Book Review: Spark of the Everflame

Title: Spark of the Everflame
Author: Penn Cole
Genre: Romantasy, Romance, Fiction, Fantasy

What It’s About:

Diem Bellator walks with Maura, a healer and a friend, and Diem comments about the way the sun is looking on Founding Day, which she feels is an omen. Maura chastises her and tells her to head home, getting there safely as Descended wine has been given out freely and it has a heightened effect on mortals. The Descended are the children of the Kindred—a race of superpowerful beings that came to their continent millennia ago—and the mortals that the Kindreds chose to marry and tie their lives to. Diem makes her way through the crowd, ignoring people, but two men come up to her, making leering comments. They see her weapons, and tell her that they can help her divest herself of them, not knowing that she knows how to use them. Diem is the adopted daughter of Andrei Bellator, the famed Mortal general who fought in the war, and he taught her how to defend herself. She manages to use her training to divest the two men of their ability to see, and their own weapons, leaving them lying around in pain. Unfortunately, it doesn’t give her time to get away, as the commotion brought a group of men, and the two tell the group that she had attacked them.

Diem runs through the alleyways of Paradise Row—a seedy area full of prostitutes—and gives her weapons to a woman in a doorway, asking her to lie for her and tell the men that she went the wrong way. She comes across her own mom speaking to a man who she can tell is a Descended based on the finery of his clothing, but notes the scar cutting across his face. She sneaks around to get to hear better, because she can read her mom’s body language and it seems like she is unhappy with the man. Diem overhears her mom tell the man that she knows his secrets and will reveal them for all the world to know if he doesn’t pay up, and the man tells her that he is tired of her using his secrets to extort him. Before Diem is able to get even closer to hear more, she gets interrupted but an old crone, who spews a bunch of cock babble that doesn’t make sense to Diem—she is, after all, a mortal child who lost her eye and hair color in a childhood illness, not some ‘Daughter of the Forgotten.’ The crone uses her power to stop Diem from moving, telling her that she is at her mercy but then frees her, and before disappearing, she tells Diem to stop taking the flameout powder. Diem looks around for her mom and the mysterious man, but they are long gone by now. She returns home, but her mother never does.

Six months pass, and Diem doesn’t know what happened to her mom. Her father acts like their mother will be back, and her brother, Teller, has the same belief that it’s time to let go of the notion that she will be back. She walks Teller to school, and he argues with her that he could leave the school because he is an adult and is past the age when mortals normally ended school so that he can do something else to help them around the house. Diem tells him that no, he needs to stay in school so that he can get a good education and maybe go to one of the other realms—Sophos, known for its education and learning—to continue it. Diem’s childhood best friend and current lover, Henri, shows up and tries to support Diem’s arguments with Teller, but Teller tells him to stay out of it. They say goodbye to Teller, and Henri walks with Diem to town, inviting her to come with him to Fortos, another realm, where he has to deliver letters as the courier. Diem agrees to talk to Maura, which she does when she enters the Healer’s clinic, and Maura agrees, giving Diem the tonic to stop pregnancies, and telling her to make sure that Henri takes it.

