Heat of the Everflame (The Kindred’s Curse Saga #3)

Chapter 53

Chapter

Fifty-Three

T he King laughed loudly. “Have the messages brought to me here, Lieutenant. I want Lumnos to see me when I read them out loud.”

Luther’s growl rolled through the air.

“And bring a battalion when you come,” the King added. “In case our guests get any ideas.”

I threw my thoughts out in a desperate bid to reach Luther, but the godstone’s effect was brutal. Like it had in his toxin-ravaged body, every time my magic brushed against it, my godhood shrieked and retreated in fear.

It felt unthinkable that I’d destroyed it in my earlier battles. The glimmering ebony rock seemed hopelessly impenetrable now.

“Change of plans,” I hissed at my mother as I stood. “The King needs six votes to execute you, and I think the last one just arrived. We have to do this now.”

She blanched, then a calm focus settled over her face. “Tell the Prince to distract the King while I run. Let him take the fall.”

She said Luther’s title like a swear. I frowned. “I’m not putting Luther at any more risk than he is already.” My mother balked. I grabbed her arm with a warning scowl, then rapped my other hand against the door. “And you aren’t running.”

“Yes?” the King’s voice called out.

“We’re finished,” I yelled.

“So soon? It’s only been a few minutes.”

“I work fast.”

“Don’t you want to make the most of your mother-daughter time?” His tone turned cruel. “Might be the last chance you ever get.”

I clenched my teeth and pounded the door. “Let us out, Fortos.”

Even without magic, the godstone’s repellant nature had an uncanny effect. The longer it touched my skin, the more my bleakest emotions bubbled to the surface—hatred and anger, sorrow and gloom. The material was smooth beneath my palm, but it somehow felt like the worst thing I’d ever touched, like death and wrongness given tangible form.

I fought the urge to recoil as I knocked again. “ Now , Fortos.”

“I’m not quite ready. I’m enjoying my time alone with your Prince.”

My blood went cold. I heard Luther’s voice, too low to decipher. I pressed closer to the door, straining my ears to hear, and the godstone’s wicked influence deepened its claws.

“Touch him and you’re a dead man,” I shouted.

“Don’t worry. I don’t have to touch him at all.”

A foul smell wafted beneath the door, followed by pained grunts.

“Luther?” I called out, my panic rising.

“I’m fine,” he answered in a stilted rasp. “Fortos is just... trying to make up... for his... tiny di—”

His words cut off, followed by the thump of a body hitting the floor.

My banging turned frantic. “Luther? Luther! ”

Fight , the voice demanded.

I hurled a blast of light at the door. The rays shattered into splinters on impact, ricocheting in white-hot sparks throughout the cell.

“The Prince might need a healer,” the King taunted. “Your mother was one, wasn’t she?” He snorted, as if that were some clever joke.

I glanced at her. Her eyes quickly darted away.

“I’ll make a deal,” he said. “Tell me everything you know about the attack on Coeur?le, and I’ll leave him alone.”

“I already told you, I didn’t know anything.”

“How unfortunate for your Prince.”

Fight .

My irritation enflamed to wrath, my worry spiraled to terror. My godhood was feeding off the turmoil, and with nowhere to go, it built inside me to an unbearable pitch. I clawed at the door, my nails screeching against the impenetrable rock.

“I can’t tell you what I don’t know,” I pleaded.

“You claim you were kidnapped and held for weeks. You have to know something. Give me names. Locations.”

I grimaced, torn by conflict. Even after all the Guardians had done, I didn’t want to be the reason more mortals died in cages. “I didn’t know where I was. They drugged me with flameroot.”

“They have flameroot? ” the King roared.

“Diem, no,” my mother hissed, yanking me away from the door.

“I have to give him something. Luther—”

“Forget about the Prince. He’s just a Descended.” She saw my incredulous stare and seemed to realize what she’d said a moment too late. “I didn’t mean—”

“That’s a lot of blood,” the King crooned. “I better get more details quickly.”

Fight .

