Page 15 of Heat of the Everflame

“Get up,” Vance repeated.

“No,” I said quietly.

His smile vanished. “I saidget up.”

“No,” I said again, stronger this time. I raised my chin and returned his scowl. “If you want to kill me, you’ll have to do it right here, where everyone can see it.”

Vance snatched a godstone dagger from the hands of one of the men and held the blade out, mere inches from my throat. “Get up now, or that’s exactly what I’ll do.”

I swallowed my panic and forced myself to arch my neck toward the weapon. “Then do it.”

It was a pathetically empty challenge. His men could toss me over their shoulder and carry me off wherever they wanted, and I’d be far too weak to fight them off. I prayed they were all too afraid of me to test that theory.

Vance’s knuckles turned white where his grip squeezed the dagger’s handle. He had been warm and welcoming—kind, even—when I had first met him, desperate for his approval as a novice Guardian. The second I’d challenged his authority, he had become a different person entirely. Even when he believed me a mortal, his compassion had always been contingent on my obedience to his control.

But I was the Queen of Lumnos.

And I would be controlled by no man.

“Better hurry up, Vance,” I taunted him. “Wouldn’t want Mother Cordellia showing up and putting you back in your place.”

His nostrils flared. “Fine,” he seethed between gritted teeth. “We’ll do it here.”

For a moment, terror swept through me as I wondered whether my mouth had really, truly gotten me killed this time.

But instead of jabbing the godstone knife into my neck and silencing me for good, he handed it back to the man he’d stolen it from and pulled a penknife from his pocket.

“Who’s got the vials?” he asked.

One of the group stepped forward and pulled out a handful of empty glass jars. He was young, perhaps a year or two behind Teller, and though he was trying to mimic the same look of revulsion the other men wore, I could spot the waver of uncertainty on his face.

Vance turned back to me with a bone-chilling smile. “The rest of you, hold her in place.”

The men rushed in to surround me. They pulled me back to my feet, their hands grabbing at my arms, my shoulders, my waist. My attempts to fight them off went nowhere, my energy reserves too low and my movements too sluggish. Within seconds, they had me pinned in place.

Fight.

Thevoice’s call was barely more than a breath. I could feel it now, twitching and trembling as it strained to overcome the flameroot’s lingering effects.

I wanted to answer.Gods, did I want to.

But there were too many mortals around me, too many glittering black weapons inches from my face. Without knowing how quickly or strongly my weakened magic could react, one miscalculation and I would be riddled with godstone arrowheads that even my Descended healing couldn’t overcome.

And, despite it all, I did not want these men dead. Their hatred for me was born of an oppression I understood too well. I knew firsthand the injustices and the tragedies that had driven them here, and I could not blame them for craving vengeance for all the loved ones the Descended had taken from them. If myfather’s killer were standing in front of me, I wasn’t sure I could hold myself back from taking my revenge, either.

Two of the men gripped my wrists and held them out to Vance. He flipped out the blade of the penknife, the dark grey metal marking it as Fortosian steel.

“This is probably going to hurt,” he said.

He reached forward and slashed the blade’s edge across both of my palms. I flinched at the sharp bite of pain as a line of dark red blood sprung up on my skin.

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

Vance ignored me and jerked his chin toward the Guardian with the vials. “Start filling them.”

The boy’s moon-round eyes jumped nervously between my face and my bleeding wounds as he uncorked two vials and held them beneath my palms to catch the falling liquid. His hands began shaking, and a few droplets of my blood missed the vials and spilled onto his own skin.

He violently recoiled, yanking his hands back with a yelp and dropping the jars. From the frantic way he scrubbed at the red liquid, I almost wondered if my blood had burned him.

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