Page 189 of Glow of the Everflame

Some unexplainable intuition told me Luther had left it behind of his own free will. What I couldn’t understand waswhy.

I looked back at the compass, whose arrow still trembled with such force I worried it might crack the glass. It pointed over the charred earth to the trees beyond.

I carefully stepped over the lip of the deep basin and made my way across, squinting through the dusky light.

My heart skipped a beat. What if the compass had led me to some evidence of my father’s murderer? My spontaneous combustion had destroyed the crime scene and any clues along with it. I had spent several afternoons wandering around the area, searching for anything that might give me a hint of the killer’s identity. Whoever they were, they’d hidden their tracks well.

And I had unwittingly helped.

But if there was something I’d missed... revenge was certainly high on the list of things I desired most.

My pace quickened, excitement and apprehension rising in unison. I crossed the center of the crater, and the compass grew hot in my hand. When I looked at it again, the red arrow had vanished, and the dial was lit up with a blinding glow.

I scanned the soil, then the surrounding land. What could possibly be here that was the object of my heart’s greatest desire?

Then it hit me.

And it broke me.

My father.

My family, together again.

My home—the safe, joy-filled bubble of my childhood.

The one thing I desired most was the one thing I could never,everhave again.

A dam gave way, and weeks of pent-up sorrow unleashed on my body. All the heartbreak I had been clutching tight and fighting to restrain, the life and loves I’d lost forever—all of it tore from my soul with a gut-wrenching sob.

I crumpled to the ground as surely as if the burden I carried took physical form. I cried for myself, and all that I had lost, but mostly I cried for everyone who had, or would soon, suffer for my failure.

For my family and my Corbois friends, whose lives I’d put in danger. For the half-mortal children, who had lost their savior because of his loyalty to me. For all the mortal families who would be torn apart when the Twenty Houses got their way.

I cried for every person who had prayed for a spark of hope in this dreary, oppressive world, and the endless dark they’d found in return.

I cried until the setting sun and the rising moon passed like wind-blown ships, and when my tears had again run dry, I took a wobbling breath and pulled myself to my knees.

“I’m so sorry, Father,” I said in a trembling, broken voice.

I looked at the soil, wincing at the memory of the cold stiffness of my father’s body as I clutched him in my arms.

“I don’t think I’m strong enough to do this. Everyone is counting on me, and I’m going to fail them, just like I failed you.”

I leaned forward and dug my fingers into the damp earth, wishing I could bury myself deep and sleep for a thousand years.

“The darkness is closing in,” I whispered, “and I don’t have the strength to find the light.”

“Then make your own.”

The voice startled me upright. I twisted around to see my brother standing behind me, hands shoved into his pockets. Across the clearing, Alixe and averyangry-looking Taran stood guard at the forest’s edge.

“You’ve got all that fancy Descended magic,” Teller said. “Maybe it’s time to stop looking for the light and start making it yourself.”

I shook my head sadly. “I don’t know how. And every time I try, I end up making things worse.”

“Then keep trying. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, pick yourself back up, and try again. And don’t stop until you figure it out. That’s what the Diem Bellator I know would do.”

He sat down beside me and leaned back on his hands, and together we stared at the site of our childhood home and the ashes of everything we once loved. I could almost hear the echo of our laughter as we cooked and cleaned, played and sparred, the sounds taunting me as much as they comforted me.

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