Page 91 of Spark of the Everflame

I sank obediently to one knee, though I couldn’t tear my eyes from the King’s face. I arched my neck, straining to get a better look.

He looked startlingly young. An older man, certainly, but not nearly elderly enough to be fading away from what seemed to be the Descended equivalent of natural causes. If he were a mortal, I would have imagined him to be the same age as my father.

But I knew better. His reign had begun long ago, ages before even the oldest living mortal had entered the world. What must it be like to outlive generations of mortals, watching them age and die, over and over? The idea struck me as terribly sad.

Of course, these Descended likely had never met a mortal they cared enough about to mourn.

I felt the heat of Luther’s gaze settle on me. He had risen, now standing beside the King’s bed, watching me as always. Judging me, I guessed, for the defiant glare I couldn’t seem to resist, even in the presence of the Crown.

Beside me, Maura held still. Her shoulders hunched in submission, eyes fixed on the floor, waiting for the Prince’s permission to rise.

The sight of it needled at my pride. What had either of these men done to deserve such obedience from her? Their vicious laws stole innocent lives, while Maura saved them. Why should she, or I, be expected to kneel to them—or to anyone?

Without waiting for Luther’s approval, I shot back up to my feet, shoulders back and chin high. I tugged Maura upright and flashed Luther a bold, unrepentant smile that dared him to correct us.

He held my gaze, refusing to react. “You may attend to your duties,” he said flatly.

Maura’s fingernails dug into my skin as she dragged me toward the bed with a scowl that was a clear command:Behave.

My nostrils flared in silent response:Thisisme behaving.

She shoved her satchel into my hands, then turned to the King. We each got to work, me laying out the items from her bag onto a side table while Maura evaluated the King’s condition.

His eyes were closed and his breathing steady. If Maura hadn’t warned me that he’d drifted into unconsciousness months ago, I might have thought him merely sleeping. The only sign of his more ominous fate was his grey pallor and the hollow cling of flesh against bone where his muscles had begun to atrophy.

Despite my best efforts to detest the man, I felt a stab of sympathy. My head understood that he was responsible for countless atrocities, having reigned over generations of oppression and cruelty toward my kind, but in this moment, my heart saw only a frail, dying man.

Were he any other patient, I would take his hand and sit with him, speaking soft words to soothe whatever bit of his soul still remained. But the Prince had not moved his eyes from me since I entered, and standing a breath away from the Crown with a knife of Fortosian steel in my boot was already pushing my luck.

I fell back as Maura smoothed salve on the King’s bedsores and massaged his many swollen joints. I should have been helping her. Ireallyshould have been doing it myself, considering this was to be our formal handoff.

Today, I had other plans.

Maura—thank the gods—struck up some chipper conversation to lighten the tension. I smiled to myself at the ease with which she roped Luther into a mundane back-and-forth about her wife’s recent harvests on their small family farm that subtly coaxed him into lowering his guard. Maura’s maternal warmth could put even the coldest hearts at ease. Though it came far less naturally to me, it was one of the earliest and most useful skills I had picked up from her.

Their conversation picked up, and Luther’s gaze finally broke from mine as his focus turned to Maura. I took advantage and slowly inched my way toward the exit.

“Oh, shoot,” I said quickly, backing through the door. “I left my satchel at the front. I must have forgotten it in all theexcitementwhen we arrived.” I gave Luther an accusatory look.

He took a step toward me. “I’ll have one of the guards—”

“No need, I remember the way.” I took off jogging before he could block my path. “I’ll grab it and return right away.”

“Miss Bellator—”

“Give me two minutes!”

“Miss Bellator,stop.”

“I’ll be right back!” I hit the hallway outside of the King’s chambers and took off at a dead sprint.

Voices shouted behind me, joined by the scuffle of running boots. I forced my body to push itself as fast as my feet could carry me while my mind retraced the steps I’d memorized.

Right turn, twenty paces—or what felt like twenty paces at full speed. Right turn again, then—damn, was it a left or a right?

I ducked into a room I’d spotted earlier, a dark office whose drapes had been drawn to shut out the light. A thin film of dust coated everything in the room, and I held my breath to avoid coughing up a cloud that would give me away.

A moment later, a single guard blew past the door. I held stone-still as his steps faded down the hallway and into silence.

---