Page 95 of Burn of the Everflame

I swore and sank back into the sand surrounding the oasis, wiping the back of my hand across my brow.

“Water?” Nidara asked, holding out a canteen. She shook it slightly, frowning at the shallow echo. “Apologies. There’s not much left. The daily rations are getting smaller.”

I thanked her and took it, savoring the splash of cool liquid against my lips as I drained it dry. I held a palm over its spout and conjured fresh water with Meros magic to refill it, then greedily drank it all down.

“This, I can do,” I muttered, refilling it again before handing it back. My stare slid to the blackened oasis. “That, on the other hand . . .”

My godhood prickled, frustrated at our failure. After arriving in Ignios, Alixe had gone with Nidara’s Vice General to assess the state of their Royal Guard, while I toured Ignios City so I could see the damage firsthand.

Initially, it seemed the people here had been lucky. Ophiucae had come alone, leaving his mortal soldiers behind. The red clay buildings were resistant to heat, so even with his gryvern’s dragonfyre flooding the city, residents had been able to hide safely indoors. The only casualties were a handful of guards whose minds Ophiucae had captured with Umbros magic, cruelly ordering them to burn themselves alive. After seeing that, the other guards kept their distance, and Ophiucae kept his.

The real truth of the devastation lay in the ink-dark liquid that surrounded me now. While the people of Ignios had been sighing with relief in their homes, Ophiucae had been plotting a slower, more insidious death for them all. The oasis had been poisoned, rendering its water toxic even to the touch.

He hadn’t stopped there. He’d used Arboros magic to wither every crop so completely that not even the seeds had survived. The few patches of fertile soil near the water’s edge had turned barren. I’d tried to restore it, but as the Kindred had warned me, even their magic had its limits. I could not create life where life had ceased to exist.

I climbed to my feet with a defeated sigh and walked with Nidara back into the city. It was a beautiful place, a more grandiose version of the Mortal City I’d hidden in after fleeing Arboros months ago. A high wall encircled the town to protect it from sandstorms, dotted with tall, thin lookout towers topped with domed bronze roofs. At the center sat an elaborate, multistoried palace with spiral turrets and a waterfall that cascaded from its uppermost balcony to a fountain below. It, too, had been poisoned.

Pathways lined with arches in elegant shapes crisscrossed the city to allow residents to move about while sheltered from the unforgiving desert sun. Sweeping canopies of brightly colored fabric that had once hung over markets now flapped in the wind, their edges tattered and burnt.

As I walked the streets, residents watched me with distrust and slipped indoors whenever I passed. One brave, dark-haired little girl crashed into my leg, tugging at the leather of my pants and reaching for my hair.

“Hello there,” I said. I scooped her up and propped her on my hip, tickling her face with the end of my braid. She giggled and scrunched her nose, then stared with wonder at its bone-white color. Her tiny hand reached for it, then hesitated.

“You can touch it,” I told her.

She beamed and ran her fingers over it, marveling at the coarser, curly texture compared to the thick, smooth line of hers. Then her eyes rose to mine and grew wide—I was surely the first person she’d ever seen who didn’t share her orange Ignios gaze.

“Pilli, no!” A woman shot forward and snatched the girl from my arms. She twisted to shield the child from me and scurried backward with a scowl.

“Mama, her eyes! They look like the moon!”

“What did I tell you about outsiders?” the mother hissed. She disappeared behind a door and slammed it closed.

I looked around to see more people ducking into alleys and shops to avoid me. Like in Montios, the Ignosians isolated themselves from the wider world. But while the mountain-bound northern Descended had seen my Crown and brought me into their fold, the people of the southern deserts wanted nothing to do with me, as their Queen or otherwise.

Sorae whined softly behind me. She nudged her muzzle into my hand, sensing my disquiet.

I wasn’t the only one upset by our lackluster welcome. I’d felt her fluttering nerves as we’d flown in, her ochre eyes scanning the dunes, followed by her disappointment when no dark-scaled gryvern was waiting to meet her.

Across the bond I now shared with Tybold, I’d sensed him out patrolling the borders and called him in, though he had yet to arrive. I suspected Sorae’s low mood would last until he did.

I suspected mine would last much longer.

“My apologies,” Nidara said. “The people here are normally quite friendly.”

“Not to people like me,” I said, and she didn’t disagree. “Alixe told me what happened during the Blood War—how the people here tried to remain neutral, and the Guardians and Crowns forced their hands. I can understand why that resentment might persist.”

“Especially now. They fear that history is repeating, and we’ll be dragged into another war we have no desire to fight.” She looked annoyed. “Is it so much to ask to be left alone? We keep to ourselves. We never ask anything of any other realm. If we have a problem, we handle it on our own.”

“Like you handled the problem of the mortals? Was it too much to ask for them to be left alone?”

Her gaze dropped. I already knew Nidara hadn’t participated in their massacre. It was the very first question I’d asked her. I wasn’t sure what violent, unforgivable thing I might have done if she’d said yes.

Nevertheless, I could tell she felt deeply ashamed. She had no fondness for mortals, but she had no thirst for slaughter, either. That, and her honesty, had won my tentative trust.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “That guilt is not yours to bear.”

She stared at the blackened oasis. “Perhaps this is what we deserve. We condemned the mortals to a slow death, and now we’re facing one ourselves.”