Burn of the Everflame — Chapter 70

70

DIEM

ighty men.E

Eighty mortal men.

Only eighty mortal men.

“Where are the rest?” Alixe squinted into the distance, where Vance and his men stood in rod-straight lines at full attention, a strange contrast to their dirty clothes and roughshod, shaggy appearance. “There were more when we faced them in the past.”

“Our lookout came to warn us before he saw their full numbers,” the Fortos Vice General said, looking them over with scorn. “If I’d known it was only this many, I would have stayed and put an end to them myself.”

“Where are the Descended?” Luther asked. “He had a group of them in Sophos.”

“They surely faced a battle in Arboros,” Nidara said. “Maybe these men are all he has left.”

“Or maybe the rest are hiding behind an illusion,” Alixe murmured.

Everyone fell quiet, their eyes rising to the empty horizon.

I glanced back at my newly united troops. Back in the forest, I’d presented the Faunos Descended with the same choice I’d given everyone else: fight or flee. Though their faces paled when I shared the full truth of who and what we faced, fighting was a way of Faunosian life, and they agreed to join us. We discovered, grimly, that they had left behind their old and infirm—nature’s way, they’d called it. Their children were sent with an escort back to Lumnos, and we resumed our march toward Fortos, where we’d found Vance and his men waiting for us at the forest’s edge.

Our luck was almost too good to be believed. Had I not wandered off, we would have missed the group from Faunos and Fortos entirely. Now, we wildly outnumbered Vance’s men, and our position couldn’t be better. They were entirely exposed on the Fortos flatlands, with nowhere to retreat to or hide, while we had the Lumnos forest on our side. Our archers had already taken up position high in the trees, and huge swaths of my army were concealed within the woods, waiting to make a surprise strike.

Vance and his men didn’t even have a shield. The glittering grey film of Ophiucae’s magic that had wrapped around them in prior battles was gone.

Even with their godstone weapons, this would be an easy slaughter, over in minutes, without a single casualty on my side.

The mood of my soldiers was giddy. Many smirked with preemptive triumph. I even heard pockets of laughter as soldiers joked that they’d been foolish to be so afraid.

But my advisors weren’t smiling, and neither was I.

Because Vance and his men weren’t attacking.

They weren’t advancing.

They weren’t surrendering.

They weren’t even talking.

They were waiting.

“Maybe Ophiucae took my offer,” I said. “His shield is gone. He’s not helping Vance anymore.”

My mother and my mate exchanged a look. “My Queen,” Luther said,

“his aura . . .”

“I know.”

If Ophiucae had abandoned his army, he’d apparently stuck around to see what came of it. The strength of his godhood had reached a head- pounding level, and it was still growing. He was either still getting closer or he was concealed nearby, refueling his magic from the soil.

“Surrender,” I shouted at the men. “Lay down your weapons, and your lives will be spared.”

Behind me, my soldiers grumbled at my offer. With victory appearing certain, they were itching to take revenge.

Ahead of me, no one moved. No weapons dropped, no heads leaned together in strategic discussion. They acted as if I hadn’t spoken at all.

“Stubborn bastards,” I muttered.

“You cannot win, Vance,” my mother yelled. “You’re too outnumbered.”

There was no triumph or smugness in her tone. These men had been hers once. I could see how it grieved her to contemplate killing the same rebels she’d sworn to lead.

“Ophiucae promises you freedom while he enslaves another,” she said.

“This isn’t the way, Brothers. Freedom means having the power to set our own destiny. What power do you have that isn’t his to control?”

Still, they ignored us.

“I know you think the same of the mortals who fight with me,” I called out. “You think they serve a Descended Crown. You’re wrong.”

I reached inside to the small piece of Kindred magic that still remained within me—the nine-armed candelabra of the Crowns. Their flames flickered and swayed as if struggling to stay alight in a breeze, causing them to swirl into a single trembling fire. Strangely, when I tucked my Crowns away into the cold, dark shadows, the warmth in my chest only grew hotter.

I gestured to the empty space above my head. “The laws are in the hands of the people now. Isn’t that better than an eternity under Ophiucae’s thumb?”

Only silence answered back. Vance didn’t even give his usual sneer at my pleas. Just eerie, empty nothing.

I glanced at my mother. “Come with me. The rest of you, hold your positions.”

As I dismounted my horse, a clink beneath my boot took me by surprise.

I looked down to see a golden plate inlaid into the road to mark the Lumnos-Fortos border. From the heavily wooded surroundings, I’d believed the border to be many yards ahead. The Forging magic had deteriorated so badly that the landscape of each realm, once starkly defined from one step to the next, had become difficult to distinguish. Fresh saplings had sprouted deep into the rocky flatlands, growing faster than nature on its own should have allowed. It was as if the land itself was healing, its harsh scars turning blurry and pale.