Not too long after the healers show up and the clinic gets busy, a Descended boy comes in calling for Auralie Bellator. Maura and Diem tell him that Auralie is unavailable but they can help him, and he tells them that he needs healers because children are hurt at the palace. Maura tells Diem to stay behind in order to honor her mother’s wishes for Diem to stay away from the Descended, but Diem pushes back that she’s one of their best healers, and that she should go. Ultimately, Maura agrees, and Diem, Maura, and one more healer, Lana, head over to the palace with the boy, who tells them his name is Elric. Elric explains that he was using a bit of magic in the room with his friends, when he lost control and some of the roof caved in, harming three of his friends. He helps them get to the classroom faster by using a hole in the wall of the garden, telling them to not tell anyone. When they arrive, Diem asks about who is hurt the most, and she takes the older child while Maura takes the younger patient, and Lana goes to the one who is hurt the least. When Diem approaches the two figures, a man holding a young girl, the man gets extremely protective of the child and is rude to Diem. Diem ignores him and speaks to the girl, who she learns is Lily, and realizes that it’s actually Princess Lilian, the girl who Teller had been telling her about as being kind to him in school. Diem also looks at the man and realizes that he is the man she has been looking for the last six months—the Descended who spoke with her mother before his disappearance. This realization has her blood boiling, though she is kind and patient with Lily as she uses something to help numb the pain, and then helps reset the arm. Diem ignores the man’s offer for help to reset the arm, and manages to do it herself. Lily stands up, but soon after, she collapses, and the man’s scream of anguish really freaks Diem out. She cuts apart Lily’s dress and finds a piece of metal from the Chandelier lodged in Lily’s back. There’s so much blood and it seems like Lily is getting paler by the second, so Diem gets gauze out but nothing helps. She keeps hoping that Lily comes back and tells the girl to fight, because she thinks of Teller and what he had said about Lily being kind. There’s some light that comes out of her hands, so she throws herself over the child to hide it, and then when Lily comes to, she takes the gauze away only to find that the flesh is smooth, so she puts the gauze back on to hide it. Then she takes her leave, while everyone is reaching for Lily, and asks Elric for help finding the bathrooms. The man follows her and asks her if she is Descended, to which she replies that she is not, and tells him that she lost her eye color in an illness—he can ask Maura about it. They get into a bit of a discussion about it, and she tells him off.

Then Diem goes into the bathroom, and breaks down crying. When she musters the energy to wash off, she meets with Maura, and Lana, and they all head out of the palace through the main gate. Diem tells Maura about the man’s weird comment about helping reset the bone, and Maura tells her that it’s because Descended bones are different than mortal ones—harder for mortals to manage—as she had to ask two Descended to help reset the bones of the child that she had been seeing to. They are all a bit weirded out, but Diem explains it away. Maura gives her a few days off after that incident, telling her to take more than two days as requested. So Diem heads out to Forstos with Henri, and they have sex one night in the forest. Diem wakes up in the early morning of the dawn, and takes a moment to step away from the campfire—while in the woods, she finds herself facing a wolf who looks hungry. Having no weapons, and cursing herself for leaving them behind at the campfire, she accepts the fact that she might die. The wolf jumps, and there is a flash of light, with the same icy feeling racing through Diem’s arms, and the wolf disappears. In its place is ash. Freaked out, Diem runs back to the campfire and starts looking through her bag for the flameroot powder, only to realize that she had thrown out all of her supply, including her emergency one, into the water the night prior after her father confronted her about not using it. Henri had woken up as well and helps her sort through the bag, but tells her that she is not hallucinating like she used to as a child—the wolf was real, as he heard it growling, which is what woke him up in the first place.

They continue onto Forstos, and when Diem passes the border, she gets a zap of energy. Henri tells her that he doesn’t feel it at all, so she assumes that it’s something that has been set up for women only to feel. Later, she is talking to Leona, one of her mom’s remaining friends in the military, and raiding her medical cabinet for some ingredients that they need-per Maura’s request. Diem tries to ask Leona some questions, but Leona doesn’t know anything beyond telling her that she owes her mother a debt and her mother was really well known, something Diem finds surprising, considering that her mother was a healer. Leona warns her to stay out of things and not to ask too many questions, as it may lead to her death, before telling her to get out. Diem starts leaving but then recognizes flameroot. She asks Leona if she can get some, and Leona freaks out, asking how she knows it since only the King of Forstos can open that door. Diem lies and tells her that it’s another medicine, but she doesn’t understand what is going on. Leona tells her to stay away from whatever it is that her mother has been doing or into.

That evening, Henri and Diem are at a bar, when a man comes by that Henri introduces as Brecke. Brecke takes a liking to Diem, and gives her a blade made perfectly for her though with a metal that is able to pierce Descended skin. Diem tells him that she can’t take it as she can’t afford it, and Brecke tells her that he wants her to have it because if he actually charged for it, only the Descended would be able to afford his weapons and he doesn’t want them to be the only ones who have them. He tells her that he will gift it to her for a favor to be owed later down the line. Diem agrees, though Henri is bothered when she says that she wouldn’t mind it being a favor of something more. Diem goes to her room, bathes, and then goes to bed, but after a while, she wakes up and finds that Henri still hasn’t come to bed. So she quietly heads down to the bar, and overhears Henri, Brecke and a few other men talking to each other, including the word “War,” which bothers her. She also notices that the tattoo that Henri has, is the same tattoo that all of the other men have, so she comes out of hiding and asks to speak to Henri—all the men quickly hide their tattoos. She asks him why he’s lying to her about the tattoo and what is going on. At first Henri argues that no one else sees them, but she points out that she did, and that they will get killed if someone sees these tattoos on them.

