Page 107 of Heat of the Everflame

“Could you teach me?” Zalaric asked.

“No.”

“I would pay you. Handsomely.”

“No.”

“Name your price.”

“I have plenty of money. I don’t need yours.”

“How fortunate,” Zalaric drawled. His tone dripped with a specific flavor of anger I knew intimately: the bitter injustice of a person who’d grown up scrabbling for every last coin, faced with the casual indifference of someone who couldn’t fathom having alast coinat all.

As a mortal, everything had its price. Love and life, freedom and family. It could all be bought, for those who could pay, or withheld, for those who couldn’t. No mortal was so rich that they weren’t for sale. We’d sell our own souls for the right price—and many did.

I wondered vaguely if Zalaric’s life here in Umbros had not been so different from the mortals in Lumnos, eking out a meager living as second-class citizens under the thumb of the Queen and her Centenaries.

He settled onto the settee, his demeanor markedly cooler. “So what brings the Prince of Lumnos from his shiny castle all the way to the dark markets? And does it have anything to do with this mysterious new Queen everyone’s abuzz about?”

Luther stiffened. “What have you heard about her?”

“Mostly rumors too outlandish to believe. ‘She’s a mortal, she’s a long-lost royal, she has no magic, she’s more powerful than a god, she’s in hiding, she’s starting a war.’ Every day it’s something different.” He arched a single brow. “Care to confirm or deny?”

Luther sank into an armchair. His cloak fell open, revealing a sweater scattered with puncture wounds and bloodstains. He covered it quickly, but Zalaric’s shrewd eyes took silent note.

“I can tell you this—she is a friend to the half-mortals,” Luther said. “She would welcome you home, if you wished to return.”

“I have a life here. A successful business, plenty of friends. I pay my taxes, and the Umbros Queen lets me do as I please. Why would I ever go back to Lumnos?”

A lie lurked beneath his haughty tone. I felt it more than I heard it—the quiet, buried longing to return to histerremère, to build the life he was so cruelly denied.

Perhaps Luther sensed it as well, because his voice softened as he leaned forward. “The offer remains open, should you ever change your mind.”

“I couldn’t leave the children. They need me.”

“Bring them. You’re all welcome to return.”

Hope sparked in Zalaric’s eyes, though he quickly shut it down. “We have nowhere to live. Without my business, I’d have no way to provide for them.”

“There’s plenty of room at the palace. And Lumnos has need of inns and taverns, if you prefer your independence.”

Zalaric fell quiet. I laid my head back against the wall and closed my eyes as my heart soared at Luther’s dogged persistence. He wasn’t just opening the door to the banished half-mortals—he was actively calling them home.

Because he knew it’s what I would want.

Because he knewme.

“And what would this generosity cost me?”

“From Her Majesty? Nothing. She only wishes to right the wrongs of the past.”

I nodded my agreement from my unseen nook.

“Andyourprice?” Zalaric prodded.

“Your loyalty to my Queen.” Luther paused. “Her Majesty needs allies. Strong ones. Allies who are not afraid of the Twenty Houses.”

Zalaric chuckled. “I see. She wishesusto do her dirty work.”

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