Page 96 of Spark of the Everflame

He turned to the other man. “Take him to the guardroom and wait there. I’ll deal withyoulater.”

The guard paled but obeyed, his colleague moaning and clutching his wound as he was hauled away.

I’m not sure what part of seeing a man viciously speared in the gut loosened my lips, but I suddenly found myself speaking.

“Was that really necessary?”

“Diem Bellator,” Maura snapped. “Hush.”

Luther’s head slowly swiveled to me.

As he silently returned my side, he seemed to have grown a foot taller and two feet wider. Those glowing eyes had me transfixed, unable to look away.

“You would defend the man who cut your throat?” he asked, low and soft.

I gingerly touched the wound on my neck, surprised to find it no longer bleeding. “It’s a scratch. Hardly worth stabbing anyone over.”

Something that looked a lot like shock passed over his features, then quickly solidified back into fiery resolve.

“The people in this palace must learn, one way or another, that there are consequences for disobeying me.”

Luther reached down and scooped up my shredded bag, as well as the papers and unbroken jars strewn across the ground.

He unceremoniously dumped them in a pile into my arms and gave me a hard look. “It’s time for you to leave, Miss Bellator.” He leaned in until the smooth skin of his jaw warmed my cheek as his whispered words caressed my ear. “Be grateful it’s with your life.”

Maura didn’t wait for me to respond. She scurried forward and grabbed my wrist, nearly causing my things to tumble out of my grasp. “Yes, of course, Your Highness. We are so grateful for your generous mercy.”

I mumbled something that might have been a thanks, or an apology, or perhaps an expletive. My mind was too consumed with trying to understand how the man before me had gone from protecting me to stabbing his own guard to threatening my life in the span of a few minutes.

Every time I thought I was starting to understand this Prince, he did something to completely surprise me. And that—more than his anger, more even than his magic—was what made him truly a threat.

If he had convinced my mother that he could be her ally, then turned on her as quickly as he had just turned on me...

Don’t end up like your mother.

His words echoed in my head the entire way home.

ChapterTwenty-One

Maura didn’t speak to me until long after we’d left the limits of Lumnos City.

At first, I was grateful for the quiet and the opportunity to piece through all the emotions warring inside of me.

Shame. Guilt. Anger. Fear. All cycling on a self-destructive loop.

But the closer we walked toward Mortal City, the more unbearable the silence became. Maura had never been angry with me before. We’d had harmless disagreements, but never anything that had caused a rift between us in any meaningful way.

Now, she couldn’t even look at me.

The forest began to thin, the buildings of Mortal City gradually coming into view, and I knew we didn’t have much time before we were consumed by the chaos of the healers’ center.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted out. “I know I made a mistake today. A lot of mistakes.”

Maura said nothing at first, only gazing thoughtfully at the road ahead, but she wasn’t the type to give the silent treatment. Inside that earnest mind of hers, I knew she was choosing her words with particular care. What I didn’t know was whether it was to avoid saying something she would regret or to cut me into a million tiny pieces.

“This was my fault,” she said finally. She paused, then nodded her head as if coming to a decision. “I should have trusted your mother. Auralie knew you best, and if she didn’t believe you could handle it, I should have respected that.”

A million tiny pieces it is.

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