spoke of with such passion. He looked to her with that fierce fire in his eyes, so intense she felt it like heat on her skin, igniting within. “When you figure that out, Faythe Ashfyre, we’ll be waiting for you.”
Reylan didn’t give her time to form a response before he turned to leave. She wasn’t even sure she had one as her mouth fell open at his declaration and the mention of her mother. It didn’t cross her mind that he would have been alive to know her. He perhaps knew her better than Faythe did after losing her at such a young age. A part of her wanted to go after him. In some ways, being close to him would also bring her closer to her mother. As would the King of Rhyenelle—her father.
She felt dizzy in her thoughts and fell back into her seat, sinking lower at hearing her door click shut behind the general. She wouldn’t give in to the temptation. Not when Nik would be crowned king with the exposure of his father’s cruel intentions. The guards had obeyed their prince’s orders to take Orlon to the castle dungeons where he currently rotted along with his secret guard. A new dawn was coming, and High Farrow would thrive once again. It was an age she had only ever dreamed of seeing unfold, and she’d be damned if she left now.
Amber torched the sky as Caius’s body was laid to rest upon the tall pyre engulfed in flames. It was nightfall, and the spitting hues of yellow and red were vibrant against the dark sky. Smoke climbed, and she imagined it carrying his spirit high while his ashes fell to feed the soil below.
A Queen Comes to Power: An Heir Comes to Rise Book 2 Page 44