Burn of the Everflame (The Kindred’s Curse Saga #4)

Chapter 1

LUTHER

Swing, strike, split.

Swing, strike, split.

Splintered wood tumbled to the ground at my feet. I propped up another—the largest, knottiest log I could find—and took my aim.

Swing, strike, split.

I wasn’t sure if the crack came from the axe’s strike or my grinding teeth.

“That’s supposed to work off your anger, not make it worse,” Auralie called out. She strolled over from the campsite, arms folded. “I think they can hear you growling from Lumnos.”

Her tone was stern, but there was concern, not reproach, in her eyes.

I looked away. I was still getting used to seeing Auralie Bellator as an ally, rather than what she’d been for many years prior: the single greatest threat to my life.

Four miserable weeks had passed since Teller and I escaped the island and flew on Sorae’s back to the Guardians’ camp in Montios.

I’d been all but certain Auralie was going to skin me alive for leaving Diem behind.

Instead, she took pity on me—perhaps as thanks for reuniting her with her son, or perhaps because my mood was dark enough for both of us.

I’d let Diem down.

Again.

My fingers stretched at my side, reaching for a hand that wasn’t there. Every day without her was a reminder of how badly I’d failed the woman I loved. And now, in a trait I shared with my Queen, my guilt had darkened to rage, a bomb more volatile than any the Guardians had ever constructed.

“We’ll get her back,” Auralie said gently.

I rubbed my jaw, now covered in a rough, dark beard thanks to our weeks on the road. “I’m sick of waiting.”

“We’ll act when the time is right.”

“We’ve been sitting for a month, and nothing’s changed. Your plan isn’t working.”

She brushed aside a curl that had fallen from her upswept hair, her advanced mortal age showing in the silver strands mixed among the fiery copper-red. “We haven’t been ‘sitting,’ and you well know it. It took weeks to move everyone here to Arboros.”

And we gave up the insight we had on Ophiucae’s plans in the process, I thought irritably, but I held my tongue. Though the risk of Vance recruiting more rebels to Ophiucae’s side was a key reason for pulling the Guardians out of Montios, the move had been to protect me, too.

Diem’s birth father, Ophiucae, had inherited the Crown of Omnos, the long-lost tenth Kindred whose existence had been hidden from everyone, even the other Crowns.

Ophiucae ruled over the Forgotten Lands, where the Guardians’ old camp had been.

If he found me in his realm, I doubted my relationship to Diem, the daughter he tried to kill as an infant, would persuade him to spare me from his quest to massacre every Descended as bloody retribution for the centuries he spent imprisoned on the island of Coeur?le.

In truth, the move hadn’t cut off our ability to watch him.

Messenger hawks arrived in a steady stream with news of his movements.

In typical Auralie fashion, Diem’s mother refused to reveal from whom these missives came.

All I knew was that Ophiucae had stepped up his onslaught.

Every week, more Descended died and more Descended children went missing.

Though Ophiucae had thus far left Lumnos untouched, it was only a matter of time before he turned his violent eyes on my terremère.

“I sent out a call for all Guardians to join us here in Arboros,” Auralie reminded me.

“New mortals arrive every day. We’re training them as fast as we can.

” She shot me a pointed look that reminded me so much of her daughter, my heart lurched beneath my ribs.

“And gathering an army for Diem was your plan, not mine.”

“A few hundred people is not an army,” I argued, “and I don’t know who we’ll face first, Ophiucae or the Crowns, but we’ll need more than mere mortals to defeat either one.”

“Don’t lecture me, Prince,” she shot back. “You were born into your titles, but I earned mine, and I did it fighting Descended with mere mortals alone.”

The air chilled between us, and for a moment, we were back to the hostile foes we’d always been.

I turned my face north. Though I couldn’t even see the coast, let alone the island where Diem was trapped, my heart had an innate sense of where it was. I’d left a piece of myself in that Temple, and I would only be whole again with her in my arms.

Until then, it was my job to keep her family safe. I’d let Diem down enough.

“You’re right,” I forced out. “My apologies.”

Auralie let out a sigh as the tension eased. “I know you’re worried about her. I am, too.”

“It’s not worry. No matter how often this world tries to tear her down, Diem always finds a way to survive.”

A touch of pride warmed her face. “Then what is it?”

The truth was too raw, too painful to explain.

I dropped the axe and slid my hand into my pocket, rubbing my thumb over the etched case of the whirring golden compass—a gift to Diem from the Meros King at her Ascension Ball.

