Page 169 of Heat of the Everflame

“That’s it?” I asked, choking on the words.

“You should focus on the dinner,” he said gruffly. Tightly. As if every word hurt to force out.

I stared at him, shaking my head.

“What happened to you?” I whispered.

His eyes shot to me. Beneath the churning shadows, there was hardly anything left of the glowing blue-grey.

“What happened tous?” I asked, my voice breaking. The emotions were rising too violently to stop. The hurt and the anger, the rejection and the confusion. It was a swirling cyclone, a tempest of feeling I couldn’t contain.

Luther’s throat worked as he watched me collapsing. His mask began to fracture.

“You’ll understand soon,” he said, sounding anguished.

It was his pity, of all things, that finally broke me. A hot, angry tear escaped from the corner of my eye. I stormed away before he could spot it and marched to Taran’s side.

“I need a drink. Fast.”

Taran smirked and bumped me with his hip. “Your wish is my command, Your Maj—” He stopped, his smile vanishing as he watched me wipe my glistening cheek. “Is everything—”

“A strong one,” I interrupted. “A large one. And is there something to drink while I’m waiting?”

He wordlessly handed me his own half-finished glass, and I threw my head back and swallowed its contents in a single gulp. Heat flooded my chest as the alcohol burned through my bloodstream.

His eyebrows rose. “Should I be worried or impressed?”

“What in the Flames was in that?” I gasped between coughs. My mouth tasted like I’d swallowed a gaslamp whole—metal, glass, and all. “That was vile.”

He shrugged. “I grabbed a bottle at random.”

“I’m not sure that was fordrinking, Taran. You might have just found the secret ingredient in the Guardians’ bombs.”

He snorted and rifled through the bottles, sniffing and tasting and crafting a new concoction.

As I waited for him to finish, my focus lifted to the mirrored panel behind the shelves, and I got my first glimpse of myself in all my regal glory—but it was the glowing Crown that stole my focus.

Itwasdifferent.

The dark, thorny circlet had shifted slightly in shape, the peak in front now mirrored on the opposite end. Nestled between the glimmering points of light, shards of broken crystals seemed to form and dissolve at random.

My gaze dropped to my face—that, too, looked different. Smoky kohl had been smudged around my eyes, while a deep, sanguine red stained my lips. With the dress and the Crown, the effect was striking.

I was fearsome, deliciously decadent, a predator on the hunt, fierce and unflappable.

The opposite of how I really felt: wrecked, vulnerable, and painfully raw.

Perhaps the alcohol had already gone to my head, but the hurt in my heart began to harden into an indignant, almost defiant confidence.

Why shouldn’t I be that woman in the mirror? I was a Queen of Emarion, for gods’ sakes. I would not let this, or anything, break me.

And if Luther was determined to push me away, then I would show him what he was missing.

“Where’s that drink?” I asked.

Taran popped upright and offered me a glass brimming with fizzing blue liquid. Without looking, he pulled an unmarked bottle from a shelf and ripped the cork out with his teeth.

“To the Blessed Kindred,” he crooned. “May they find us more useful alive than dead.”

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