My skin glimmered and glowed, my magic whipping into a frenzy beyond my control. “Get out of my way,” I warned my mother.

She spread her hands across the door. “No, Diem. I won’t let you betray the Guardians for him.”

Fight .

“Move,” I growled. Pebbles rattled against the floor, the air crackling with the buzz of a brewing storm. I ground my teeth near to dust in a fight to keep it contained.

She held fast to her place. “I’m so sorry, my little warrior. This is one battle you won’t win.”

“Luther, are you alright?” I called out.

An awful silence answered back.

“ Luther? ” I pleaded.

“I think he might be sleeping,” the King crooned. “Permanently.”

Fight .

I stormed into my mother’s face, her frightened features awash with the light from my blazing eyes. She shrank back, and something inside me broke at the knowledge I’d become a monster my own mother feared.

“Get out of my way,” I snarled.

She steeled her shoulders. “I will not.”

Fight .

“Mother, move! ”

Her brown eyes turned glassy, her expression going blank. With limp arms and a sagging head, she stiffly shuffled into the far corner of the cell.

Destroy .

I didn’t even surrender to the magic—my heart did it all on her own. She was still healing from the near loss of him to the godstone, and she’d be damned if we let the gods take him now.

The odd, destructive silvery light burst from my skin. I’d once believed it a reflex, some uncontrollable force that worked in ways I couldn’t predict let alone control, but every time I used it, I came a little closer to bringing it to heel.

I honed in on its essence—where it came from, what it did. My usual magic flowed from my godhood, but this power seemed imbued in my blood itself. And when it brushed against the toxic bleakness of the godstone’s touch, it did not cower.

It merged. It fulfilled.

I thought I’d been destroying the godstone. But it was never destruction—it was balance.

Hot and cold, light and shadow, life and death.

In the center of that all-consuming glow, a preternatural wisdom bathed me in its eerie, quiet calm. A knowledge of all that was and ever will be, a glimpse from the gods themselves at a truth too pure for human minds to comprehend.

And yet, for that moment—one perfect, ephemeral moment—I understood.

But it was an answer I wasn’t yet meant to know.

Not until my worth was proven.

Not until my soul had been judged.

I cried out as it slipped away, evaporating like a wet stone baking beneath the sun. It tingled at my fingertips and whispered in my ear of choices and prophecies and fate, but when the light ebbed, so too did it fade.

“How did you do that?”

The King stood in the corridor, jaw agape.

“That... that was godstone ,” he stammered. “How...?”

I raised my palms, and a burst of shadow slammed into the center of his chest. He grunted and hit the floor, wrestling with the writhing darkness that pinned him down.

Luther lay nearby, eyes closed. My heart plunged as I ran and collapsed on top of him, healing magic pouring out before my hands even found his flesh.

His insides were in ruins—organs failing, tissue rotting to an ashy grey—and yet his heart had once again been miraculously spared. It was defiant, that warrior heart of his. Just like the woman it loved.

Its fierce, persistent beat grew louder as my magic did its work. His hand twitched, then closed over mine, and when his blue-grey eyes opened and met my gaze, all the air in my lungs rushed out.

“I leave you alone for five minutes,” I joked, though my voice was a hoarse, shaken mess.

“Whatever it takes to get your hands on me.” We shared a relieved smile as the last of the damage mended, then his face turned grim. “The messenger hawks.”

“I heard. We can’t wait anymore.”

As I helped him stand, I spied my mother lurking in the doorway of the cell, watching me with a clouded expression. I felt a stab of guilt—I hadn’t intended to use the Umbros magic on her, but given her willingness to let Luther die, I didn’t exactly regret it, either.

“How did you do that?” the King bellowed, wriggling free of my shadowy web. “What kind of weapon do you have? Where did you get it?”

I schooled my face to confusion. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“That door was solid godstone. Nothing can destroy it.”

My head cocked. “That door was made of iron. I melted it away with Lumnos light.”

He scowled. “Don’t play games with me. That godstone dates back to the Blessed Father himself.”

My mother slowly began to creep away.

