Page 28 of Burn of the Everflame

I rolled my eyes and wedged the flower’s stem beneath the rock. “Fine. I like giving presents better than receiving them, anyway.”

I let my gaze drift over the island, searching for a distraction from the bittersweet memories of what my birthdays had once been. What it might have been today, if I wasn’t stuck here.

My attention stopped on the Kindred’s Temple, where Yrselle’s gown billowed in the wind. Her face was turned to me, the dark hollows of what used to be her eyes fixed in a macabre stare.

I’d tried hard not to look at her corpse these past weeks. It felt wrong to remember her like this instead of the intimidating beauty she’d been in life.

Today, though, I couldn’t look away.

The future is so much darker now, she’d said. If there’s even still a future at all.

Though the air was balmy, a shiver rattled down my spine.

Blessed Father Umbros warned me that our fate hung in the balance of your choice. He urged me to trust you. Instead, I tried to force your hand. That decision cost me much. This decision will cost me everything.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I yelled. “I would have helped you, Yrselle. I could have stayed in Umbros. I⁠—”

Would I have stayed, with Luther dying of godstone poisoning? Would I have sacrificed him to save thousands of others? Was that a betrayal, or was the real betrayal letting him live with those deaths on his shoulders? I knew what Luther would have wanted, had he known the cost.

Rosebane.

I blinked at the sudden thought.

Hadn’t Yrselle said something about rosebane? I pressed the heels of my palms to my brow as I waded through the muddled memories leading up her death.

Take the rosebane. Use my key. Heed my warnings—especially about my heir.

My eyes grew wide.

Take the rosebane.

I stared down at the abandoned flower. In the wrong amount, rosebane could be lethal, even for Descended. If you were lucky enough to survive it, its hallucinations were said to make you lose all touch with reality. In a place like this, that could get me killed in a hundred different ways.

Taking it would be foolish. Reckless. Suicidal. Utterly insane.

My gaze lifted again to Yrselle.

Take the rosebane.

And don’t forget what you pledged to sacrifice to see your plans through.

I reached down and plucked a velvety petal from the flower, then took a deep, uncertain breath. “May the Everflame save me.”

Before I could talk myself out of it, I popped it into my mouth and swallowed it whole.

I froze, fingers still perched on my lips.

Oh, gods.

Oh, gods.

“By the Flames,” I breathed. “What the hell did I just do?”

I sprinted toward the brush and doubled over, jamming two fingers down my throat to force a gag. Tears formed at the corners of my eyes. As wretched as my situation had become, I didn’t want to die. I had family and friends, I had a mate—an unknowing, unbonded one, but one I loved with all my heart.

I had hope.

And I wanted to live.