Page 254 of Heat of the Everflame

Some of the soldiers whipped toward him, their dark blades swinging his direction. A panicked cry stuck in my throat.

“Luther, please,” I begged. “Go back outside.”

The commander looked between us, his mouth curving. “Ah. I see.”

I didn’t need Umbros magic to understand the plan forming in his head.

I shook my head in warning. “Don’t do it.”

He smirked. “You wanted us to fight like Descended. That means using every weapon we can get. Soldiers, take him down!”

My protests drowned in the roar of the surge. Luther moved with the grace of a leopard, prowling expertly through gaps in their swings, but the godstone sliced through his shield like it was nothing. If he made one wrong move...

Fight.

I hurled a globe of blazing light at the commander. It burned straight through his armor and left a circle of charred flesh across his chest. His screams rang in my ears as I leapt past him and waded through a swarm of sparkling black blurs, a few missing me by inches.

“Diem,no,” Luther shouted. He launched toward me, each of us turning reckless in our race to rescue the other.

The soldiers took quick advantage. They hacked at us as we passed, a deadly gauntlet we couldn’t survive for long.

I’m going to lose him, I thought, my heart breaking.The gods won’t let me save him again.

A soldier appeared at Luther’s flank, two black daggers in his fists. One blade punched forward.

Fight.

Destroy.

I screamed.

And I surrendered.

The room flooded with silvery light. Its blinding brilliance forced my eyes shut as a wave of frost and fire tingled down my spine.

Then... silence.

“No,” I whimpered. I clamped my hands over my face. I couldn’t bear to face the horror of what I’d done. All those soldiers, all those lives...

“What in Kindred’s name did she just do?”

My eyes popped open at the Fortos commander’s voice.

Luther sank to his knees before me. His lips parted, his eyes aglow with reverence. The air rushed out of him as he laid a palm on his chest.

“My Queen,” he breathed.

“How did she do that?”

I tore my eyes away to see the commander staring at his open palms—hisemptypalms.

Across the foyer, every soldier was gaping at their hands, looking lost, and every palm was empty, not a weapon in sight.

“How?” the commander demanded again. “Godstone can’t be destroyed.”

“Yes it can,” I protested. “After the war, the Crowns confiscated all the godstone weapons and—”

“—and stored them,” Luther finished. “The weapons were locked in a vault in Fortos, because even the Crowns couldn’t destroy them. No one could... until now.”

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