Page 12 of Spark of the Everflame

“You don’t have to walk me to school, you know.” Sharpness edged into Teller’s normally mild voice, and I wondered if my newfound irritability had been rubbing off on him. “I’m not a child. If I were with the other mortals, I wouldn’t even be in school anymore.”

“What kind of sister would I be if I sent my favorite sibling—”

“Your only sibling.”

“—mysmartestsibling into the lion’s den on his own? It’s bad enough you’re the only mortal at a Descended school, but you’re also ten times more clever than any of those blue-eyed brats. And they know it. If they have half a brain, they’ll sweep you up after you finish next year and send you across the sea to those fancy research institutes in Sophos.”

“If they even let me finish,” he mumbled.

“Why wouldn’t they?”

He looked away, avoiding my gaze.

I grabbed his arm and forced him to face me. “Teller, what’s going on?”

“Come on, D,” he huffed. “You know the arrangement. Mother serves the Crown as the palace healer, and I get to attend the Descended school.”

“And?”

“And she’s no longer serving the Crown.”

“Maura took her place. They’ve still got their healer, why would they care who it is?”

He shrugged, his dark brown eyes fixed on the horizon. “Maybe they don’t. But is Maura fine serving the palace without payment? She has her own wife and family to care for, Diem. I can’t keep asking her to do that for me.”

My shoulders sagged. I’d been so wrapped up in my own temper and self-pity, I hadn’t even thought about the ripple effect of Maura’s generosity.

Teller finally returned my stare, his features steeled with resolve. “Maybe this is for the best. I hate that place anyway, and with Mother gone, I should be working so I can—”

“No,” I interrupted. “If—when—she returns, she’ll have my head if I let you quit now.”

“But—”

“You only have one year left. Let me worry about it until then.”

“Diem—”

“I’m not letting you walk away from your chance to get out of this cesspool, Tel.”

“Diem,listen—”

A lighthearted voice interrupted our spat. “Haven’t you learned by now there’s no winning an argument against the great Diem Bellator?”

I smirked. Teller groaned.

“Thank you Henri, I’ve been telling him that foryears,” I said to the shaggy-haired man swaggering toward us.

Henri flung an arm around my shoulders and grinned down at Teller. “Whatever it is, take my advice and accept defeat. She’s relentless—especially when it comes to you, kid.”

Teller bristled. “I’m not a kid. And this is none of your concern.”

I snaked my arm around Henri’s waist and squeezed his side in a silent plea to back off.

Teller was straddling the cusp of boyhood and manhood, and it had become a growing sore spot. Mortals finished school at fourteen and carved out paths for themselves shortly thereafter. I myself had done the same, beginning work with my mother as a healer six years prior. However, the prestigious Descended academy that Teller attended finished at eighteen, and the particularly bright would be invited to Sophos, Realm of Thought and Spark, to continue their learning well into their twenties.

At seventeen, Teller’s mortal peers were already years into their adult lives, but his Descended classmates had yet to begin theirs. With a foot in both worlds, he was not a boy but not yet a man, and I knew he’d been struggling to find his place.

Henri’s constant teasing didn’t help. With no siblings of his own, Henri fancied himself an adopted big brother, an offer Teller had never quite warmed to.

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