They return home to Lumnos, and Henri tells Diem that he had watched a mortal child carrying boxes get trampled by a Descended on a horse, who was riding way too fast in town. The man had just yelled at the child and when he realized that the child was dead, he was cold and cruel, and took off. Henri went around to the nearest towns asking if they knew the child, but since they did not, he buried the child in his own yard, in case anyone came looking so that he can give back the bones. Later, he returned to the spot with the intention to wait out the man and kill him, or die trying, but a man saw him with vengeance in his eyes, and told him that there’s a better way to fight back than the fool’s errand. As a result, he joined the Guardians of the Everflame, the same group that had rioted years prior in the failed rebellion. He asks her to join, to help them, as she has access that others will not, but Diem isn’t so willing to break her healer’s vow to help others regardless of who they are. She says that she will think about it.

She returns to Maura, to find out that Prince Luther had come asking questions about her, and that Maura told him that she is the daughter of Andrei Bellator, and that she had brown eyes before her childhood illness. Maura tells her that she’s not telling anything more than that because it’s none of her business. Diem asks questions about Prince Luther and she learns that he is Princess Lillian’s brother; he had been the one who was holding his sister the day that she had helped her, and is shocked to find that she had been looking for the prince all along. She convinces Maura that she will take on her mother’s agreement with the royals in order for Teller to continue going to school, though Maura had told her that there were many other things that Auralie did for the Royals beyond healing.

Maura and Diem go into the palace to check on the two children. They are accosted by the guards, and Diem gets into a tussle with one of them, when they try to take away her weapons. She has one of them on the floor, while the others surround her, when Luther shows up and tells them all to stand down. The guards tell him that she had attacked them, but Diem asks if Descended men had been taught that they can grope however they want. Luther tells her that no, and then attacks the guard with his shadow magic, which sings to Diem, and has the guy apologizing to Diem. He lets Diem keep her weapons, and then escorts them to the room where the two children are playing with their mother sitting in the room. One of the women notices that Diem has weapons, and tells Luther that she will absolutely not be coming up to the children, while putting up a protective barrier around the kids. Luther squirms and Diem enjoys watching it, but also doesn’t like how the other woman flirts with him, though they’re supposed to be cousins. She ultimately decides to leave her weapons on a table, so that she can check on the child, and when she does, the other woman removes the protective barrier. She checks the kid over, making corny jokes that have him laughing, and tells them all that they will be fine. Then she gets her weapons back, and Luther comes up to her. They end up talking aggressively to each other, with Luther grabbing her weapon out of her hand and sheathing it. Maura and the two other women are shocked at how close they have gotten, and at least one of the women is not happy about it.

