Page 248 of Burn of the Everflame

Doriel crept closer and squinted at the jar, their injuries abruptly forgotten in the face of something new to study. “What is that?”

Teller jammed his finger into Ophiucae’s mangled wrist, smearing the substance over the freshly cut gash. “Flameroot-based poison. If it mixes with Descended blood, it temporarily stops their magic. I put it on the arrows I used, but I wasn’t sure whether it would work on a Kindred.”

Doriel frowned. “What do you mean a Kindred?”

My heart lurched as I watched my brother abuse my sire’s wounded body with emotionless, almost clinical focus. Seeing Ophiucae lay there, utterly helpless, entirely alone . . .

Even his own men refused to come to his aid. They watched from a distance, whispering as their eyes jumped between Ophiucae and me—two enemies that magic had stopped them from attacking. With that magic now gone, they seemed to be debating which of us to kill first.

“We have a problem,” Henri said. He pointed across the city, where the mind-wiped Meros Descended had risen from their forced slumber. They staggered toward us, hands lifted as the air picked up with a powerful gust. “He must have given one last order before the flameroot took effect.”

Luther stood and grabbed my hand. “If we hurry, we can beat them to the coast.”

“Wait,” Teller said. “Diem has to kill him first.”

I looked down at Sorrow’s Edge. The heartstone at its center pulsed with a pale grey light. I could almost hear the desperate cries of the woman who’d forged it, still haunted by its terrible purpose and its inescapable cost.

Taran picked up the sword and offered it to me. My fingers trembled toward the gilded handle. For weeks, I’d known this moment, this choice, would come.

Save your friends.

Fulfill your fate.

Say goodbye.

Luther’s hand beat me to the sword. “I’ll do it.”

“You can’t,” Henri said quietly. “It has to be her.”

I couldn’t look at either of them. Unlike Luther, Henri knew what this would mean. The night I’d told him the truth, he’d offered to take my place, too. If I’d known then about his role in my father’s death, I might not have felt so ashamed when I considered letting him do it.

But as we’d argued that night over which of us most deserved to live, the memory of Lumnos’s story nagged at me until I noticed a detail hidden in her carefully chosen words.

A future taken, and a future given. It was love that bound them all.

It wasn’t just anyone who could take his life, just as it couldn’t have been a stranger who put him in chains nor could an enemy have freed him. The spell their mother had used to forge the blade had one critical limitation: Ophiucae could only be killed by someone who loved him.

And there was only one person foolish enough to do something like that.

Gingerly, I slipped my hand beneath Luther’s and closed my fingers on the handle. His grip tightened—on the sword, and on me.

“He’s right,” I said gently. “I have to be the one.”

His piercing gaze scoured my face.

“I’ll hold them off as long as I can,” Henri offered.

Taran snorted. “Great. That half a second should be really useful.”

“Just get the kid out of here, Corbois. He shouldn’t see this.”

“It’s Bellator now,” Taran snapped.

“Shouldn’t see what?” Teller asked. He looked between Henri and me. “I shouldn’t see what?”

“Diem,” Luther said darkly.

I pulled the sword away from him without meeting his eyes. I cringed, unable to believe the words I was about to say. “Go with them, Henri. Lana needs you.”