Don’t , I warned into her thoughts.

“You don’t know your own prison, Fortos,” Luther said, chuckling. “That door was clearly iron.”

The King scoffed and glanced at the cell, where my mother froze and nodded quickly in agreement.

He stiffened. “That door... it wasn’t—I’m sure of it...” He gazed down the hallway. “All these cells are fortified with godstone.”

“You said it was being repaired.” I flashed a helpful smile. “Squeaky hinges.”

The King looked down, scratching his head. “ Squeaky hinges? ”

My mother started moving again, creeping slowly as she moved beyond the King, then scurrying faster. Luther’s arm brushed mine—he’d spotted it, too.

Mother , I warned her. The King will kill you .

I heard her answer back: Then tell the Prince to stop him . He should want his revenge .

I glared at her. I’m not letting you run a—

She turned and bolted. The King’s head snapped toward her, and to my surprise—and my horror—he began to laugh.

“Finally,” he breathed, grinning. “I’ve been waiting for her to give me a reason. Now I don’t need a sixth vote.” His gaze slid back to me and sparkled with malice. “Escapees can be slaughtered on sight.”

My eyes narrowed.

“Go get her,” I murmured to Luther. “Be careful.” He nodded and took off after my mother.

The King lunged to grab him and collided into my shield. He stumbled back, grabbing his nose with a snarl. “Helping a prisoner escape is treason. You’re just as dead as she is.”

My head spun as my plans unraveled. Getting my mother out quietly, leaving no proof, convincing the Crowns to coronate me —those hopes had gone up in a bigger blaze than the Everflame itself.

I squared my shoulders and crouched into a battle stance. “I’m not dying in this prison, Fortos. Do what I say, and you won’t, either.”

His lips slid sideways. “I can’t wait to hear this.”

I pointed to an empty cell. “Open the door and get inside. Your soldiers can let you out once we’re gone. I don’t want to have to kill you.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “You’re very cocky for a woman. What is it you think you have that I don’t?”

“Knuckles that don’t drag when I walk. The ability to breathe through my nose. A neck.”

His mirth vanished. “If you’re so certain you can kill me, why not do it now?”

“I’m not here to take lives. You and the other Crowns have put too many bodies in graves already.”

“This is your problem, Lumnos. You’ve got all the confidence of a man, but none of the balls.” He pulled his broadsword from its scabbard and pointed it at me. “If you want me in that cell, you’ll have to chop me into pieces and sweep me under the door.”

My insides tangled in knots. I was being forced into a crossroads I’d tried desperately to avoid.

Shadows hissed at my palm, and a long, dark sword took form in my hand. “Don’t make me do this, Fortos. Let me take my mother and go.”

He grinned and lifted his blade. “Maybe I’ll get lucky, and she’ll come back just in time to see her ‘ little girl ’ die.”

He lunged forward and struck. I’d never used a magic-made sword for anything but show—when I raised mine above my head to block his attack, I wasn’t entirely certain the shadows would hold.

My eyes screwed shut, and I braced for death.

A violent ripple rocked through my arms as his blade clashed against mine and bounced away. Though my magic had held, the brutal force of his swing sent me stumbling back.

He was strong. Very strong.

Dangerously strong.

He was also dangerously skilled. It seemed all five of his brain cells had been devoted to the art of the fight. He wielded his strength with shrewd precision, using momentum to compensate for my greater speed. As we danced in violent tandem, trading parries and thrusts, my nerves rose higher with every blow.

But I had skills of my own. Though it pushed my training to its limits, I managed to land a few critical strikes in an aggressive flurry of attacks.

He retreated a step, looking amused. “A Queen who can wield a blade. I didn’t expect that.”

“You forget who my father is. Andrei Bellator taught me everything he knew.”

“And who do you think taught him? ”

I sliced a line at his throat, shifting at the last second so my blade only drew a minor nick. “Yield, Fortos.”

Blood trickled down his chest. He touched his fingers to it and smirked. “Never.”

