Page 1 of Spark of the Everflame

Prologue

Whether it was a blessing or a curse is, even now, the subject of considerable debate.

If I’d had the courage to step forward into the dark alley that day and hear the words that the handsome, scar-bearing stranger whispered into my mother’s ear, perhaps one of us—or all of us—might have died a great deal sooner.

Or, if I’d come just a few minutes earlier, if I’d taken my mother’s hand and convinced her to follow me out of town and down the forest path to our little home on the marsh, perhaps her secrets, and the secrets she kept on my behalf, might have stayed buried forever in the Emarion soil, and so many lives might never have had to take their place.

Only one thing is certain: my mother’s disappearance on that hot, cursed afternoon set off a chain of reactions so unexpected, so far-reaching, that even the gods themselves could not predict the consequences that would later come to pass.

And so it’s there that my story begins.

ChapterOne

Between the dead patient, the drunk men, and the blood sun, my day was not off to an auspicious start.

A stream of inebriated revelers stumbled through the dusty alleys of Mortal City, their catcalls and slurred words an unwelcome refrain on my walk home. Though I gave their roaming hands a wide berth, I couldn’t avoid the hooded, red-rimmed eyes that followed me with too much interest.

The blood sun wasn’t helping. At dawn, a thick haze had settled across the sky, bathing the city in an eerie scarlet glow. As the sun rose to its midday peak, it seemed to make the early summer heat scorch hotter, thicker,angrier.

“I hate days like this,” Maura muttered.

I glanced at the short, ruddy-faced older woman at my side. She paused and leaned on her cane as her honey-brown eyes turned skyward, the corners of her lips hooking into a frown.

“Forging Day is bad enough without this infernal heat,” she said.

I hummed in agreement. Rising temperatures brought rising tempers, and that meant more fights, more injuries, and more patients.

“The healers’ center will be a madhouse this evening,” I said. “I can come back with you, if you’d like. I’m sure the apprentice healers would appreciate the extra hands.”

“Your mother and I can handle things for the rest of the day. Go on home and rest, you had a rough morning shift.”

I flinched at the memory.

Maura set her age-worn hand on my forearm and gave it a squeeze. “It wasn’t your fault, Diem.”

“I know,” I lied.

A patient had died on my watch.

He’d been young—far younger than his weathered features suggested, orphaned and swallowed up by the slums of Mortal City. On the brink of starvation, he’d tried to poach a roast duck from a vendor’s cart and received a knife between the ribs in return. By the time I arrived, he’d lost too much blood, his breath raspy and wet from a collapsed lung.

I could do nothing but hold his hand and murmur the sacred Rite of Endings. The life had dimmed from his carob eyes while the merriment continued around us uninterrupted. No one had paused to pay respects, not even as I’d struggled to haul his body to the forest surrounding our village so he could decompose in peace, eternally slumbering under a blanket of whatever fallen leaves I could collect.

The unnecessary cruelty of it had set my temper ablaze. Every patient’s death lay heavy on my soul, but this boy had been so young, his death so preventable, that I couldn’t help feeling the weight of it on my shoulders. It had lit a spark deep within me, a need for justice, that I was struggling to ignore.

“Strange to have a blood sun on Forging Day,” I said, eager to change the subject. I tucked a wisp of white hair behind my ears, its unnatural hue made all the more bold against the dark tan of my sun-drenched skin. My focus rose to the crimson orb glaring down at us. “Feels like a bad omen.”

In the old mortal religions, a blood sun was said to be a warning from the gods, a harbinger of great upheaval. An appearance generations ago on the eve of civil war—a conflict we now called the Blood War, in its honor—had reinforced its ominous reputation. Its reoccurrence now, and on Forging Day no less, was sure to ignite speculation.

“Nonsense,” Maura said with a swish of her hand. “A silly superstition, nothing more. We had one two decades past, and no harm came of it.”

“My darling little brother might disagree with you,” I said. “That blood sun was the day of my birth.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Was it really?”

I nodded. “His greatest joy is reminding me every chance he gets.”

Even the gods knew you would be a pain in the ass, Teller would say with a grin before fleeing out of my reach.

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