At some point, Diem gets called into Paradise Row, to a building where she finds a woman fully drenched in blood. The woman tells her to not worry about the blood and that it’s the girl that needs help, and Diem just nods—the women in this area are nothing if not loyal to one another. She goes in and sees the bruised girl, who had been fawned over by all of the other girls who work for the Madam. They tell her that the girl had been with a male client, who then tried to get her to do something she wasn’t ready or willing to do. Diem puts everything together, and realizes that they protected one of their own, killing the man. She takes care of the, helping with the bruises, while asking for their advice on lingerie and things like that, getting them to laugh and giggle. At some point, the girls tell her that men want them to pretend to be Descended, and that the Descended men pay the most. They tell Diem that she would bring a lot of money for her looks as it’s very similar to a Descended, but Diem tells them that she will not do it. They offer to pay her, but Diem tells them that she has gotten enough information about the lingerie that will be more useful than payment, and walks out with the Madam, who tells her that she doesn’t take handouts, and pays her anyway. Diem then steps into the alleyways, and hears someone calling for help, so she heads in the direction of the voice, and finds a Descended standing over a woman and her son. The woman pleads with him to let her son live and that he will hear nothing of it, but the Descended tells her that he cannot let a half blood illegitimate son get in the way of everything that his House has built and the prestige they are getting from the crown for it. Diem recognizes the woman as the lady she gave the weapons to while running away from the men, and does what she can to help her, though she’s not really able to do much as the Descended uses his shadows to put bars that she can’t get through. The woman pleads with Diem to protect her son, even as she dies from the man’s shadowy spikes. The Descended then turns onto the kid, and Diem uses her weapon from Brecke to cut the man. In the fight that ensues, she uses her body to protect the kid, and the Descended man keeps sending shadowy weapons at them, though Diem keeps closing her eyes and they end up going away in a flash of light. She does hurt him with her weapon to fight him off, as more mortals arrive, thinking that there is a fire—something that she called out for in order to get help. When the descended leaves, and the remaining mortals do too, realizing that they had been fooled, an old man comes up to her and apologizes to her for losing her son. Diem tells him that it’s not her own, but that of the woman who lies dead as well, and she’s angry about the loss. The man is about to leave her because she’s mad about the way that the Descended treated the child and woman, and how it’s all cruel on their part; that something has to be done. She asks him to help her bury the two of them, and they move the bodies to a forest, where she buries them in a shallow ditch. Diem then goes looking through the alleyways for their home, but doesn’t remember where it is, so she heads over to Henri’s house instead, and tells him that she will join the Guardians, but no tattoos.

Her trial to get into the Guardians is to infiltrate the home of one Evrim Benette, whose daughter had gotten sick. She knocks at the door, and the son opens up the door, being mean to her and then telling her to wait in the foyer. He goes over to his father’s office, and she silently follows, where she overhears Evrim talking to someone else about weapons, and explosives coming from other realms that they need in order to fight the rebels. The man tells his son off, and she realizes that the boy’s cruel attitude comes from the man himself. So she runs back to the foyer, silently, and is waiting for the boy when he comes to take her up to his sister. She tries to figure out what is wrong with the girl, but then asks the boy’s help and he tells her that she had wandered off while out and about the other day, but then showed up with flowers that they had then thrown out when the gardener saw them. Diem looks at the rashes on the girl’s skin, asks about the flower, and realizes that it could be deadly if ingested, but it wasn’t ingested thankfully, and the girl will heal. She watches as the boy is kind to his sister momentarily, trying to distract her as they put on the cream for the rashes. At some point, the boy turns cruel again, and disappears, telling her to meet him in the parlor, and Diem speaks with the girl who tells her that the person that gave her flowers had brown eyes. Diem has a suspicion that the Guardians had been the one who planted the woman to give the girl the flowers so that she can get in and heal them. She makes a note and leaves the cream on the girl’s desk, then goes wandering into the rooms, until she finds the office. Diem steals a map off the desk of Evrim Benette, and then writes down the names off of a ledger, but before she can go any further or even get more information, Evrim shows up and she hides under his desk. She is saved by the fact that the boy comes looking for him to tell him that he cannot find the healer. Once he’s gone, Diem makes her way into the kitchen, and the cooks are exasperated now because they will have to throw out all of the food and cook it again. She mentions something about the flames, and one of the cook drags her out of the kitchen to the foyer, where she meets Evrim and his son. Diem makes up a story that she got lost, tells Evrim she left the medicine and the instructions in the girl’s room, and requests her payment for the services. He gives it to her.

Diem then meets with Henri outside of the house, and shows him all that she got, which surprises him as everyone usually fails their first assignment—the whole purpose is for them to try it anyway. He tells her that she will be getting into the Guardians if she shows this to the Father. At night, Henri takes her to the Guardian hide out and provides the codes, but the bouncer at the door rejects her. He tells Henri that only he is allowed to go in and speak to the Father, but that Diem has to stay outside, and so she does stay outside, only to get into a tussle with the man and have him on the ground by the time Henri, the Father and two of his men show up. They tell the guy to lay off, and then ask her to show them what she has found. She shows them, and it takes them a while before they consider letting her in. The Father, who is later found out to be named as Vance, is undecided. Two of his men are not for her to join, since she is the daughter of Bellator, a man who has killed many of their own, but the bouncer tells Vance that they need more women like her—who know how to fight, so the Father lets her in. She thinks that there is something familiar about Vance, but she’s not sure why or how. At the meeting, Vance talks a lot, and Henri jokes that they will have to drink their blood to initiate her into the Guardians. She doesn’t realize it, and is about to leave when Henri tells her that he was joking and that she should see her face. She had also recognized Lana at the meeting, which was surprising and makes things awkward for them at the clinic. Brecke shows up and asks her if she managed to use her weapon on the Descended, to which she says that yes, she cut one of the men with the weapon, surprising Henri. Henri has her volunteering for a mission at the Palace, when Vance mentions it, telling her that she will be able to do it.

