Page 26 of Burn of the Everflame

“Who was it?” I asked Ignios again. “Please tell me it was my Diem.”

The eerie curl of his smile was cold water on my joy. “If you really want to know . . .”

“This is not what we came to discuss,” Doriel jumped in. “Let’s focus on the matter at hand.”

“Agreed,” Arboros said.

“Agreed,” Meros grunted.

Ignios shrugged—twitched—and continued to flash his disconcerting smirk.

“Agreed,” Auralie conceded. “Now . . . let’s begin with our demands.”

8

DIEM

“Oh, Dessies, Dessies, a loathsome crew,” I crooned at the top of my lungs. “Cruel and vicious, untrustworthy, too. Beware their charms, stay out of their beds.” I raised a knotted bundle of waterweed, swinging it like a banner. “If only their dicks were as big as their heads!” I grinned to my left. “Right?”

No one answered.

I cackled loudly. “Come on, Perthe, don’t be offended. I’m sure yours is huge.”

More silence.

I swatted at his gravestone with the plants. “Fine, see if I ever teach you any mortal drinking songs again.” I flopped back on the ground, arms and legs sprawled wide in the grass. It was a beautiful day, sunny and gorgeous. The perfect day for a celebration.

I sighed. “Blessed birthday to me.”

While scavenging my first day on the island, I’d found the remnants of what looked like a makeshift calendar. I recognized my mother’s handwriting scrawled with chalky stone. The reminder of her had sent me into a pit of gloom I didn’t crawl out of for days.

Then, it gave me resolve.

I was walking in her footsteps, reliving the same miserable existence she had endured not once but twice, even while carrying me in her womb. If she could survive this, so could I.

My mother had taught me so many skills in the forests of Lumnos—how to forage for food, how to catch rainwater and make it safe to drink, berries and mushrooms that would feed me and those that would leave me dead. I’d collected these lessons, thinking little of where she’d learned them (picked up over the years, she’d say) or why she’d taught them to me (you never know what you might need).

Now, I understood. Though I doubted she ever imagined me trapped in the same open-air prison that once caged her, she’d given me the tools I needed to stay alive.

Staying sane was another matter.

I squinted at the sun. “Looks like midday. You know what that means, Perthe. Wanna join me?”

Silence.

I shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

My hands folded behind my head as I curled my forehead to my knees one time for each line on my calendar, once for each lonely, repetitive, dismal day. I relished the burn that built in my torso, the way the ache cut through my hunger and the fog of my thoughts. “A healthy body is a healthy mind,” I huffed out, flipping onto my stomach and pausing as the world wobbled dizzily around me. I flattened my palms and pushed off the ground until my arms were straight, then shakily lowered. “That’s what Father always said.”

I repeated the motion several more times, trying to ignore my spotting vision. My muscles had languished with no trees to climb, no swords to swing, no heavy satchels to carry or horses to ride. Isolation had made me weak.

Physically. Emotionally. Mentally.

I rose and shook out my arms, then began to walk in a circle, dipping in a low lunge with each step. A breeze chilled the beads of sweat forming at my temples. “We have to stay strong, right Perthe?”

More silence.

I’d tried to exercise my mind as well as my body. The books I’d flipped though in the Sophos library were recorded in my head, but with the island stifling my Sophos magic, my attempts to “read” them were like trying to relive the memories of a well-spent day, the feelings sharp but the details murky.