Page 67 of Heat of the Everflame

Despite the winter season, the climate was unrelenting. Our faces turned pink and tender under the blazing sun, and even the chill in the air could not stop the sweat from pouring down our backs. Combined with the brutal aridity and lack of water to drink, the signs of dehydration set in alarmingly fast. By midday, we were all sporting cracked lips and throbbing, woozy heads.

I learned quickly that although our fortified Descended skin was difficult topierce, it was not difficult toirritate. Fine granules of sand worked their way into our boots and clothes, grating painfully against our flesh.

The walk itself was torturously slow. The powdery terrain sucked down our heels and refused to let go, making every step a battle. We stayed near enough to the Arboros border to avoid getting lost in the open desert, but our desire to stay out of arrow range forced us to stay in the steep, hilly dunes.

The worst of it was the sandstorms. Every so often the wind would pick up, surrounding us in a blinding cyclone of grit. Each time, in terror of what the whirling sand might do to Taran’s wounds, I would rip off the overcoat and fling it onto his chest, prompting Alixe and Luther to throw themselves on me to protect my bare flesh. Together, we would huddle and pray we came out alive.

Perhaps the most rattling aspect of the journey was that we weren’t alone. In the harsh light of the sun, the Guardians’ vigil was on full display as they marched easily through the woods at our side. It was a constant reminder that we were trapped, with death chasing us from the left, from the right, and in Taran’s case, from within.

We kept a slow pace for his benefit—a fact he griped about for at least half the journey, though he endured it well. When the sun disappeared with neither a sea nor a city in sight, and we were forced to settle in for another night among the dunes, Taran was panting the least of us all. Despite my fatigue, it puta true smile on my face, my first real glimmer of hope that he might truly make it through.

But when I peeked beneath his bandages and saw that the mass of black veins had grown by an inch, my glimmer darkened to shadow.

While the battle raged on in his body, a different battle was taking place in my heart. I spent the evening telling my wildest stories, teaching Taran mortal drinking songs, and trading lighthearted ribbing about their very privileged upbringing and my very unrefined one. When eyelids finally began drooping, I jumped to volunteer for first watch, climbed over the nearest dune and out of sight, and collapsed into tears.

Or what passed for tears, when your eyes were too dried out to weep.

Every smile I shared with Taran was a nail lodged in my heart. I’d meant what I’d told Luther about joy being its own kind of medicine, and even if it did nothing, I wanted Taran’s final days to be happy ones. He deserved to go out laughing.

But it had a cost. The constant effort to conceal my true feelings was eating me alive, and when I dared to look Alixe or Luther in the eye and see past our shared mask, I could tell it was killing them, too.

IdespisedVance for what he’d done. I wasn’t proud to admit that I’d spent half the journey recalling his screams when Sorae’s dragonfyre had burned him or imagining all the gruesome ways I might make him pay. I both relished and feared what I might do if he was still in those woods when my magic returned.

And if we lost Taran... I wasn’t sure I would be able to wait on my godhood to avenge him.

But I also knew my loathing was a mirror of what festered in the hearts of those mortal men, the same hate that had driven them to attack us in the first place. After all, how many of themhad watched a loved one take their last breath at the tip of a Descended blade?

For at least one of them, that blade had been mine.

They had taken their revenge on Taran, and it had birthed a new hatred in me. If I took my revenge in return, it would only create new grudges, new blood feuds. Around and around we would go, hating and killing until no one was left standing. There was no good that could be borne of it.

And yet I hated them nevertheless.

I’d been fretting over how to convince the mortals and the Descended to choose peace over vengeance. But how could I stop a war between them when I couldn’t even stop it in my own heart?

I reclined back onto the soft sand, gazing up into the inky, star-flecked blanket of night.

“Listen, Grandma Lumnos,” I muttered, “I see what you were trying to do here. A Descended raised as a mortal, a Queen who doesn’t want her throne. It’s all very poetic. But you might have mucked it on this one. I really think you’ve got the wrong girl.”

My nose wrinkled. “Why not Luther? He knows how to avoid making an enemy out of every Descended on the continent, which I seem entirely incapable of doing. If peace is your goal, surely he would be a better choice to wear your Crown.”

I narrowed my eyes, head cocking. “Do you even chooseanyone?Maybe all this talk of you choosing someoneworthyis a lie made up by greedy men to convince the world they have divine permission for all their evil deeds. Maybe you’re not handing out blessings at all, and it’s up to us to decide whether we become villains or heroes.”

Groaning, I rubbed my face. “Why am I talking to some dead lady who doesn’t care? The desert is drying out my brain.” I climbed to my feet and began plodding back to wake Alixe for her turn on watch. As I climbed up the dune, I paused andlooked skyward one last time. “You don’t get my prayers yet. Save Taran and get us home. Then we’ll talk.”

Chapter

Sixteen

We arrived at Mortal City early the next day.

Well, we arrived at theghostof Mortal City.

From a distance, it looked as if it might still be a sleepy little hamlet, a place where humble, hardy people created lives of beautiful simplicity in their own quiet corner of the world.

The town was built around an oasis, a tiny fleck of blue and green on a canvas of boundless beige. Rows of buildings made of dark red clay sat in neat lines dotted with clusters of palm trees and overgrown citrus plants.

When we crested the final dune and spotted the glittering aqua spring still active at the center, we embraced with a round of grins. It looked like such a lush haven that I wondered for a moment if the sun hadn’t cracked our brains and sent us into joint delusion.

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