I rubbed at the burning in my ribs as my mother and I walked toward Vance. Luther’s shield shimmered into a dome around us. Shadows curled at my feet, then took the form of a dark silhouette walking at my side.

My hand tightened on Sorrow’s Edge. Even with Luther’s shield, it was a risk to leave ourselves so exposed. One well-aimed godstone arrow could be fatal.

We stopped thirty paces away. From here, I could see Vance’s face more clearly. His expression was calmer than I was used to, lacking his usual snide contempt. Perhaps he’d seen our large numbers and accepted his fate.

“I recognize these men,” my mother whispered. “They’re all from Lumnos.”

I squinted closer. Their faces arose in my memories—neighbors, old patients, vendors I bought from at the village market, a former schoolmate I’d flirted with, a friend of Teller’s from when they were boys. This wasn’t simply the remains of the militia Vance had recruited from across the realms. This was a carefully cultivated group of the men among his troops

that my mother and I knew most.

My insides churned.

“This doesn’t have to end in bloodshed,” I said. “We’ll bring you safely back to Lumnos, and I’ll leave it to the council to decide your fates.”

Vance wouldn’t even look at me. His eyes stared over my shoulders into the trees.

“You always said no sacrifice is too great to see the mortals freed, Vance,” my mother said. “So prove it—give up your pride, and come tell the council your story. Help them understand what drove you to this place.

Make them see why we must never go back to how things were before.

Live, and fight for our people in a different way.”

Her words fell on indifferent ears. Not a twitch, nor a frown. She huffed with frustration and started toward him. “For Old Gods’ sakes, Vance, don’t be an id—”

Every blade in every hand rose in an instant. The mortals moved as one, their weapons snapping up and pointing to her.

She froze. Behind us, leaves rustled as archers nocked their arrows in the trees.

A sickening suspicion took root in my stomach. “Mother,” I whispered, “step back.”

She slowly eased back to my side. In a single, unified movement, the mortals’ weapons jerked down to their side.

“No,” I breathed.

My hands trembled as I shoved my mother behind the dark silhouette of Luther’s shadows. The blood had drained from her face, her eyes round with the horror of our shared realization. “Gods—they’re . . . he . . .”

“Stay here,” I ordered. I took a shaky step forward, just short of where my mother had gone. I paused, waiting for a reaction, then held my breath and took another step, then another. As I approached, Vance and his men

stayed relentlessly still.

Inhumanly still.

“Diem, stop,” Luther shouted in the distance, his growl a cover for the apprehension I felt through the bond.

But these men wouldn’t hurt me. Ophiucae wouldn’t allow it.

So forward I went, my heart breaking with every step. Fear ebbed, and anguish took its place as the mortals’ features sharpened into excruciating

focus.

Smooth brows.

Hazy, unseeing eyes.

Minds and hearts . . . empty. Erased.

Enslaved, just like the Descended.

Dead.

I stopped in front of Vance and gazed into the foggy brown eyes that had once crinkled with a welcoming smile when he’d first met me as the mortal healer who craved a revolution—then filled with disgust the moment I disobeyed him. I reached down to his hand, shuddering at the deceptive warmth of his skin, and slowly pried his fingers off the godstone sword he carried. He didn’t resist, nor did he react when the weapon slipped out and thumped to the rocky soil at his feet.

Behind me, my mother let out a cry, our fears confirmed. Vance would never have let me disarm him if there was anything left of him to protest.

After his role in my father’s slaughter, I knew it wasn’t Vance she really mourned. The rebels who stood beside him had trusted her, then him, to lead them to freedom, only to be let down by them both.

I walked up and down the lines, disarming each man and moving their weapons out of reach. Luther raised a shield to block anyone from retrieving them, and I threw him a somber look over my shoulder. His features were hard with understanding at what we both knew came next.

“Let me do it,” he called out, light crackling at his palms. “I’ll make it fast and painless.”

I shook my head. I didn’t want the mortals in my army—or, frankly, the Descended—to watch the rebels so easily erased from the world by Descended magic. Especially not by his.

I pulled Sorrow’s Edge from its sheath. The tip of the blade dragged on the ground as I trudged back to Vance. It felt too heavy to raise, already burdened by the weight of the deaths it would carry.

“I used to dream of this moment,” I murmured, glaring at Vance. “I fantasized about making your death as brutal as my father’s. I was going to make you bleed while I told you that you were a hypocrite who spoke about sacrifice while hiding behind your men. I was going to watch you suffer for betraying the mortals by trading freedom for revenge. I told myself you didn’t deserve my humanity, because you let hatred eat away at your soul until you were no longer a man, just an empty shell.” I let out a bitter, choked laugh. “The gods truly have a sick sense of humor.”