In a flash, he jabbed straight for my heart. I spun away and crashed into the corridor wall, wincing at both the King’s smug laughter and my now-tender arm.

“Andrei must not have taught you everything. You’re making a mistake my men never would.” He rolled his sword in a lazy arc. “You’re holding back.”

I feinted left and sent him lunging for open air, a distraction to mask my unease at being so easily read.

I didn’t want to end him. But I needed to convince him I could —then perhaps I might rattle him enough to comply.

My godhood howled to be let loose. I firmly clamped it down, feeling some innate push to do this on my own. Perhaps it was an homage to my father—using his training to defeat the man he’d served all those years. Or perhaps the King’s comments were getting to me more than I wanted to admit.

A quick strike landed a deep gash on his arm. He hissed at the blade’s sharp bite.

“My mother taught me everything she knows, too. I can have a look at all those wounds you’re taking on.” I smirked. “Once you yield, of course.”

“Ah, yes. Your mother. The healer .”

Again, he said the word with a curious timbre.

His blade swung up and clipped my thigh. I bit down on the pain and lurched forward on my injured leg, slicing my sword at his unguarded side. Panic flashed briefly in his eyes, but he deflected surprisingly fast, and our blades locked in an X at his neck.

“Yield.”

“ Never .”

His strength won out over mine, and I was forced to stumble back.

“Why do you speak as if she wasn’t a healer?”

His head cocked. His eyes trailed curiously over my face. Finally, he barked a laugh. “I shouldn’t be surprised. She was always good at keeping a secret.”

Pattering footsteps echoed down the hall—far too many to be just my mother and Luther.

The King’s grin stretched wide. “Time’s up.”

In a panic, I sent him hurtling backward with a burst of Meros wind. His head cracked against a godstone door, and his unconscious body slumped to the ground. I crouched beside him, wrapping him up in dark vines and raising a veil of shadows to cover us both.

A group of his soldiers appeared at the end of the corridor carrying two hawks with scrolls clamped to their legs.

My pulse set into a gallop. If the soldiers came any closer, my sloppy makeshift illusion would be too obvious to miss.

“I thought the King was here,” one of them said.

“They must have taken the prisoner back to her cell.”

“We passed the mortal cages. They weren’t there.”

The King stirred at my side, his groggy voice emerging from the dark. “I’m over he—”

I slapped a thick patch of shadow over his face.

“Did you hear that?” a soldier asked. He crept our way, warily craning his neck.

An idea struck.

They already left. I pushed the thought out with force. The King must be in his office now.

The man stopped. “They already left. The King must be in his office now.”

My heart leapt.

Another soldier raised his brows. “No one saw them leave.”

The man blinked, then frowned, then shook his head as if clearing a fog. “I... I’m not...”

How dare he question your command? I thought.

He spun on the other with a glare. “How dare you question my command?” He shoved him in the shoulder. “Get going. Back to His Majesty’s office.”

The others hustled to obey. The soldier whose mind I’d spoken into lingered and stared down the dimly lit corridor. After a moment, he was gone.

My magic dissolved. The King gasped for air, his face alarmingly blue.

I swore and reached for him. “Are you al—”

He launched at me in a rage, slashing at my head with enough force to shatter bone. I yelped and rolled across the ground as his blade carved a gouge in the floor.

He didn’t spare a second before trying again. I abandoned my shadow sword and frantically crawled out of his path. A whiff of air whistled past my ear, his strike missing by a hair.

My godhood snarled to answer in kind. I snarled right back, still determined to do this my way.

“Wind,” the King wheezed between pants. “You used wind to push me back.”

I climbed to my feet. “You hit your head too hard,” I said, desperately trying to keep my tone light as panic spiraled in my chest. “Wind belongs to Meros.”

“Earlier, in the hall—it was you using my magic.” His eyes blazed a bloodthirsty crimson. “Sophos was wrong. You’re not just an imposter, you’re an abomination.”

He swung for my neck, and I struck fast. I crafted another sword, this one sizzling with white-hot light, and glanced a blow across his wrist. His blade clattered to the floor as his hand went limp, skin bubbling and raw from the magic’s burn.

