Page 19 of Heat of the Everflame

MyLuther.

Even with a mile between us, his eyes found me in an instant. He took me in—pinned to the ground, my dress soiled with dirt, wet blood coating my body, Vance’s knee lodged into my ribs.

The rage on his face could have leveled the continent.

Happy tears sprang to my eyes, and an ecstatic laugh bubbled out. Luther was alive—and he had come for me.

I had little faith in gods or men, but I believed in the fearsome dedication of Luther Corbois with every fiber of my being. He had proven that he would give anything, even his own life, to protect me. He would stop at nothing to take me home,help me rescue my mother, and stand by me to stop this war. Together, we could do this.

Everything was going to be okay.

“Prepare the ballista,” Cordellia shouted. “Wait until the beast is close. The aim has to be perfect.”

I turned my head toward her voice. At the edge of the treeline, a group of mortals stood around a tall structure that resembled a massive crossbow. Loaded into its grooved arm was a bolt as large as a person, its sharpened tip dotted with hunks of glittering black stone.

“By the Flames,” I whispered. “No...no!”

Cordellia marched toward it. “Remember, the godstone has to pierce the beast’s heart to kill it. We only have two bolts, so don’t fire unless you’re certain.” She glanced at me, then scowled at Vance. “I told you to get her chained up. We need her under tree cover so the gryvern is forced to land.”

Vance and his men finally climbed off me and yanked me to my knees, dragging me along the dirt toward the tree in the clearing’s center.

I screamed again, thrashing against their hold. “Cordellia, don’t do this—she’s loyal to me. I won’t let her hurt the mortals, I swear it!”

“She’s loyal to the Descended Crown,” Cordellia shouted back. “If you die, she’ll turn on the mortals and kill us all. We can’t take that risk.”

Sorae roared a deafening war cry as she passed over our heads, flying so low that the downdraft from her wings sent a breeze fluttering through my hair. A stream of sapphire dragonfyre poured from her mouth and seared a line of scorched earth across the meadow.

The horde of mortals fled in terror. A few moved too slowly, and their flame-engulfed corpses staggered, then fell, lifeless and still.

Fight, thevoicepurred, galvanized by the slaughter.

No. This was not what I wanted. Death and bloodshed, Descended against mortal. It didn’t matter that these rebels would slit my throat, given the chance—I was meant to be a better Queen with a higher purpose.

If carnage was the price of my freedom, the cost was too high.

I clutched desperately at Vance’s tunic. “I can call her off. Let me go, and I’ll stop the attack. No one else has to die.”

He grabbed my arm and yanked me closer. “Why do you think we put you out here in the first place?” he snarled in my face.

Blood rushed from my head, my vision spinning as quickly as my thoughts.

Bait.

They hadn’t placed me in the wide-open clearing to keep me out of trouble or to spy on me from a distance. They’d done it to show me off—to lure my protectors here and take them out, one by one.

Starting with Sorae.

Vance shoved me to the ground at the foot of the tree. “One of these days, you will finally accept that unlike you coward Descended, the Guardians are not afraid to die for our cause.”

He gestured to his men to chain me up, and I scrambled to get away. My fingers clawed at the hard soil in a futile effort to clutch onto something, anything, to drag myself out of their grasp.

I had to stay out of those chains. If they managed to lock me up, I would be trapped, with no way to get to Sorae, and she would be a sitting duck for their godstone bolt. The thrum of my magic was stronger now, giving me confidence that I could use it if I had to, but it was still merely embers of its full strength. One miscalculation and I could drain myself dry.

One of the men caught hold of my ankle and jerked it backward. My movements were still too sluggish, and I couldn’t react quickly enough to stop my body from collapsing.

With a nauseatingcrack, my head slammed onto a knobby, rock-hard root at the base of the tree, and my vision went watery.

Across the bond, Sorae felt my pain, and her fury exploded. She circled back toward me, her nostrils glowing as sapphire flames licked at her sharp-fanged jaws.

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