Ever since Diem went to Coeur?le, the compass had slipped into an aimless spin.

The island’s ability to block magic was apparently strong enough to thwart the compass’s spell to point toward your heart’s greatest desire.

I told myself that as long as its arrow continued to move, that meant Diem was still trapped. Once it stopped spinning, that meant she was free.

And the second that happened, I would go get my Queen.

“The realms are under siege,” Auralie said.

“The ports are barely functioning. The Emarion Army’s a mess—since Diem has the Fortos Crown, no one can agree on who has authority to command it in her absence, and every battalion they send to face Ophiucae never returns.

Soon, the Crowns will have to admit they need help.

” She glanced over her shoulder at the rebel camp, then lowered her voice.

“And we might have just the weapon they’ll need. ”

She pulled a small ceramic jar from a pouch at her waist and handed it to me. I pried open the cork stopper, and the smell of citrus and smoke hit my nose as I peered inside at a vibrant scarlet balm.

“Flameroot,” she explained. “The Guardians managed to bring a supply of it from the island, though Vance took much of it when he left.”

My lips twitched with a scowl. Auralie had used the substance for years to hide Diem’s magic, even from Diem herself. Though I knew she’d done it to keep her daughter safe, it had cost Diem the chance to train her magic—a shortcoming that could turn deadly in the coming war.

“It’s a salve, not a tea,” she went on. “My son thinks it might have the same effect when applied to a wound. If Diem smears this on a blade and is able to strike him, it could stop Ophiucae’s magic long enough for us to kill him.”

“Teller made this for you?” I asked.

Auralie looked pained at my surprise. Though her reunion with her son had been teary-eyed and tender, once he’d learned how much she kept from her family over the years, things between them quickly strained.

“I told him it was for Diem. He’d do anything for her.”

My eyes narrowed. “Is it for Diem? Or is this going to end up on the tip of every Guardian weapon?”

She shrugged, her gaze darting away. “That’s up to Diem to decide. It was Teller’s condition to telling me.”

Smart man, I thought, my respect for him rising. “You’re certain this works?”

“Not yet. We need to test it. I was hoping you might be willing to—”

“No,” I snapped.

“Just a small cut—”

“No.”

“I thought you said there was nothing you wouldn’t do for her.”

The jar nearly cracked in my clenched hand.

“Do not challenge me on what I would do for your daughter,” I warned.

“I’d drive a blade into my own heart if I thought it would help her.

Diem could escape at any moment. When she does, she’ll be the target of the most powerful people on the continent.

I won’t risk leaving her to fight them alone. ”

“She won’t be alone.” She pointed to the camp. “The Guardians captured the port in Meros and the island without Descended help. We’re more skilled than you think.”

“Oh, I’m well aware,” I said, my tone low and lethal. “I watched my guards take their final breaths after burning alive at the hands of the mortal you left in charge in Lumnos—the same man who ran me through with godstone. I know just how skilled at bloodshed Guardians can be.”

The nobler part of me regretted using Vance’s crimes against her. Auralie had been irate when she learned what he’d done with the Guardians in her absence. After hearing how he’d held Diem down and sliced her open to take her blood, Auralie wanted him dead as much as I did.

I drew in a breath, trying to dull the fiery wrath that now seemed to be my baseline state. “Even if I wanted to help you, I can’t. I don’t have my magic outside of Lumnos. Testing it on me will do you no good.”

That wasn’t entirely true. Whatever the Crowns had done on the island, it hadn’t slowed the deterioration of the realm borders or the Forging spell that enforced them. Just like before, my magic occasionally returned in random, temporary bursts—a fact I’d kept to myself.

“Fine,” Auralie conceded. “But if you get your magic back . . . will you let me test it then?”

As if on cue, a familiar prickle of energy tingled in my chest. Like a struck match in a vat of oil, my magic sparked to life, searing through my veins.

My jaw clenched at the timing. I knew what a sign from Blessed Mother Lumnos looked like. For whatever reason, she wanted me to help Auralie.

The Luther of a month ago would have obeyed without a second thought. I’d always been a devoted servant, ready to offer up my life for the Blessed Mother’s divine will. But ever since losing Diem to that fucking island, knowing she was alone, after all she’d already been through . . .

For the first time in my life, when called on by my patron goddess, I said no.

“I’ll think about it.” I shoved the cork in the jar and started to hand it back to Auralie, then thought better of it. Our mutual trust was growing, but it had a long way to go.