Page 49 of Glow of the Everflame

It’s hard to say whether it was some benevolent god, my secret Descended blood, or just dumb luck that kept my neck from snapping in that collision into the rocky shores. When I finally came to, my lungs were full of water and my limbs were too numb to move. I watched in horror as the world slipped slowly away and a cold, hollow dread took its place.

Stumbling upon Henri, my mortal best-friend-turned-lover, in the middle of the royal palace with the Crown of Lumnos on my head feltexactlylike that moment.

I stared helplessly as emotions rotated across his face like spokes on a carriage wheel.

Shock, then confusion.

Realization.

Grief.

Then anger. So much anger.

I said something—his name, or maybe some feeble explanation—but I couldn’t hear it. I could feel my mouth moving, feel the throb of my pulse, feel my gauzy dress turn to lead and pull me down, down, down into the dark, but the only sound in my ears was Henri’s voice and the words he kept repeating.

“You’re one of them. You’reone ofthem.”

I staggered a step toward him. He recoiled as if I were some noxious disease he might accidentally contract.

“You lied to me.”

The hate in his eyes was tangible. I could swim through it. Drown in it.

“I didn’t know,” I pleaded. “I swear, Henri.”

“Didn’t know?” he spat.

I took another step. He dropped the sack he was carrying, piles of letters spilling across the marble floor. He must have finally convinced his father to let him take over some of the palace courier duties.

Just my luck.

Henri’s hand went to the hem of his tunic and slid toward his navel—toward the small, flat blade that I knew he kept concealed in his waistband.

A knife the guards at the front would have missed when they searched him for weapons.

He was going to stab me.

Henri.MyHenri.

He saw me note the gesture, and he froze. For a brief moment, we both understood each other in the most wretched, painful of ways.

Guards near the entrance took notice of the open hostility on Henri’s face and closed in around us, swords sliding from their sheaths with an ominous scrape. Nearby, nosy servants pretended to busy themselves with an invisible task, while a pair of Corbois cousins unabashedly gaped from an adjacent room.

Too many curious eyes. Too many honed ears and sharp blades.

I straightened, raising my voice with manufactured haughtiness. “You there, courier. I have something I’d like you to deliver. It’s a message to someone I value very dearly.” My eyes flared wide. “Will you follow me to my study so I can retrieve it?”

Every quivering atom begged him to hear my unspoken plea:Give me a chance. Don’t give up on me yet.

My knees almost buckled at his barely discernible nod.

Two guards stepped forward to join us. “No escort is necessary,” I commanded, waving them off despite their wary stares of disapproval. “We’ll go alone.”

The problem, I realized, was that I had no idea where the Crown’s offices were. Though Eleanor had mentioned them on her tour, the only two rooms in the palace that I could both find on my own and remain in undisturbed were the palace dungeon and my bedchambers.

Neither was ideal, but I suspected if I led Henri to the dungeon and its dark, caged cells, his blade would be embedded in my side before I had a chance to explain.

My chambers it would have to be.

---