Page 224 of Glow of the Everflame

Everything slowed, and the arena fell away.

* * *

I’d been here before.

It was nighttime, and I was in the midst of war. I wore the same suit of dark, glittering armor, carrying the same blade of black and gold, still surrounded on all sides by rings of corpses extending as far as the eye could see.

Luther stood across from me, the blood-soaked Sword of Corbois in his hand. His dark hair lashed at his face in the breeze, his blue-grey eyes watching me with reverence. Just like before, his palm lay against the left side of his chest, and again, I echoed the movement.

But this time, something in the vision was different. Across the battlefield, the form of a man glowed as bright as the moon. Everything about him was grey and colorless—his skin, his eyes, his hair.

The man stared at me and extended his hand. “Join me, Daughter of the Forgotten,” he purred in a voice like liquid darkness. “Together we will destroy this world and build it anew. We will end the Descended and their rule forever.”

He was almost too beautiful to look upon, and when I turned my gaze to him, I felt an overwhelming urge to kneel at his feet and surrender.

But something in me told me to resist. Tofight.

Slowly, I shook my head.

The man’s eyes sharpened on me. “After all the Descended have done, you would still defend them? You would spare their lives, when they would so happily take your own?”

I hesitated. Some part of me did still despise the Descended for all the evil they had wrought over the centuries—evil they would gladly return to if left unchecked.

But they were still my people. The blood of the Kindred ran in my veins as surely as my mortal blood. If I wanted to be truly worthy of my Crown, I had to stop denying that truth. I was mortal.AndI was Descended. And I would fight with everything I had to protect them both.

From each other—and from him.

I straightened and lifted my sword. All around me, a wall of silver flames began to rise.

“I do not rule for you,” I shouted. “I rule for them.”

The man’s face froze over with vicious wrath. “Then you will die like the rest.”

A blinding explosion of light lit the world aglow until there was nothing but endless white.

Now, Daughter of the Forgotten, thevoicewhispered.Now, you are ready.

* * *

I was once againin the arena.

Once again standing helpless as dark, spiked death speared for my heart.

There was no time to shield. No time to dodge.

Not even time to scream.

I could only watch in horror as the shadowy bolts made direct contact all across my body.

A gasp burst from the audience, and the realm of Lumnos collectively held their breath.

But I felt... nothing.

There was no pain of torn flesh, nor any crimson bloom of fresh blood. I didn’t fall backward from the force of any impact. The only reaction at all was a soft glow and a deep prickling over my skin, a sensation that was at once ice and fire, frost and flame.

I ran my palm across my chest to feel for any puncture wounds or signs of injury and found none. My eyes lifted to Rhon’s, my own gobsmacked confusion matched on his expression.

I rose to my feet, still wobbly from my head injury but healing fast, and began to walk toward him. He fumbled to throw out another attack, then another, each one colliding against me with no effect. Wild murmurs skittered through the audience.

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