Page 242 of Heat of the Everflame

Her answering howl rumbled across the forest.

The sound of approaching bootsteps sent me scurrying up the nearest tree just as soldiers flooded the clearing. I carefully searched their eyes, spying various colors, none of them brown.

Descended, all.

Even their search tactics reeked of their privileged upbringing. With the trees bare for the winter, I was plainly visible among the branches. Any mortal would have looked there first, but these soldiers barely lifted their eyes above the ground.

They’d been raised in mansions, their childhoods filled with tutors and toys. As adults, hunts were structured affairs for social leisure, their prey hobbled in advance to make for an easy kill on the ground. Even as soldiers, they traveled on roads and slept in inns, not in the rough of the Emarion wilds. Climbing a tree to stalk prey or gather fruit—or, Kindred forbid, just to play—was a concept their pampered minds simply couldn’t fathom.

A wise man would have sentsomemortal soldiers to guard a mortal town, and I’d heard enough from my father to know the Fortos King was a bastard, but he was no fool.

So why hadn’t he?

“This must be where the gryvern landed.”

“I hear it—it’s back up there in the clouds.”

“Is the Queen still on its back?”

“I’m not sure. Wait... yes, I think I see her.”

“Follow it. Don’t let the Queen out of your sight.”

The soldiers sprinted off in pursuit, and I barely held in my laugh until they were gone. I shimmied down the tree, tugged my hood low, and set off into town.

The streets of Mortal City were packed, many with faces upturned to watch my gryvern doing circuits in the sky. As I ducked my head and wove through the throng, morsels of various conversations floated to my ears.

“Her fault these soldiers are here. Maybe if they catch her, they’ll leave.”

“I thought they put her in prison with her mother.”

“That’s why she never had friends. We always knew she wasn’t really one of us.”

“She hasn’t been here once since the Challenging. She’s already forgotten us.”

“Is it true her whole family are Guardians?”

“Hush. Don’t mention the rebels out loud. My neighbor did it once, and he hasn’t been seen since.”

I gritted my teeth. So many lies and misconceptions. So many faces I’d once treated as patients, now all too happy to treat me like a villain.

The belief that I’d abandoned them was most troubling of all. Before I left, I’d make my presence—and my intentions—known to them all.

But first, I had business to finish.

I veered into a quiet alley, following a series of turns my feet knew by heart. When I made the final left, the street lit with the amber glow of firelight through a white-paned window.

A raucous laugh echoed from inside and squeezed around my heart. Even if I hadn’t been standing outside the post office he ran, I’d know it instantly as Henri’s father.

This place had been like a second home. Henri and I had chased each other around its bins of boxes and letters before we were even old enough to read the writing on their labels. Hisfamily home was in the back, and we’d spent countless nights on its creaky wooden porch trading fantastical stories of the adventures we’d have together one day.

Not once had we ever imaginedthis.

I walked toward the post office door when murmurs caught my ear. A low, honeyed voice, then a giggle.

I craned my neck, and my heart leapt into my throat. Barely visible around the corner, a mop of ash-brown hair fluttered in the winter wind.

Henri.

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