Page 66 of Spark of the Everflame

In the midst of the chaos, the cage he’d built around me flickered and faded away. I launched toward the boy and covered his body with my own. He was curled into a ball, tiny arms wrapped protectively around his dirt-scratched knees.

“Youbitch—you stabbed me!” The man’s words came out gurgled and half-drowned in blood, but he managed to stay on his feet. The shock in his eyes twisted into something sharper and angrier.

He jerked the knife from his neck and let it rattle to the ground. I watched in horror as the gash began to clot before my eyes.

I knew they could heal, but to see it work—to see a wound that could be fatal for a mortal man cause them no more danger than a minor cut...

These people truly were gods.

Evil, horrible, murderous gods.

Father was right. Mortals didn’t stand a chance—not in a battle of strength, at least. If we had any hope of surviving them, it would have to be a game of wits.

Fight.

A plan began to form. I filled my lungs with air and screamed a single word as loud as I could.

“Fire! Over here—fire!”

The man balked, his ire cooling to confusion. I screamed the word again—and again and again. My throat scraped raw with the effort of casting my voice as far as it could fly.

With a swipe of his hand, the shadowy spikes dissolved from the woman’s corpse and reappeared, one by one, in a lethal halo around my chest.

“You should have walked away,” he warned. “You mortals have such pathetically short lives, and yet you’re all so quick to throw them away.”

“Fire!” I shouted again. “Fire!”

Nothing happened. My confidence in my plan was turning bleak.

Death stared me plainly in the face, its toothy grin enjoying the misery of my demise. I was going to die in this disgusting, forgotten alley. Would anyone even bother checking my body or searching for a next of kin? Or would I be yet another woman who disappeared on the streets of Mortal City, following in my mother’s footsteps in one final, horrible way.

FIGHT.

Thevoicethrashed, no longer asking for release but demanding it—snarling to be unleashed and bring the world to ash.

But I had nothing left to offer, to the boy or to myself. No weapons, no magic, only the protection of my flesh to shield him from his father’s vicious wrath.

I had never really been religious. I’d never sought the guidance of the Old Gods, and aside from the occasional sacrilegious swear, I had certainly never invoked any of the Kindred, knowing better than to expect any help from the very same beings who had fractured our world in two.

But if it could bring even a sliver of peace in these final moments or curry a crumb of favor from whatever infernal thing ruled over the afterlife—for this boy and his mother, I had to at least try.

Sacred, ancient words flowed through me—the Rite of Endings, a forbidden prayer from the ancient mortal religion.

“End be your time, a trade in kind, a life well-lived for peace to find.”

As the prayer tumbled from my lips, the man’s feet shuffled over dusty stone. He sauntered closer, and my words quickened with my racing heart.

“Be not afraid, as shadows fade, all pain and woe shall be unmade.”

“A blasphemer,” he sneered. “Good. I’ll sleep easier knowing you earned your death.”

“Now fate well-sealed shall be revealed, for those whose worthy souls shall yield.”

“Your mortal gods can’t help you now, girl. Perhaps the Kindred will have mercy on you both.”

I wrapped my hands tighter around the child and squeezed my eyes closed.

“In love and calm, our holy psa—”

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