Page 20 of Heat of the Everflame

“Hurry up,” Vance barked. “Get the chains on her.”

The boy who had carried the vials for Vance latched a chain onto my shackles and rushed to secure it. With his hands still shaking, he struggled to thread the thick iron lock into place.

I tried to push him away, though my protests were pitifully feeble. Between my exhaustion, my dehydration, and my throbbing new head wound, I was barely clinging to consciousness.

A piercing shriek pulled my eyes to the sky, and Sorae’s golden eyes locked with mine. A pulse of emotion washed across the bond as she made her intentions clear.

A promise—to protect me at all costs.

I grabbed the boy’s wrist. “Go,” I warned him. “She’s coming. Run—now!”

His bulging eyes mirrored mine. He looked over his shoulder at the gryvern shooting toward him at lightning speed. “By the Undying Fire,” he whimpered. “Gods protect me.”

He dropped the chains and scrambled to get away. The other men in the group took one look at the fearsome beast spearing our direction, and they abandoned their posts and followed suit.

Only Vance remained. He unleashed a string of swears at his men, demanding in vain that they return.

“Vance, get out of here,” I yelled at him. “She’ll kill you.”

“No,” he spat out. “I’m not a coward.”

“Better a coward than a corpse,” I shot back. “If you’re so determined to die, save it for a more important battle—I am not worth your life.”

On that, at least, we seemed to agree.

Vance dared a glance behind him. Sorae was already surging over the clearing, her dragonfyre plume mere seconds away.

He gave me one final look, the side of his face slowly illuminating from the approaching inferno.

“Run!” I screamed.

I turned my face up to my gryvern and shut my eyes as the world went blue.

Even behind my eyelids, I was blinded by the sun-bright azure glow of Sorae’s fire. It engulfed me, swallowed me up like the depths of the sea, but I felt no burns, no wounds, no pain—only a comforting warmth that, for one fleeting moment, left me entirely at peace.

But when I opened my eyes, I sawwar.

A blackened line in the earth ran straight between my feet, scattered soft blue flames flickering in the surrounding grass. Behind me, the mammoth tree I’d been chained to was now a pile of ash. Only a few charred pieces of wood remained, along with a red-hot pool of molten metal that had once been my chains and shackles.

I looked around for bodies, relieved to see the mortals had escaped—all except Vance.

One second more and he might have been spared, but his ill-conceived bravery had cost him. He lay in a heap a few feet away, screaming and clutching a bloody, steaming mess of burnt flesh where his arm had once been.

I started toward him, my healer’s instincts tomendandsavekicking in, when a tremor rumbled through the earth.

Across the clearing, Sorae had landed in a patch of scorched soil. She threw her head back with an enraged roar that set theforest leaves trembling, then flooded the woods around her in a blazing firestorm, warning the mortals to keep their distance.

This was it—my chance to escape.

Sorae crouched down to her haunches as Luther slid from her back, his boots hitting the soil with a menacing thump. The wall of lingering flames and thick smoke made his form hazy, like the mirage of an oasis in the hot Ignios sands.

I was suddenly desperate to have his arms around me. Even when we had barely known each other, something about his embrace had always felt safe and impenetrable and inexplicably right.

His quiet strength had been my calm amidst the chaos. The faintest brush of his hand could center me when I was lost and catch me when I was falling. Somehow I just knew that if I could get to him, if I could justtouchhim, we would find a way out.

Exhaustion and relief tugged me staggering forward. My clothes had burned away under Sorae’s flames, but the purifying blaze had also stripped me of the caked-on dirt and blood, leaving my skin cleansed and my soul feeling strangely renewed.

Luther’s gaze traveled over my bare flesh, but there was none of the heated desire in it that normally sent my stomach fluttering. Instead, his features hardened to a sword-sharp edge.

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