Page 299 of Burn of the Everflame

Lily picked up speed, and I gave up on getting answers, jogging behind them through the hallways to the palace armory. I was surprised to see the expansive room packed with people at such a late hour, each of them caked with a crust of sweat and glittering black dust. Anvils and hammers lay scattered with half-finished armor, some still glowing red from the forge. They’d all been abandoned, thanks to something at the center of the room that had attracted a crowd.

“I found them,” Lily yelled, tugging Diem through the circle of people. One glare from me had the crowd parting to let us through to the center, where Teller was smearing a black paste over Alixe’s forehead.

“Diem,” Teller said, looking up. “We need a Centenary. You have to make them help us.”

“Why are you all awake?” I demanded. “Your Queen gave you orders to rest.”

“She gave us orders to fight,” a man said from the crowd. Beneath the grime, I recognized him as an old friend of Diem’s—Brecke, she’d called him. “This is how we do it.”

“When I told Brecke our plans for tomorrow, he gathered everyone with smithing experience,” Alixe explained. “They’ve been working through the night to finish as much godstone armor as they can before we leave.”

“She said you wanted us to make helmets,” Brecke said to Diem. He grimaced. “Thing is, helmets are the worst kind of armor. If they don’t fit just right, they’re as likely to get you killed as save you. They take time and precision, and we don’t have either.” He grabbed an object from a nearby table—a thick, uneven plate of godstone threaded with leather straps. “This may not look like much, but it’ll keep a blade out of your heart and out of your belly. We could spend all night and make ten helmets, or I could make a hundred of these. I made the call I thought was right.”

“Of course,” Diem said, though I could feel the disappointment she wouldn’t let show. “Thank you, Brecke.” She looked at her brother. “I still don’t understand why you’re here. And why do you need a Centenary?”

Teller grinned as Lily squirmed beside him, biting her lip and looking ready to burst. “I was making more of the flameroot paste for our archers to put on their arrows, and I started thinking about my time in Sophos. I overheard a professor tell his students that the best way to test an invention is to ask yourself, ‘What can I change?’ So I started to wonder what might happen if I replaced the flameroot with godstone.”

“The godstone toxin doesn’t work fast enough to be useful in battle,” I said.

“Not as a weapon. But it could work as a shield.” He dipped his hand in a bowl of black sludge, then held out his palm to Lily. “Show them.”

Lily conjured a spear of pale blue light and thrust it toward Teller. Diem gasped, her palms jerking up to raise a shield around her brother. Though she had no magic to protect him, the glowing bolt snuffed out with a hiss when it hit Teller’s blackened palm.

Suddenly, I felt it again—that warm, inexplicable flicker of energy in the air.

“See?” Teller said. “It blocks magic. It won’t do much to stop a weapon. You’ll need Brecke’s armor for that. But if it’s put on a person’s head⁠—”

“—it might stop thought magic,” Diem finished breathlessly. “Teller, you’re a genius.”

“Save your compliments until we know it works,” he said, though he beamed with pride.

“If it does, it’ll be a hell of a lot better than helmets,” Brecke said. “We’ve got seven barrels of raw godstone left. Should only take five to make enough of this mixture for everyone in your army.”

Diem nodded at Brecke. “Keep making the armor for now, but don’t touch those last five barrels. Alixe and Teller, come with us.” She leveled me with a pointed stare. “I have a feeling we’re going to need your shield.”

67

LUTHER

“Iknow the Umbros accent is hard for you westerners to understand, but ‘no’ is pretty clear in any dialect.”

Diem and Symond scowled at each other with mirrored contempt. My hand twitched at my side as I watched, ready to put a shadow through his gut if he tried to attack her the way he had in Umbros. I had half a mind to do it anyway.

“I respect your choice not to fight,” Diem gritted out, looking like she was battling the same desire. “I’m asking you to protect the people who were brave enough to say yes. This could be what we need to win.”

“We both know that victory won’t hinge on what I do.” He smiled frostily. “Tell me, have you made up your mind whether you’re going to kill Ophiucae or keep pathetically begging for his love while he slaughters us all?”

The shame that spiraled through Diem turned my vision red. I drew the Sword of Corbois and jabbed its point toward his throat.

“Could you three keep it down?” Drusila hissed, stepping out of a nearby tent. “If you wake the baby, no one in this camp is getting any sl—” She paused at the sight of Symond an inch from my blade. “What’s going on?”

“We think we have a way to keep Ophiucae from controlling our minds,” Diem told her. “We need Umbros magic to test it. A minute of your time, that’s all I ask.”

Diem rubbed her wrist. I could tell it was killing her not to have her magic, and it killed me to see her reduced to begging because she couldn’t do it alone.

Drusila gave her an apologetic look. “I would, but Symond is our strongest. He’d stop me before I could try.”

Symond’s smarmy smirk had shadows writhing at my palms, but Diem beat me to it. She shoved the blade of my sword away and stepped up to him herself, chin high, coming so close he was forced to lean back. “I will not let you get everyone here killed just to spite me. Symond. You are going to help me.”