Page 162 of Burn of the Everflame

I felt, rather than saw, his body lock up. A glimpse of a memory flashed into my head—a man I didn’t recognize, lying in a bed and drenched with sweat, his skin covered head to toe in blackened veins. The man’s dark eyes gazed at me, so clearly in pain and pleading to make it end. My trembling hand closed around a dagger and held it over his heart. I felt warm tears spill down my face as I tightened my grip and⁠—

I stumbled backward at the violent force of Symond’s retreat from my thoughts. Our eyes met for a moment—both confused, both wild—then he grabbed his head and looked away.

Drusila turned to the turquoise-eyed man at her side. Their heads bowed in conversation, and after a moment, his shoulders sank, and he nodded. He laid a sweet kiss on her lips, then took the child from her arms. Her palm pressed tight to the mating mark on her wrist as she walked to my side and turned to face her peers.

“Do you remember what Yrselle told us before she left for the island?” she asked them. “‘If there is to be a future for our kind, my Centenaries must live or die as one.’ None of us understood what she meant. Now, I think I do.” She lifted her chin. “We must fight, but we must do it together. As one, the way our Queen commands. Our loyalty belongs to her.”

It was not lost on anyone that the Queen she spoke of was Yrselle, not me.

“We could run,” another suggested. “Your mate could sail us all somewhere they’ll never find us.”

“What if we lose our magic when we leave?” another asked.

“Better our magic than our lives,” Hagface said.

“Ophiucae is a Kindred,” Drusila reminded them. “He’ll find us, wherever we go.”

“How do we know she’ll really kill him?” Hagface argued. “Even she isn’t sure what she’ll do.”

Drusila sighed. “If she fails or spares him, we’re doomed either way.”

Those words clanged like a gong in my head.

“Drusila’s right,” one Centenary said as they moved to stand beside her. “We have to help her stop him.”

“I knew this girl would be our ruin,” another muttered, shuffling to join them.

“Wait,” Hagface said. “Symond is our Chief. We go where he commands.”

I looked at Symond. His head was bent, his shadowed eyes narrowed on his feet. I’d known Symond to be a cobra and a rogue, often at the same time, but this quiet, pensive man was unlike any side of him I’d seen before.

“I understand that what I ask is no small thing,” I told him, “but if you⁠—”

“You knew in Sophos.”

His voice was so quiet, I barely heard him.

“Knew what?” I asked.

“That you could heal them.”

I frowned. “My Fortos magic?”

“The godstone,” he hissed between clenched teeth. His poison-black eyes lifted and seared into mine. “Do you know how many people in this realm were poisoned?”

I’d badly misread his silence. Symond wasn’t pensive . . . he was furious.

I fell a step back. “I wasn’t sure it worked until I⁠—”

My words cut off as his fist smashed into my temple. My head snapped back, stars swimming. Before I could make sense of what just happened, he slammed into my body and pinned me to the floor. His hands closed around my neck and started to squeeze.

Drusila lunged to grab him. A dark energy pulsed around us, and she froze, hand hovering in mid-air.

All the Centenaries had stilled.

Symond’s grip tightened on my neck. I flailed beneath him, clawing a hand at his face. It jerked to a stop, my limbs no longer in my own control.

“You could have saved him!” he roared, quaking with rage.