Page 313 of Burn of the Everflame

We stopped thirty paces away. From here, I could see Vance’s face more clearly. His expression was calmer than I was used to, lacking his usual snide contempt. Perhaps he’d seen our large numbers and accepted his fate.

“I recognize these men,” my mother whispered. “They’re all from Lumnos.”

I squinted closer. Their faces arose in my memories—neighbors, old patients, vendors I bought from at the village market, a former schoolmate I’d flirted with, a friend of Teller’s from when they were boys. This wasn’t simply the remains of the militia Vance had recruited from across the realms. This was a carefully cultivated group of the men among his troops that my mother and I knew most.

My insides churned.

“This doesn’t have to end in bloodshed,” I said. “We’ll bring you safely back to Lumnos, and I’ll leave it to the council to decide your fates.”

Vance wouldn’t even look at me. His eyes stared over my shoulders into the trees.

“You always said no sacrifice is too great to see the mortals freed, Vance,” my mother said. “So prove it—give up your pride, and come tell the council your story. Help them understand what drove you to this place. Make them see why we must never go back to how things were before. Live, and fight for our people in a different way.”

Her words fell on indifferent ears. Not a twitch, nor a frown. She huffed with frustration and started toward him. “For Old Gods’ sakes, Vance, don’t be an id⁠—”

Every blade in every hand rose in an instant. The mortals moved as one, their weapons snapping up and pointing to her.

She froze. Behind us, leaves rustled as archers nocked their arrows in the trees.

A sickening suspicion took root in my stomach. “Mother,” I whispered, “step back.”

She slowly eased back to my side. In a single, unified movement, the mortals’ weapons jerked down to their side.

“No,” I breathed.

My hands trembled as I shoved my mother behind the dark silhouette of Luther’s shadows. The blood had drained from her face, her eyes round with the horror of our shared realization. “Gods—they’re . . . he . . .”

“Stay here,” I ordered. I took a shaky step forward, just short of where my mother had gone. I paused, waiting for a reaction, then held my breath and took another step, then another. As I approached, Vance and his men stayed relentlessly still.

Inhumanly still.

“Diem, stop,” Luther shouted in the distance, his growl a cover for the apprehension I felt through the bond.

But these men wouldn’t hurt me. Ophiucae wouldn’t allow it.

So forward I went, my heart breaking with every step. Fear ebbed, and anguish took its place as the mortals’ features sharpened into excruciating focus.

Smooth brows.

Hazy, unseeing eyes.

Minds and hearts . . . empty. Erased.

Enslaved, just like the Descended.

Dead.

I stopped in front of Vance and gazed into the foggy brown eyes that had once crinkled with a welcoming smile when he’d first met me as the mortal healer who craved a revolution—then filled with disgust the moment I disobeyed him. I reached down to his hand, shuddering at the deceptive warmth of his skin, and slowly pried his fingers off the godstone sword he carried. He didn’t resist, nor did he react when the weapon slipped out and thumped to the rocky soil at his feet.

Behind me, my mother let out a cry, our fears confirmed. Vance would never have let me disarm him if there was anything left of him to protest.

After his role in my father’s slaughter, I knew it wasn’t Vance she really mourned. The rebels who stood beside him had trusted her, then him, to lead them to freedom, only to be let down by them both.

I walked up and down the lines, disarming each man and moving their weapons out of reach. Luther raised a shield to block anyone from retrieving them, and I threw him a somber look over my shoulder. His features were hard with understanding at what we both knew came next.

“Let me do it,” he called out, light crackling at his palms. “I’ll make it fast and painless.”

I shook my head. I didn’t want the mortals in my army—or, frankly, the Descended—to watch the rebels so easily erased from the world by Descended magic. Especially not by his.