Page 211 of Glow of the Everflame

“On behalf of House Ghislaine, I, Rhon Ghislaine, wish to Challenge Diem Corbois as unworthy to wear the Crown.”

For a long beat, I couldn’t process anything but the group clustered around him, the comparatively tiny family that sat behind their golden emblem.

House Ghislaine?

The weakest of the Twenty Houses—the House for whom a Challenge meant gaining nothing and risking everything, the one House everyone had been certain I didn’t need to fear?

My eyes focused on the man who had spoken, and my racing heart skidded to a halt.

Tall and lanky, his slender frame was topped with shimmering blonde hair, his attractive face ruined by the vitriol carved into his fair-skinned features.

But there was more than hatred behind his eyes—there was doubt.

Fear.

Because he recognized me just as surely as I recognized him.

And the last time we’d met—in a dark alley in Paradise Row, where I’d watched him murder his own son and his mortal lover in cold blood despite my pleas for mercy—he had walked away bleeding, and I had walked away alive, an ending neither of us could have predicted.

“You,” I growled, narrowing my eyes. “I will happily fight you, you murderous piece of sh—”

“I will Challenge her.”

I whipped around to the new voice, this time from a face I didn’t recognize, though one look at the simpering green-haired twins beside him told me everything I needed to know.

“On behalf of House Byrnum, I, Roderyck Byrnum, wish to Challenge Diem Corbois as unworthy to wear the Crown.”

My stomach lurched. This was not good, at least if I believed his parents’ claims that he was one of the most powerful Descended in the realm.

But also not entirely unexpected. I had known that by encouraging Lily to reject the betrothal, a Challenge might come from House Byrnum. Even knowing this result, I wouldn’t have changed a thing.

I took a deep breath.

You can do this, I told myself.You can—

“I will Challenge her.”

This time, I recognized neither the voice nor the House, one of the nameless few I’d met with at the height of my grief, when I’d been little more than a sentient ball of dark, vengeful despair.

“I will Challenge her,” another called out.

“I will Challenge her.”

One at a time, they stood.

One at a time, they declared meunworthy.

Five Houses became ten, then fifteen, then eighteen. When only one House remained, their members all clad in matching glittering red, I turned to face what I knew was coming with my head held high.

“On behalf of House Hanoverre, I, Jean Hanoverre, wish to Challenge Diem Corbois as unworthy to wear the Crown.”

Every last one of the Twenty Houses, save my own, had raised a Challenge. The Lumnos nobility stood unified against me.

And then the bad somehow got worse.

The Challenges kept coming, this time from the smaller Houses that did not make up the elite Twenty. Then, just to add insult to injury, there came Challenges from Unhoused Descended, who spoke for no clan at all.

This wasn’t just a Challenging—this was aHumiliating. Though I would only have to fight one of them, the message would linger. This was an outright rejection of me and everything I stood for. A vote of no confidence.

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