He screamed and clutched it to his chest. I pinned him against the corridor wall with the length of my sword, its scorching edge pressed to his throat.

“You’ve lost. Yield, and leave with your life.”

“Fortos never surrenders. We fight until we die.”

I scowled. Without him offering his blood by choice, I couldn’t open the cell doors to lock him in, but the longer our eyes stayed locked in mutual rage, the clearer it became he would never give in.

He arched his neck against the blade. “Go on then. Do what you must.”

I let out a loud, frustrated groan, then stepped back and dissolved my sword.

The King balked. “You’re not going to do it?”

“I told you. I didn’t come here to kill.” I grabbed his fallen blade. It glowed red in my hand, then melted to the ground in a useless sludge.

“By the Kindred... a Queen who won’t kill.” He began to laugh. “How pathetic.”

My eyes rolled hard.

His chuckling grew louder. “This is precisely why my realm will n—”

His words choked. His bulging eyes shot upward, then back to me as his breathing turned shallow. “You?” he rasped. “That—that’s not... but you’re...”

“Yes, I know. I’m pathetic .”

Blood drained from his face. “I won’t let this happen. You—you can’t do this. It’s not possible.”

I shrugged and turned away. “Watch me. I’m taking my mother and leaving.”

As if on cue, a seething Luther turned the corner, carrying my squirming mother under his arm. His clothes were disheveled, his glare hot enough to melt glass.

“Why is it the traits I find endearing in you are so gods-damned annoying in your mother,” he snapped. He clamped an arm around her legs as she tried her best to kick him in the groin. His eyes darted to the King. “He’s not dead yet?”

“Sadly, no,” I answered with a sigh.

“You win,” the King said suddenly. “I’ll let you go without a fight.”

My brows flew up. “You will?”

He nodded and extended a hand. “You bested me in battle. It’s only fair.”

I eyed it—and him—my skepticism plain. Warily, I extended my own. The King held statue still until my fingers curled around his wrist, and his closed around mine. His other hand swept across his hips, and he bent into a waist-deep bow.

“There’s just one thing,” he said. “A lesson your father must not have taught you.”

The hairs on my nape stood on end.

His eyes snapped up. “Never leave a fight unfinished.”

He jerked my arm, forcing me off balance. Before I could react, he had me pinned against his chest, his hands clamped to the sides of my head.

“ Diem! ” Luther shouted.

The anguished panic in his voice seemed to slow time as each second of the tragedy played out.

The King’s fingers digging into my skull. His excited heartbeat hammering at my back. The muscles of his arms pulling taut in preparation to snap my neck.

I might have died that day, in that dirty, hopeless, gods-forsaken prison.

But Fortos was wrong—Andrei Bellator had taught me that lesson. That one, and many others.

And though I’d forgotten it for a time, there was one lesson I now carried in my heart wherever I went.

To be disarmed is to court death. By wits or by weapon, be ready at all times.

Years of training ignited on instinct, a well-worn path I could walk even in the darkest of nights. I twisted in the King’s arms, my knees going slack. In the confusion, his death strike faltered, a split second’s hesitation.

Just long enough for my small, shadow-crafted blade—the one I’d hidden in my palm the second he came near—to slide deep into the apex of his thighs.

He doubled over, hands clutched at his groin. I kicked the knife, jabbing it further into his flesh. He collapsed on his back with a blood-curdling scream.

“Never underestimate a Bellator,” I muttered.

Luther stared, face still ashen from the terror of nearly watching me die. He let my mother fall from his grip, and when she climbed to her feet, she took in the scene with equal surprise.

“The guards might have heard him,” I said. “We need to go. I’ll have to hope my magic can burn through all the bloodlocks.”

“Do you have enough left?” Luther asked. “You’ve used so much already.”

I frowned, unsure how to answer. The only time I’d ever exhausted my godhood was the day my father was killed. At the time, I hadn’t exactly been noting my body’s subtle magical signals.