But this wasn’t some divine joke. This was the natural consequence of a people oppressed. Vance had killed my father to radicalize me against the Descended because he himself had been radicalized by whatever horrific injustice had taken his family. Each of these men had been swept away by a bloody tide of all the mortals who had ever been beaten or starved or violated or locked away or murdered at the whim of some Descended.

And it was never just one injustice. It was a lifetime of a thousand different wrongs. It was a shared history of our land being stolen and our culture being mocked, forbidden, and erased. It was the boundaries set from birth on what schools we would never attend, what jobs we would never hold, what wealth we would never earn, what places we would never go— sometimes through inequitable laws, but more often by unwritten, unspoken obstacles put in place by the holders of power to keep it in the hands of them and their kin. Each small cruelty we witnessed was a pebble on our backs, every horror a stone, every death a boulder. Some endured for decades before they broke, but it broke everyone in the end.

I fractured the day I witnessed Rhon Ghislaine murder his mortal lover and half-mortal child, and at my father’s death, I’d shattered completely. I’d been ready to wage war against the Twenty Houses, consumed by desire to destroy the Descended. If I hadn’t fallen for Luther and befriended his family, I might have walked the very same path as the men who stood with Vance now.

Was I a better person that I hadn’t, or was I just luckier, privileged by a Crown and a voice that, unlike the mortals, the Descended were willing to hear? I bristled at branding them villains, and I didn’t feel much like a hero when so many of the Descended who had placed the rocks on their backs stood behind me now, carrying my banner.

I hung my head. These men were already dead in every way that mattered. Their minds were gone. To protect my people, I had to make sure their bodies would follow.

But at least I could still fight for their souls.

I raised my voice loud enough for everyone to hear—the mortals, my army, the gods. “End be your time, a trade in kind—”

“—a life well-lived for peace to find.” My mother’s voice trembled as

she joined me. “Be not afraid—”

More voices rang out.

“—as shadows fade, all pain and woe shall be unmade.”

The words echoed over the flatlands as the mortals in my army joined in reciting the ancient, sacred words of the Rite of Endings.

“Now fate well-sealed shall be revealed for those whose worthy souls shall yield.”

Though my voice was raw and breaking, I forced myself to finish.

“In love and calm, this holy psalm, shall guide your soul to realm beyond.”

The heat in my chest turned blistering as I closed both hands around the handle of Sorrow’s Edge. “I don’t think I’m strong enough to forgive you, Vance,” I murmured, lifting the blade to my shoulder, “but I pray we both find our way back to the people we lost.”

My sword swung, and he was dead.

For all that I’d wanted this moment, watching Vance’s blood seep across the soil to pool at my feet brought me no joy. Only the sharp snap of a rope, an anchor finally cut free.

I stepped over his corpse to the mortal standing behind him. I recalled him as a patient of my mother, a stonemason who came to her after a block of marble slipped and crushed his hand. The Descended who’d hired him had not only refused to pay for his treatment, they’d fired him for damaging their expensive imported stone.

I wondered if that was the moment that broke him, or if it was just one of the many cruelties he quietly endured along the way.

This death was harder. Sorrow’s Edge was more difficult to lift, and when its blade met flesh, I couldn’t bear to watch him fall.

The next man I didn’t recognize. In the absence of knowing who he was and what drove him to this point, my mind tried to fill in the blanks. Maybe he’d been depraved, eager to kill for killing’s sake and using the rebellion to do it. Maybe he’d tortured his victims and defiled their bodies for his own personal glee. Maybe he was a monster whose death made all of us safer.

Or maybe he was like every other Guardian I’d ever met—tired, angry, and desperate for something to change.

My blade sliced through the air, and another corpse hit the soil. I didn’t know the next man either, and I didn’t give myself time to think before I

struck again.

Another swing. Another thump.

I reached the end of that line and turned, staring at the backs of the next.

It would be so much easier to strike them down from behind, never having to look at their face or be reminded that this was a human being with a name and a story and people who would grieve their loss.

But killing should never be easy.

Even in war.

Especially in war.

My boots splashed in puddled blood as I walked back up the line.

Crimson liquid streamed through cracks in the dry, hardened soil, the scarlet veins mirroring the pulsing Fortos Crown and stretching further with every man slain.

At the front of the ranks, I turned to face the man who’d been standing at Vance’s side—Brant, his second-in-command. Even with his mind gone, he still wore a scowl, as if his hatred had become a physical part of his body.

Brant had hated me from the beginning. He’d never wanted me in the Guardians. He’d tried to sabotage my council. And he’d smiled when he slit

my father’s throat.

No, killing should never be easy.

But sometimes . . . it was.

Swing.

Thump.

A cold, harsh apathy shadowed my soul. Across the bond, I felt Luther stir with concern.

Swing. Thump.

Swing. Thump.

Two more bodies at my feet.

