Page 25 of Heat of the Everflame

Her mouth tightened at my sarcastic bite. “Am I right to assume from the way that man looked like he was ready to cut down the gods themselves that he and the gryvern will be back very soon?”

“The gryvern won’t. I commanded her to stay away. The man...” My appetite faltered, and my hands lowered to my lap. “He will.”

“And I suppose he won’t come alone next time, will he?”

I debated my answer. Perhaps in her mind, she envisioned him returning with the entire Emarion Army at his back. That wasn’t Luther’s style, and I had to hope he would know me well enough not to bring the wrath of the Fortos King down on a group of mortals for my benefit. But I also feared the trap she might set if she expected him to return alone.

“He’ll do whatever it takes to free me,” I said carefully. Let her take from that what she would.

She gave a weary sigh and looked up at the remaining Guardians. “We’ll need to move the camp. Start spreading the word, and have everyone begin packing things up.” They nodded and dispersed.

We sat alone together in silence for several minutes while I devoured the rest of the food. When I finished, Cordellia secured a second set of chains through the shackles at my wrists and wrapped them tightly around the fallen log.

“You’ll have to find a new place to tie me up so you can lure in the people I care about and murder them,” I said bitterly.

She took a seat on the grass in front of me. “You’ve only just been coronated, and you already care that deeply about a Descended man and the Crown’s gryvern?”

The snap of disapproval in her voice suggested she couldn’t imagine ever caring for anyone from the Descended world. I’d felt that way myself not that long ago—and likely still would, had a Crown not appeared from thin air above my head.

“You’re the leader here,” I said. “Do you have people who are loyal to you beyond all reason? Who believe in you so much they would take on certain death merely because you asked?”

She nodded solemnly. “Yes, I do.”

“Then how would you feel if I chained you up, waited until they came to save you, then butchered them while making you watch?”

She shifted her weight, visibly uncomfortable at my insinuation. “That gryvern is a beast, not a person.”

“That gryvernhas more humanity in her heart than most humans I’ve met, including some Guardians. Which reminds me—” I smirked. “—how is Vance?”

A strange expression flickered across her face, there and gone too quickly for me to decipher. “He’s recovering. His arm isin bad shape. I’m not sure how much use he’ll have of it when it heals.”

I expected to feel some righteous justice at that news. After all, Vance had hardly bat an eye at slicing me open and watching me bleed.

But I was Descended—I would heal, while Vance would carry the scars of this wound for the rest of his life. I could not bring myself to find happiness at a mortal’s suffering. Even his.

“I can examine him,” I offered. “I’m a healer. My mother trained me herself. I’ll tend to him and the other wounded, if you’d like.”

She looked startled at the offer. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Diem. It’s going to be hard enough as it is to keep my people from trying to take their revenge on you. If any of them die under your care, even if it’s beyond your control, I fear there will be a mob even I cannot stop.”

I bristled. “Revenge onme?I didn’t wound them. I sent my gryvern away.”

“Be that as it may, you’re the only Descended in this camp, and my people were killed by a Descended beast. They want their pound of flesh, and they’ve no one else to take it from.”

I drooped back against the log. I’d agreed to cooperate in the hopes that I might earn the mortals’ trust. Instead, I’d made enemies of them simply by existing.

“What happened between you and Vance back in Lumnos?” she asked. “I can tell there’s no love lost there.”

“He didn’t tell you?”

“He told me his side.” She tilted her head. “I want to hear yours.”

I studied her for a long moment, weighing the wisdom of giving her the full truth. After watching her lead the siege against Luther and Sorae, I had a hard time believing I could trust her, as Brecke had urged me to do. Then again, she was a friend ofmy mother. That had to count forsomething, and there was an earnestness in her expression that gave me a flicker of hope.

So I told her—about the murder of the boy and his mother that had driven me to join the Guardians, about my missions for Vance, and about my reservations about his merciless methods that treated everyone, even children, as expendable sacrifices. I told her how I’d fled from him the night of the armory attack, and how it had earned me his ire before I took my Crown—and how I’d cemented that hatred when I’d thwarted his attack at the Ascension Ball by sending the mortals home without bloodshed.

“But even before I joined the Guardians,” I said once I’d finished, “Vance and his men were suspicious of me. I think he never trusted me because of who my father was.”

“More likely because of who your mother is,” she mumbled, almost too quietly to hear.

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