Page 322 of Heat of the Everflame

I set a direct course for the tendrils of smoke rising into the air. Even without that beacon to guide me, I’d know where to find him—his powerful aura was a shiny, dangerous lure.

“We’re going the wrong way,” my mother called out. “The camp is near the border to the east. We’re headed north.”

“Then he’s not at the Guardian camp,” Luther answered. “Diem’s going the right way.”

I didn’t look back, but I heard the apprehension in his tone. He could feel it, too—how the man’s energy crackled through the air. It wasn’t protective, like Luther’s, or refined and guarded, like Zalaric’s. This man’s aura was violence incarnate, pure apex predator, the kind accustomed to never losing a fight.

Distant voices rang out through the trees. I froze and darted a glance at Luther, his grave nod confirming he’d heard the same. My mother jerked her head toward a steep hill not far away, and we made our way to its base and dismounted our horses.

The second my feet hit the ground, a rush of energy surged into my body. My godhood went wild with an eager fervor. For some reason, itlikedthis bleak, gloomy place.

Claim me, Daughter of the Forgotten, itsvoicedemanded.

Luther knelt beside his horse, clutching his chest and looking pained. “What isthat? It feels like it’s sucking out my magic right into the soil.”

I frowned. My godhood wasgrowing, getting stronger and bolder, seeming to feed off the land itself.

Luther’s aura sputtered as if the Forging spell was fighting to bring it back within its grasp. I reached inward toward it, and my breath hitched.

Every time I’d dipped into the Forging magic, its energy had been abuzz with life. But this place... it felt abandoned, decayed, like unpicked fruit rotting on its vine. Though it was within Montios borders, it seemed angrily disconnected, as if rejecting the realm’s embrace and aching to rip itself free.

I could see why the Montios Descended had avoided it. If this land could speak, it would snarl of long-held grudges and festering, bleeding wounds. Something bad had happened here once, and, despite its name, the land had not forgotten. It remembered—and it was waiting to claim its due.

The healer in me prickled. A visceral urge rose to cure the damage and find a way to make the realm whole. But when I tugged at the fabric of the Forging spell, it didn’t gather in my hand as it had before. It snagged, caught on some force I couldn’t see.

It didn’t like Luther—that wasveryclear. It was attacking him like a virus, leeching his energy in a bid to force him out or strike him dead. I yanked again, harder, demanding the Forging magic bend to my will.

The symbol at my throat burned hot. The land resisted, but after a moment, it finally ebbed and released Luther from its grasp. A low, distant chuckle echoed faintly in my ear.

I rushed to Luther’s side. “Are you hurt?”

“No, but whatever that was, it drained a good deal of my magic. And I wasn’t full to begin with.”

His glum expression said everything he wasn’t saying aloud. We were woefully unprepared and almost certainly outmatched. The battle we’d come to fight had gone from a risk to a folly.

But I couldn’t walk away now. We’d come too far, and the stakes were too great.

I crept to the top of the hill to survey from a higher vantage, Luther and my mother following behind. In a large clearing within the trees lay a small village, though it wasn’t like any I’d ever seen. There were no roads leading in or out, and though it was populated by simplistic stone buildings, it was set up more like a camp, with a bonfire at its heart, a single pen for livestock, and a shared line of cooking pits.

“Look,” Luther said, pointing at a cramped patch of crops. “Potatoes, wheat, lemons. How is that possible in the dead of winter?”

“It’s not. This far north, those plants should be dormant.”

“Maybe he’s an Arboros Descended,” my mother said. “Their kind have been friendly to the Guardians in the past.”

“Those days are over now,” I mumbled, absently itching the star at my throat. “The Guardians captured their Queen. I saw her chained up at the camp where they took me.”

She didn’t respond, but her face took on an expression I knew too well. Lips pursed, brows arched, eyes anywhere but on me.

I glared. “Mother, what do you know?”

“Nothing to concern yourself with.”

Her answer was a knife screeching against porcelain. I’d heard those words a hundred times growing up, and not once had she ever given in.

“The time for secrets is over,” I growled. “If you know something about the Arboros Queen—”

“I recognize some of those mortals. They’re Guardians, but not particularly high-ranking ones.”

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