Page 334 of Burn of the Everflame

I pushed off my heels and surged back the way we’d come, swinging Sorrow’s Edge in a wide arc to clear a path. I caught sight of my soldiers through the fighting, and I frantically waved them down.

“Your Majesty,” one of them said, running over. “What are you doing out here?”

I pointed behind me. “Will you stay with him?”

Her brows furrowed. “Stay with who?”

I groaned, realizing too late what Teller had done. When I turned, he was moving fast in the other direction.

“Asshole,” I screamed.

His laughter answered back.

I ran to catch him, then smashed into a wall of Ophiucae’s men. With my soldiers at my side, I could no longer push through ignored. The mind-stolen Descended trapped me in a cage of their arms as they stretched beyond me to swipe at my people. Their relentlessness was sobering, especially knowing the soldiers on my front lines had been fighting wave after wave of this for hours.

I understood my father’s warnings about “survival at any cost” in a way I never had during our lighthearted lessons outside the family cottage. In this kind of warfare, there was no honor, no strategy, no clever tricks to outsmart your opponent, no high-minded attempts at diplomacy, no moral hand-wringing over who should live and who should die. Those were the concerns of people with fancy fucking titles who watched the carnage from a distance.

Out here, you had one thought and one alone.

Fight.

The reminder kept the fire in me burning as I battled my way back to my brother. “Teller, do you want Ophiucae to see you?” I snarled when I reached him.

“Not yet,” he said. “But you must, the way you keep screaming my name loud enough for him to hear.”

My eyes darted across the field. Ophiucae was closer than I’d realized, but his attention was on the east, where Sorae had thankfully broken free of the Meros soldiers. She sped toward us, Luther on her back.

A breeze wafted through the battlefield, and a strange scent filled the air. Something sweet and slightly spicy . . .

I knocked my brother’s hand away as it stretched toward my face. The vial of winterwood in his fist overturned, and Teller paled as he watched the liquid splash against his breastplate. He grabbed his knife and sliced the armor’s straps, pulling it from his chest, then he ripped off his tunic, frantically soaking up the dripping liquid.

“Trying to drug me again?” I yelled. “Have you lost your mind?”

“Actually, I’m thinking more clearly than I ever have.” He crumpled his tunic into a ball, tucked it into the waist of his pants, and barreled into my chest with enough force to knock me on my back. As I hit the soil, I caught a blur of movement in the sky, followed by a gryvern’s frantic screech.

“Let me go,” I said, writhing beneath him. “I have to distract Ophiucae before he hurts Sorae.”

He wrestled with my arms to pin them down. “The sooner you let me do this, the sooner this ends.”

Suddenly, Teller flew off me, his collar clutched in the fist of one of my soldiers. “Your Majesty, I’m afraid your brother is lost to thought magic.” She lifted her blade to his throat.

“No!” I scrambled to my knees and tugged him out of her grip. “I’ll handle him. Just give us cover.”

My soldiers backed into a circle around us, and I pulled Teller’s face close to mine, fearing her suspicions might be correct. I scoured his gaze for the telltale fog of Ophiucae’s control, but his eyes were clear and bright.

“Do you know the hardest part of being a Bellator?” he asked. “The rest of you are so sure of who you are. Father was a soldier. Mother was a healer. Even when you became Queen, you doubted yourself, but you never doubted that you were meant to help people.”

My heart stuttered as an arrow whizzed past his ear. Above us, Sorae screeched, and Xipherus snarled a warning. “We’re in the middle of war, Tel. Now is not the time⁠—”

“I wanted to be that sure of something,” he interrupted. “I threw myself into school, and Sophos, and the Royal Guard, even Lily. I thought if I tried hard enough, eventually I’d feel like I was where I was meant to be. I wanted that more than anything.” He sighed. “Especially with Lily.”

“You’re eighteen. No one knows who they are at eighteen. You can make it work with Lily. If this is about her being Descended⁠—”

“It’s not. For once, it’s really not.” He smiled, and I frowned. There was something about his calmness in the midst of so much violence that my instincts screamed at me not to trust. “Making that godstone mixture was the most confident I’ve been in a really long time. It felt so right. I haven’t felt that way since I stabbed Ophiucae in Sophos. I felt it when I made the flameroot paste, too. When I saw the healers’ sleeping draught and realized what I could do with it, I felt that way again.”

Two Descended broke past my soldiers and lunged for Teller. I put Sorrow’s Edge through the chest of one and drove an elbow into the face of the other. “If you were trying to keep me out of the battle, you’re doing a terrible job of it,” I said irritably.

Teller stared at me with clear-eyed focus, as if we were entirely alone. “If I wanted to do that, I would have given you a stronger dose. Lily told me winterwood wears off once the patient stops breathing it in. Remember that, alright? You might not have long to do it.”