On the last man in line, I raised my blade before I looked, hoping the grisly rhythm would carry me through—then I stopped.

This man, I knew well. His name was Dristan. We’d had a brief summer fling when we were younger. He’d been kind and friendly and, most importantly to teenage Diem, very tall.

My body locked up. My arms wouldn’t swing.

Dristan didn’t hate Descended. He didn’t hate anyone. He was the kind of boy who tucked flowers in my hair and told me that my strange grey eyes were pretty.

I staggered back, my body repelled by what I was asking it to do. I scrambled for the numbness of moments ago.

“He’s already dead,” I told myself.

Then he blinked—a reminder that he was very much alive.

My knees buckled, and I sank to the ground. I bent over and retched, my insides trying to expel the poison of what I’d done and still had to do.

“You should be grateful.”

I fell backward at the sound of an ancient, masculine timbre. Dristan stared down at me, but when he spoke, it was with Ophiucae’s voice.

“These men were going to kill you, daughter. Their minds were full of schemes to get around my protection.”

I climbed to my feet, hands trembling. “Don’t try to tell me you did this for me. I didn’t want them dead.”

“You wanted me to stop them from killing Descended.” He smirked. “I compromised.”

It had always been a matter of time before Ophiucae and Vance’s tenuous alliance imploded. It was never in question which of them would survive it, but that gave me little comfort at the role I’d played in their demise.

Dristan’s gaze drifted to Luther with a murderous glare that made my blood run cold. “It took me quite a while to repair the head your mate chopped off.”

I raised the point of Sorrow’s Edge. “If you try to hurt him—”

Dristan chuckled—not the happy, boisterous laugh of the boy I’d known, but the ominous snicker of my sire. “Don’t worry. All that time gave

me a chance to think on what you’d said, and I realized you were right. My anger caused me to lose my way. Revenge is the concern of simple, powerless men. I have loftier goals.”

Thunder sounded in the distance—odd, given the cloudless late afternoon sky. The wind was still, the air dry and hot, showing no sign of an approaching summer storm.

Dristan waved a hand, and Ophiucae’s ten-pointed Crown shimmered over his head. “These Crowns of ours have brought so much destruction.

Perhaps it’s time to let them go.” It began to splinter with glowing cracks.

“A fresh start—isn’t that what you said you wanted?” Fragments crumbled and fell to the soil. “A chance to move forward.” His Crown deteriorated until there was nothing left of it but a small pile of ash at his feet. He smiled, wide and knowing. “A blank slate, just like you asked.”

The faraway thunder rumbled again.

Louder.

Nearer.

“I spent centuries resenting this place. Even my own realm never truly felt like home. Then I met you—my daughter.” He raised his hand to my cheek. “How can this world not be my home when you are in it? For you, I will abandon this fight, and we can rewrite the blank slate anew.”

It was everything I’d longed to hear him say. He was giving up his vengeance and choosing love over hate, choosing me. If he could let go of the scars upon his soul, then so could I, and together, we could heal. My most vulnerable, most indestructible hope—a chance to save us both.

But if my mate had taught me anything, it was that some scars weren’t meant to heal. Some scars, we keep . . . to remind us how we got them, and to prove how much we could overcome.

“You speak of saving this place,” I said. “This continent. This world.

But never of these people.” Though everything in me begged to look away, to not see the answers, I forced myself to hold his stare. “What did you do in Umbros, Ophiucae? Why have my messages to Arboros gone unanswered?”

The air around us seemed to chill in his silence, though my chest felt hotter than ever.

“I saw the Challenging in your mate’s memories,” he said. “You loved making the Descended bend to your will and kneel.” He leaned in close.

“You may try to deny it, but you and I are the same. The fire that burns in you is one I lit.”

The heat inside me spiked, thrashing with an angry resolve.

“There is a darkness that binds us,” I agreed. “Things that are beautiful, too. When we care for someone, we care deeply. I see the light inside you, wishing the world had let it shine.”

I leaned back, heart slowly breaking as his hand slipped from my cheek and fell away. I saw in his eyes that he knew I’d finally made my choice.

“You’re making a grave mistake,” he warned.

“As long as you live, the people I love will never be safe. No one will.”

The approaching thunder was so loud now that it seemed to be one continuous roar. I tilted my face to the sky, letting the blood sun soak into my skin and feed the heat within me as I fought the tears that begged to fall.

“If you deny me, Diem, there will be a cost.”

My hands tightened on the handle of my sword.

“I know,” I whispered.

Sorrow’s Edge swung, and Dristan’s lifeless body hit the ground.

In the distance, a wobbly line took shape between the sky and the stony flatlands. I swiped the back of my hand across my glistening cheeks, then turned on my heel and strode toward my army.

“He’s coming,” I said loudly. “Everyone, prepare to fight.”

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