Page 170 of Glow of the Everflame

“Use yourmagic, Diem,” Alixe shouted.

Taran crowed loudly like a clucking chicken. “Too scared to fight like a Descended? Never took you for a coward, Queenie.”

“Screw you,” I hissed. I waited to hear thevoicecall out to me and push me to fight, to kill, to destroy, but where the godhood had once pulsed like a volcano, I now felt only an empty cavern.

“Maybe we should train out on the roads, since all you seem to know how to do is run away,” Taran jeered.

Red filled my vision, my fury writhing like a serpent on a hot stone. I let out a hoarse, frustrated cry as I scraped inside myself, begging for some scrap of power to rise to the surface. Inside my head, I screamed in anger—at myself, mostly, and at the goddess Lumnos, demanding to know why she had given me power but not the ability to use it.

The cloud of my rage broke for a moment, giving me a good look at Taran’s devious grin. There was something false about it, something not quite sincere. Hiding in his bright blue eyes was a scared, desperate prayer.

Taran wasn’t picking on me. He wasworriedabout me.

My anger instantly drained away.

Once again, I was a crumbling shell, held together by a glue of guilt and self-pity. Taran had been willing to make himself into a punching bag just to help me—all because I was too much of a failure to do it on my own.

“Session’s over,” I mumbled and turned away.

“Come on, Queenie,” Taran pleaded, following behind me. “I was just teasing. We can fight physical if you want. We’ll make it a bet: loser has to kiss Aemonn. Wait, no, that’s a lose-lose for me.”

I trudged up the stairs. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Come back, I have amuchbetter idea. Winner gets a kiss from Luther!”

I slammed the door as I exited the dungeon. Even Taran’s jokes couldn’t bring a smile to my face.

Sometimes, I wasn’t sure anything ever would again.

* * *

“ShouldI be worried you’re planning to assassinate me?”

I hovered on the edges of the lantern’s amber glow, arms crossed as I leaned a shoulder against the wall.

Vance threw a snide glance in my direction. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

“If I wanted you dead, I would have just let you go through with your plan the night of the ball.”

He grunted, but said nothing more.

I strolled along the winding stone pathway lining the underground canal. The passage smelled of seawater and moss, the damp silence broken by the soft lapping of water. I feigned boredom, pretending to be engrossed in my nails, but my eyes never strayed far from the two men scouring the Crown’s personal boat.

Sneaking them in had been disturbingly easy. With a dropoff in the forest from Sorae to avoid being followed, and the old make-a-noise-and-sneak-in-while-they’re-investigating trick to distract the guards at the canal’s entrance, I’d led Henri and Vance to the royal dock with barely any effort.

Against their fervent protests, I’d forced them to wear blindfolds to conceal the exact location of the canal, an awkward reminder for all three of us how little trust we shared.

Even now, a voice in my head was shouting at me, warning me that this was a bad idea, that every time I helped the Guardians, innocent people got hurt. I told myself things were different this time. I could be strategic, use my influence to temper their violence and prevent further bloodshed.

But I couldn’t stop wondering if I was making the same deadly mistake all over again.

“What are you looking for, anyway?” I asked.

The men shared a weighty look. Vance went back to his work without answering, and Henri grimaced at me with an apology in his eyes.

“If they find me here helping you, they won’t bother waiting for the Challenging to kill me,” I said archly. “The least you could do is tell me what I’m risking my life for.”

“Considering what happened the last time you discovered our plans, you should understand why we’re hesitant to share them again,” Vance grumbled.

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