Spark of the Everflame (Kindred's Curse, #1)

by Penn Cole

“You shouldn’t have run,” he said flatly. “You made things so much worse.” “Seems to be a trend for me,” I mumbled. “You lied to Vance’s face. To my face. You pretended to be with us and took off as soon as I let you go. Do you know how that looks?” I gritted my teeth. “I wasn’t your prisoner. You had no right to stop me in the first place.” “I was trying to keep you from doing something I knew you would regret.” “What I regret is ever joining the Guardians in the first place.”

We stood in silence for several painful minutes, each avoiding the other’s eyes, slowly boiling alive in the uncomfortable heat of all that had happened between us these past months. The childhood love we’d once shared had been simple and pure. We’d chased each other in the forests, picked wild berries and swam naked in the sea, teased each other and imagined the great journeys we might take together one day. I wanted more than anything to get back to that effortless joy, but the harder I reached for it, the further it seemed to float away, a shrinking point on the sunset horizon. If I didn’t have being a healer, and I didn’t have Henri, what was left of me? Who would I become?

But it wasn’t just my future that worried me. Teller’s dream was dead, and he didn’t even know it. He’d spent his life studying to be the best and brightest in the hopes the final payoff would be an invitation to Sophos. That was the only outcome that might have made walking away from Lily worth the pain. Learning the truth now would destroy him. My father was about to march off to war. Growing up, I’d eagerly devoured every crumb of his thrilling tales of battle, but the threats in those stories had existed only in his memories and my imagination. The enemies he now faced were very real—and very well-armed, thanks to me. My mother was still missing, and I was no closer to finding her than I’d ever been. With the door closed on my access to the palace, my hope of finding answers was slim, at best. And Luther... What he’d said. What he’d done. What I’d felt.

Free me, Daughter of the Forgotten.

Far away, a shrill and inhuman cry roared through the night. An ancient sound. A mourning—and a calling. Release me.

Suddenly, I was screaming. My throat was scratchy and raw—perhaps I had been screaming the whole time. My connection to reality had become tenuous, my body too overwhelmed with warring sensations to separate the real from the imagined. Claim me. I am your birthright and your destiny. I couldn’t take it anymore. The pain, the heat, the weight, the voice. I was going to die from it. I wanted to die, if only to make it all stop. I lifted my hands to the gods as a great beam of light shot from my palms into the heavens. Take me, I whispered to the voice. I surrender.

With wild eyes and a horrified stare, Teller whispered the words that would change my life forever. “Diem—you’re wearing the Crown. You’ve been selected. You are the new Queen of Lumnos.”

Far in the distance, she heard a series of long, piercing cries, their distinctly inhuman nature cutting through the fog of her pain. Her eyes lifted in the direction of the sound—but caught on something else. The obelisk she had been looking at moments ago had gone dark, the symbol at its center fading to shadow. The cauldron at its peak now held only wisps of smoke. In the sky beyond, a column of light rose from within the forest and disappeared into the clouds. As if in answer, a twin beam shot down from the sky directly above her head. It landed on the glassy rock at her side, filling it with a sapphire glow. Despite her still-aching hand, a jubilant grin spread across her face. The King was dead. After six months, two weeks, and four days of waiting, of being apart from her family, of retracing the steps that haunted her—the King of Lumnos was finally, finally dead. Which could only mean one thing... In thirty days, Auralie Bellator was going home.