Page 50 of Glow of the Everflame

I kept my face forward as I marched down the halls, too scared to look back and see the hatred in his eyes. With my thoughts so flustered, I made it almost all the way to the royal wing before I realized I no longer heard the click of his footsteps behind me.

I turned to see him fifty feet away, his focus glued on a door set slightly ajar. Whatever he was watching had captured him so completely that he didn’t even notice me as I came up beside him.

I followed his line of sight into a small reading room. Nestled in a back corner, Luther and Aemonn were arguing heatedly in hushed voices.

My insides lurched. If Aemonn saw Henri sneaking into my bedroom... I doubted whatever secrets Luther held over him would be enough to buy that level of discretion.

I grabbed Henri’s arm. “We have to go. They can’t see you here.”

A thunderous crash came from the room. When I looked back, Aemonn wore a vicious smile despite hanging from the wall, legs dangling, held in place by the hand Luther gripped around his throat.

Thatconversation was not going well.

I yanked on Henri’s sleeve. “We really,reallyhave to go.”

“It’s him.” He was transfixed, breathless. “The man I saw—the one who killed the mortal boy. That’shim.”

My chest squeezed tight.

Though I had already mentally convicted Luther for the horrific crime, a piece of me had clung to the hope that it was all some misunderstanding.

Now, it was a truth I couldn’t escape. Henri would never forgive me if he knew I was working alongside the man he despised so fervently that he’d been willing to die to bring him to justice.

“He’ll pay,” I said. “I swear it—I’ll make sure he pays. But I can’t do that if he sees you here.”

Henri glared at me, then looked back to the room, rage smoldering in his narrowed eyes. “Fine.”

I pulled him toward the royal wing, but I spotted a crowd of guards chatting outside of my rooms and froze. No matter how discreet Eleanor and Luther considered them, I wasn’t willing to bet Henri’s life on it. I tugged Henri around the corner and yanked him into the first bedroom I saw.

When I turned back, Henri’s face had shifted. He stared at the Crown floating above me, his anger giving way to something far more devastating.

“You’re the Queen,” he murmured.

I wanted so badly to throw my arms around his neck and bury my head in his chest. To turn back the clock until we were no more than two naive youth, discovering what friendship could grow into with trust, honesty, and a little time.

A little timemeant something very different for each of us now.

“I didn’t know,” I pleaded. “I swear to you on my life, onTeller’slife, I had no idea.”

His eyes snapped to mine, dark with distrust. “How is that possible? How could you not know?”

“I have the same questions myself, believe me. When the King died, this thing just... appeared. I thought it had chosen a mortal, until...” I flinched at the memory of the dungeon. “I didn’t truly know until last night.”

The hardness in his expression eased—just barely. “It was your birth father, then?”

“That’s the only explanation. My mother has brown eyes, and she has aged too quickly to be Descended.”

“Do you think she knew?”

That was the question I wanted more than anything to be able to ask her—and the question I most feared hearing the answer to.

“She had her secrets, but I have a hard time believing she would keep this from me. She always told us the big things, the things that mattered.”

Henri looked away, an indecipherable expression scrawled on his features.

“What about the flameroot powder?” he asked. “Was that part of all this?”

I started to deny it, but—was it?

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