I did feel something , though. A hot kind of pressure over my temples, like the beginnings of a brutal headache.

“I’m fine,” I lied. “Let’s go.”

My mother planted her feet. “What about the mortals? I’m not leaving here without them.”

I sighed heavily. “Mother, I understand, I really do, but—”

Something brushed against my ankle. I jerked back with a yelp, then looked down to see the King’s hand stretching toward me. The lake of ruby red around his body confirmed my aim for his artery had hit its mark. His slow, vacant blink and his tormented stare sent a chill of dread slithering over my skin.

“You,” he croaked out hoarsely. “You’re...”

“Leaving,” I finished. My focus returned to my mother. “I’m not even sure the three of us can—”

“ Daughter of the Forgotten. ”

My blood turned to ice.

The King’s voice had... changed.

There was nothing wounded in it, no dying rattle of a final breath.

In fact, he sounded strong. Impossibly strong.

Impossibly powerful.

And impossibly ancient .

My godhood responded to its call like a reunion with a long-lost friend. It brushed excitedly against my skin and hummed with an eerie anticipation, as if straining for some long-sought prize it deeply craved.

The King’s skin began to glow. The scarlet of his irises faded to a churning smoky grey.

“ Never before have I made this choice, ” his voice boomed throughout the hall. “ It was not an easy one for me. Nor will it be an easy one for you .”

I sucked in a breath as the pressure on my head sharply increased. My senses felt heightened and overtaxed, every sound too loud, every smell too noxious. The stifling air became a sea of liquid fire that my gasping lungs couldn’t quite draw in.

“What choice?” I gritted out.

The voice of my godhood answered back. It screamed and shouted, whispered and sang, all at once and in a language I wasn’t sure I even knew.

The King’s skin had grown almost too blinding to gaze upon. I stared down at my own hands, both alight with equal, star-bright brilliance.

“ Guard my people well ,” the King said.

“Blessed Kindred,” Luther murmured. “I think that’s—”

My legs trembled and gave way. I fell forward, the stone blissfully cold against my scorching skin. Luther rushed to grab me, but on some buried instinct, I raised my shield to keep him away.

The King’s back arched unnaturally toward the sky. “ Remember my sister’s words . Beware my brother’s wrath. ”

The pressure spiked, an excruciating pain inexplicably mixed with the sweetest pleasure. Light exploded in a wave around me, and I let loose a piercing scream.

Claim me, Daughter of the Forgotten.

It was a calling my soul would not, could not , ignore.

I closed my eyes, and I surrendered.

The light in the corridor shifted—the blinding, ethereal silver warming to a sunny gold. The force on my head began to ease, though a heavy presence lingered as if something sat upon my brow.

“By the Flames,” my mother gasped.

“My Queen,” Luther breathed.

My eyes opened to see him fallen on his knees, palm pressed against his heart. He looked as if he were gazing at something profoundly sacred, something as worthy of his reverence as the Blessed Mother herself.

I dropped my shield and staggered toward him, then nearly tripped over a ring of fallen soil and stone. My face turned up with a sudden gasp. Rising in a line from where I stood, a tunnel had formed through the prison’s ceiling. A perfect circle of sunlit sky beamed its spotlight into the bleak, dim center of the prison hall.

Luther pushed to his feet, and we strode toward each other, pulled together by a soul-born, irresistible draw.

“My love,” he whispered, “you are so much more than we ever dreamed.”

“Show me?”

Somehow, he knew what I meant. He took my trembling hand and pressed it firmly to his cheek.

An image arose in my mind—me, through Luther’s eyes, courtesy of my Umbros magic. A fiery red corona ringed my body, the shimmering glow slowly receding from my skin.

Above my head, my Crown had changed. A new peak had formed, and woven among the thorny, star-dotted vines and glittering crystal was a ring of throbbing, tangled veins.

I pulled my magic back, and our gazes met.

“My Crown,” I rasped.

Luther tenderly cupped my face.

“Your Majesty... you just became the Queen of Fortos.”