Page 281 of Heat of the Everflame

“I told you. I didn’t come here to kill.” I grabbed his fallen blade. It glowed red in my hand, then melted to the ground in a useless sludge.

“By the Kindred... a Queen who won’t kill.” He began to laugh. “How pathetic.”

My eyes rolled hard.

His chuckling grew louder. “This is precisely why my realm will n—”

His words choked. His bulging eyes shot upward, then back to me as his breathing turned shallow. “You?” he rasped. “That—that’s not... but you’re...”

“Yes, I know. I’mpathetic.”

Blood drained from his face. “I won’t let this happen. You—you can’t do this. It’s not possible.”

I shrugged and turned away. “Watch me. I’m taking my mother and leaving.”

As if on cue, a seething Luther turned the corner, carrying my squirming mother under his arm. His clothes were disheveled, his glare hot enough to melt glass.

“Why is it the traits I find endearing in you are sogods-damned annoyingin your mother,” he snapped. He clamped an arm around her legs as she tried her best to kick him in the groin. His eyes darted to the King. “He’s not dead yet?”

“Sadly, no,” I answered with a sigh.

“You win,” the King said suddenly. “I’ll let you go without a fight.”

My brows flew up. “You will?”

He nodded and extended a hand. “You bested me in battle. It’s only fair.”

I eyed it—and him—my skepticism plain. Warily, I extended my own. The King held statue still until my fingers curledaround his wrist, and his closed around mine. His other hand swept across his hips, and he bent into a waist-deep bow.

“There’s just one thing,” he said. “A lesson your father must not have taught you.”

The hairs on my nape stood on end.

His eyes snapped up. “Never leave a fight unfinished.”

He jerked my arm, forcing me off balance. Before I could react, he had me pinned against his chest, his hands clamped to the sides of my head.

“Diem!” Luther shouted.

The anguished panic in his voice seemed to slow time as each second of the tragedy played out.

The King’s fingers digging into my skull. His excited heartbeat hammering at my back. The muscles of his arms pulling taut in preparation to snap my neck.

I might have died that day, in that dirty, hopeless, gods-forsaken prison.

But Fortos was wrong—Andrei Bellatorhadtaught me that lesson. That one, and many others.

And though I’d forgotten it for a time, there was one lesson I now carried in my heart wherever I went.

To be disarmed is to court death. By wits or by weapon, be ready at all times.

Years of training ignited on instinct, a well-worn path I could walk even in the darkest of nights. I twisted in the King’s arms, my knees going slack. In the confusion, his death strike faltered, a split second’s hesitation.

Just long enough for my small, shadow-crafted blade—the one I’d hidden in my palm the second he came near—to slide deep into the apex of his thighs.

He doubled over, hands clutched at his groin. I kicked the knife, jabbing it further into his flesh. He collapsed on his back with a blood-curdling scream.

“Never underestimate a Bellator,” I muttered.

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