Page 1 of Burn of the Everflame

1

LUTHER

Swing, strike, split.

Swing, strike, split.

Splintered wood tumbled to the ground at my feet. I propped up another—the largest, knottiest log I could find—and took my aim.

Swing, strike, split.

I wasn’t sure if the crack came from the axe’s strike or my grinding teeth.

“That’s supposed to work off your anger, not make it worse,” Auralie called out. She strolled over from the campsite, arms folded. “I think they can hear you growling from Lumnos.”

Her tone was stern, but there was concern, not reproach, in her eyes.

I looked away. I was still getting used to seeing Auralie Bellator as an ally, rather than what she’d been for many years prior: the single greatest threat to my life.

Four miserable weeks had passed since Teller and I escaped the island and flew on Sorae’s back to the Guardians’ camp in Montios. I’d been all but certain Auralie was going to skin me alive for leaving Diem behind. Instead, she took pity on me—perhaps as thanks for reuniting her with her son, or perhaps because my mood was dark enough for both of us.

I’d let Diem down.

Again.

My fingers stretched at my side, reaching for a hand that wasn’t there. Every day without her was a reminder of how badly I’d failed the woman I loved. And now, in a trait I shared with my Queen, my guilt had darkened to rage, a bomb more volatile than any the Guardians had ever constructed.

“We’ll get her back,” Auralie said gently.

I rubbed my jaw, now covered in a rough, dark beard thanks to our weeks on the road. “I’m sick of waiting.”

“We’ll act when the time is right.”

“We’ve been sitting for a month, and nothing’s changed. Your plan isn’t working.”

She brushed aside a curl that had fallen from her upswept hair, her advanced mortal age showing in the silver strands mixed among the fiery copper-red. “We haven’t been ‘sitting,’ and you well know it. It took weeks to move everyone here to Arboros.”

And we gave up the insight we had on Ophiucae’s plans in the process, I thought irritably, but I held my tongue. Though the risk of Vance recruiting more rebels to Ophiucae’s side was a key reason for pulling the Guardians out of Montios, the move had been to protect me, too.

Diem’s birth father, Ophiucae, had inherited the Crown of Omnos, the long-lost tenth Kindred whose existence had been hidden from everyone, even the other Crowns. Ophiucae ruled over the Forgotten Lands, where the Guardians’ old camp had been. If he found me in his realm, I doubted my relationship to Diem, the daughter he tried to kill as an infant, would persuade him to spare me from his quest to massacre every Descended as bloody retribution for the centuries he spent imprisoned on the island of Coeurîle.

In truth, the move hadn’t cut off our ability to watch him. Messenger hawks arrived in a steady stream with news of his movements. In typical Auralie fashion, Diem’s mother refused to reveal from whom these missives came. All I knew was that Ophiucae had stepped up his onslaught. Every week, more Descended died and more Descended children went missing. Though Ophiucae had thus far left Lumnos untouched, it was only a matter of time before he turned his violent eyes on my terremère.

“I sent out a call for all Guardians to join us here in Arboros,” Auralie reminded me. “New mortals arrive every day. We’re training them as fast as we can.” She shot me a pointed look that reminded me so much of her daughter, my heart lurched beneath my ribs. “And gathering an army for Diem was your plan, not mine.”

“A few hundred people is not an army,” I argued, “and I don’t know who we’ll face first, Ophiucae or the Crowns, but we’ll need more than mere mortals to defeat either one.”

“Don’t lecture me, Prince,” she shot back. “You were born into your titles, but I earned mine, and I did it fighting Descended with mere mortals alone.”

The air chilled between us, and for a moment, we were back to the hostile foes we’d always been.

I turned my face north. Though I couldn’t even see the coast, let alone the island where Diem was trapped, my heart had an innate sense of where it was. I’d left a piece of myself in that Temple, and I would only be whole again with her in my arms.

Until then, it was my job to keep her family safe. I’d let Diem down enough.

“You’re right,” I forced out. “My apologies.”

Auralie let out a sigh as the tension eased. “I know you’re worried about her. I am, too.”