Page 329 of Burn of the Everflame

She scoffed. She flicked a wrist, and the creatures prowling around her group set off running eastward. “You can have our beasts. We’ll keep our shields to ourselves.”

A yellow veil shimmered around her to emphasize her point. She didn’t spread her shield around her people, even though there hadn’t been enough of Teller’s godstone mixture to protect all the Faunos arrivals. She’d insisted it be applied to her first, then left the others to fight for the rest among themselves—literally, as evidenced by the fresh wounds many of them wore.

Diem would never, I thought crossly.

“This is not the time to be selfish,” I told her. “If Ophiucae gets into their minds, he’ll turn their bombs right back on us.”

She shrugged. “I can shield a bomb. Wouldn’t be the first time we faced them.”

“Ailani, it isn’t up for discuss⁠—”

I stopped short at the gleam of challenge in her eye. I’d dealt with Faunos Descended like her in the Emarion Army. It was in their nature to prove themselves as the strongest, most dangerous predator in any given group. When given orders, their instinct was to fight back until someone more powerful put them in their place.

Unfortunately, Ailani’s magic vastly outmatched mine. The smile rising on her lips was begging me to give her a chance to prove it.

Think, Alixe, I told myself. Her Majesty trusted you to lead. Prove that you deserve it.

I could remind her that Blessed Faunos had chosen Diem, not her, to lead. Then again, the Crown hadn’t stopped the Faunosians from resisting Diem when we’d visited them earlier this year. Diem had been forced to prove herself with her strength, and that was something I couldn’t do.

But I could talk to them in a language they understood.

I waved a hand toward the battlefield. “Today, all of us are a single pack. You might not like everyone in your pack, but you tolerate them, because everyone in the pack has a role to play, from the strongest”—I nodded at her—“to the weakest.” I glanced at the Guardians.

Ailani took the ego stroke as I’d hoped, tension easing from her stance.

“In nature, a pack exists to further its line and to guard its resources, right?” I went on. “Well, Emarion is the most important resource we have, and if we lose today, our lines end. Mortals and Descended both.”

Ailani’s ochre eyes rolled skyward.

“You know what happens to animals who abandon their pack in the wild,” I pushed. “They die.”

Her arms uncrossed and dropped to her side. “Fine,” she groaned. “We’ll shield the rebel filth.”

A rush of pride went through me, but I had no time to celebrate my victory. The archer’s arrows were falling short of the eastern front, and I needed to find out why. I nudged my horse into a gallop and left the Faunosians behind as I searched for the former Meros King.

I found him at the base of the tree line, staring east in a teary-eyed daze while Doriel gently rocked him in their arms. “I told them to leave Meros,” Obaneryn said hoarsely. “I thought they’d be safe on the sea.”

Doriel stroked a hand over his locs, cradling his head against their chest. “You tried to protect them,” they murmured. “You did everything you could.”

“How could the Blessed Mother let this happen to her people?” Obaneryn sobbed.

Doriel’s eyes squeezed closed, agony scrawled across their face. “I’ve asked the Blessed Father the same. I don’t know why they would do this to their most loyal believers. We obeyed every commandment to the letter.”

Did you? I wondered as I swung off my horse. Did any of us?

I’d once believed myself among the most devout of the Kindred’s adherents. So many times over the years, I’d buried the discomfort I felt at the Crowns’ commands beneath my faith, holding fast to the belief that their actions were anointed by the gods.

The Kindred see beyond what our Descended minds can fathom. It’s not for us to understand. Whatever pain obedience might bring, it’s better than what would come from ignoring the Blessed Mother’s wisdom.

That’s what I’d told myself every time doubts crept in. I heeded the promises of my elders that the system we lived within, though it might seem cruel or unjust by worldly standards, was divinely inspired and righteous in its perfection. To challenge the gods was a heathen’s pride, and I was no heathen.

But the more I studied the Kindred’s words, the stronger my discomfort grew. When I read their commandment to honor the mortals as our neighbors, my stomach roiled to see the Crowns use it to impose separate cities, separate schools, sometimes even separate realms. Neighbors, the Crowns emphasized. To live beside each other, not as one.

Protect the mortals—perhaps the Kindred’s most repeated directive, and by far the Crowns’ most often-used excuse. Those three words wound around my heart every time I was sent to punish a starving orphan for stealing food or arrest a mortal for not paying taxes that anyone could see they couldn’t afford.

But I was obedient.

I was pious.