Page 8 of Spark of the Everflame

Hours passed,but my mother did not come home.

I said nothing to my father and brother of what had occurred that day. I thought only of my mother, my questions for her multiplying with every heartbeat. I sat on the front stoop of our cottage and waited to see her face emerge from the forest path, waited to pounce on her with my now-ravenous curiosity.

But still she did not come home.

We ate a quiet dinner by the fireplace, forcing smiles as we debated what innocent thing might have detained her, our heads snapping to the door at every creak.

As night fell, we wandered the woods outside our house and called her name. My brother scoured the path to the healers’ center, there and back, again and again, while my father searched the wilder areas of the forest. I skimmed the shoreline, pausing along the areas where she and I often gathered flowers for medicinal concoctions.

In the distance, my gaze snagged on the twinkle of a lantern hanging from a boat. The light grew brighter as it neared, evidently returning to Lumnos’s shores. An odd thing, considering passage across the Sacred Sea was banned on Forging Day, but with the Royal Guard currently gorging themselves in the palace, all kinds of unsavory characters might be taking advantage of today’s lax enforcement of the laws.

That thought stayed with me, heavy in my stomach, as I returned to an empty house. Eventually, my father and brother joined me, their faces falling when only I rose to greet them.

And still she did not come home.

The next day, we called on all our friends and neighbors, hoping one of them had taken her in for the night. We revisited the patients she’d treated, none of whom had noticed anything amiss. We ransacked her belongings, searching in vain for clues that she’d planned a trip away. We canvassed the streets of Mortal City and squeezed each other’s hands as we looked for any sign of her—dead or alive.

More days passed with no answers.

Then weeks.

Then months.

And still... she did not come home.

ChapterTwo

SIX MONTHS LATER

“Diem.”

It was less a name than a command—a hawkish summons that left room for nothing short of perfect obedience.

My shoulders pulled taut. This was not the voice of the gentle man I knew, whose kind eyes and calloused hands would wrap me up in a chest-crushing embrace after a rough day. The man who, though we shared no blood, had been the best father I could have ever hoped for.

This was the voice of the man that came before.

The soldier who fought his way up the ranks of the Emarion Army, earning the highest rank ever given to a mortal, both for bravery on the battlefield and leadership off of it. The warrior whose name might have gone down in legend, had he not walked away from it all for a quiet life with a penniless young mother and her wild-spirited infant.

This was the voice of the Commander—and it never meant anything good.

Teller lifted his head from his book and grinned in that infuriating younger sibling way. “What did you do now?”

I rolled my eyes as I finished lacing my boots. “Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s your fault somehow.”

His smile only widened. He knew I was full of it. My brother was our father’s most obedient soldier. If Teller ever found himself scolded by the Commander, it was only because he’d taken the fall for me out of pity to spare me yet another lecture.

“Di-em,” the voice boomed again, the two syllables stretching into a menacing dirge. “Get out here,now.”

“Dead girl walking,” Teller teased.

“Try to sound a little less thrilled about it, will you?” I threw my white, waist-length waves into a sloppy braid, then slung my weapons belt around my hips. The leather sheaths of my daggers thumped softly against my legs as I secured them with a clink of the brass buckle. “Hurry up, I’m supposed to meet Maura early this morning.”

I bounded down the short hallway to the hearth-warmed, wood-wrapped chamber that served as the common room of our small home. As I sidestepped the teetering piles of books that seemed to fill every corner, my thoughts rummaged through the past few days, trying and failing to anticipate what had earned this particular reprimand.

Frankly, there were too many possibilities to count.

I skidded to a stop in front of my father and beamed my most believably innocent smile. My fist thumped to my chest in mock salute. “Present, Commander.”

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