Page 2 of Glow of the Everflame

This was all part of the hallucination. It had to be.

Maybe Teller wasn’t even here. Maybe I was talking to myself, lost in my own insanity.

My focus shifted to the marshy shoreline that ran in front of our family’s land, the same spot where I’d flung the vials of flameroot into the sea. The current was strong in this area, but maybe...

I climbed to my feet and staggered toward the water’s edge, clumsily kicking off my boots and unlatching my weapons. I was still wearing Prince Luther’s tunic and the plated armor pants of the Royal Guard uniform, after his cousin had dressed me when my own clothes were incinerated by the armory fire. The fabric soaked up the frigid water like a sponge, plastering to my skin and weighing me down to the muddy seafloor.

“By the Flames, Diem, what are you doing?” Teller protested. “Come back, it’s as cold as the glaciers of hell out there.”

I didn’t answer, my mind too focused on my search. I dove under the surface and tried to spot some sign of the distinctive jars, but the water was too murky to see more than a foot through its cloudy depths.

I came up gasping for breath and caught sight of my reflection on the surface. Even through the ripples, I could see it hovering above me, its scattered dots of light twinkling like gemstones.

The Crown of Lumnos.

No,I told myself.Not the Crown—just my imagination. My madness.

A fresh wave of dread sent me wading deeper into the water and thrashing wildly as I rummaged along the seabed.

“Diem, come back to shore,” Teller called out. “We’ll figure this out.”

“I can’t,” I yelled back. “I can’t. I... I have to...”

“Come back, or I’m going to get Father.”

“No!” I whirled around and saw the panic in Teller’s caramel-brown eyes.

“Please, Diem,” he begged. “You’re scaring me.”

“The flameroot—I threw it out here a few weeks ago. I was angry, and I...” I pushed myself deeper into the ink-black sea. “I need to find it. I can stop all of this if I can just find it.”

My brother’s expression shifted to something like pity as his voice dropped low. “The flameroot isn’t going to stop this, D. That Crown is real.”

“No,” I rasped, an invisible noose tightening around my neck.

“Remember when we were little,” he said gently, “and you were so scared the flameroot wouldn’t work. You made me promise to tell you if your mind was starting to go, and I swore to you that I would. Do you remember?”

I managed a nod.

“I need you to trust me. I’m telling you, on my life, that you are not imagining this. I don’t know how in the nine realms this happened, but that powder won’t make it go away.”

His tone was so earnest that I might have believed him, had I been listening. But my focus had shifted—to the dark-haired, blue-eyed, finely dressed Descended girl standing behind him holding a bouquet of white roses whose petals seemed to be dipped in glowing moonlight.

The flowers tumbled to the ground. “Blessed Kindred, you... you’re...”

Teller stumbled backward. “Lily! What are you doing here?”

Her gaze locked on me—on the spot above my head. “Diem said I could come for dinner, and I thought...” Her hands flew to her mouth. “Is—is it real? Are you...?”

Lily’s unexpected arrival snapped me out of my stupor. I waded back to the shore, trying to find the words to tell her that no, this couldn’t be real, not for a thousand different reasons, but the words wouldn’t come. At the moment,realwas too complicated a concept.

“This means our King is dead,” Lily murmured. She sank to her knees and placed a fist over her heart. “Long live our Queen.”

“Please, don’t,” I protested, attempting to wring the liquid from my waterlogged clothes. “I’mnotyour Queen.”

Teller’s eyes darted between us. Slowly, he began to drop to his knees. “Long live—”

“Oh stop it,” I hissed and grabbed his arm, hauling him back to his feet. “Not you, too.”

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