Diem goes to the palace with Maura, and Luther oversees the search, but then intervenes when one of the Descended guards touches her butt, and does the search himself. She told him that she did not have weapons, but he can tell that she does when he checks her boot, though she does make a couple of jokes about him being on his knees. He lets her keep it, and then takes them both to the king’s room. En route, Diem throws her bag into an alcove and then tries to remember which way she went to the King’s bedroom. When they reach the bedroom, Luther uses his magic to open the doors and answers some questions from Diem about the magic and how he makes shadows into weapons, which apparently is not something he should be sharing based on how stiff the guards get when she asks the questions. They enter the room, and Maura and Diem start laying things out to help the king after Diem rises ahead of time from the kneeling position Maura had told her she needs to follow. She doesn’t like that level of loyalty because she doesn’t think that any of the Descended had done anything to deserve it. Then, Diem tells them that she had left her bag behind, and runs out of the room, even after Luther calls out after her. She manages to run away to a section of the castle, following the map, and hides behind a column, when Luther enters that area and tells her to come out—and that she should not want to suffer the same fate as her mother. It almost has her coming out, but she doesn’t do it, and instead stays hidden until he and the guards disappear. She later returns to the room, where the guards frisk her, throwing all of her vials out of the bag and breaking them, asking her if that is poison. She says that there’s no way to prove it to them, and gets sassy, with a guard putting his blade against her and drawing blood. Luther shows up, gets angry when he sees the blood, and then stabs the guard with his own weapon in a spot where he doesn’t damage any of the guard’s internal organs but still makes him hurt. He tells the other guard to take him to his room, and that he will deal with them later. Diem tells him that he didn’t have to do that—that it was barely a scratch. He tells her that she should be glad to be leaving with her life.

When they leave, Maura remains silent and Diem finally breaks it before they make it to the city, apologizing to her. Maura asks her if she was even thinking of Teller when Diem did all that since Diem claims that she wants to take her mother’s position in order for Teller to keep going to school. Maura points out that Teller would rather quit school than see his sister get executed, and then she adds that Diem’s mother knows her best, and there was a reason why she kept Diem away from the Descended, so Diem will no longer be allowed to go visit the palace with Maura to serve the Royals. Diem tries to argue, but doesn’t win that argument. Instead, she meets up with Vance and his two commanders in charge that night at their location, and tells them that she failed. Vance tells her that she walked out alive, so there’s that, and that anyone who heard her plan would have told her it was bound to fail. They tell her that she’s not ready, but she does give them information about the hole in the city walls that she used to get into the palace. She feels guilty as soon as she does, but she does point it out anyway.

From there on, Diem visits Descended houses to heal them, and help them, but doesn’t go to the Palace. She is asked by the Guardians to keep her ears open, and she watches as Lana comes back from the Palace with Maura, wondering if Lana is giving any of the information to the Guardians. It becomes awkward between them to the point that even others are noticing. One day that she’s in the Descended city, she runs into Lily, who tells her that Luther speaks highly of her and that he’s really a nice person, just broody since he is the head of the Royal Guard, and feels guilty any time someone gets hurt on premises. Lily invites her and Teller to her palace for dinner with Luther, but Diem counters and invites Lily to their home. Lily agrees and tells her that she would like to know some healing though she can’t be a healer—but something that she could use for her children when she has them. That night, Diem makes fun of Teller by telling him and their dad that she invited Lily, a friend of Teller’s to the house for dinner and that she wants to learn some healing. Their father tells them that she is welcome and then Teller pokes fun at Diem, revealing to their father that Henri asked Diem’s hand in marriage three weeks prior but that Diem has asked him to let her think about it. Their father asks her why she wouldn’t say yes, and she asks him how he knew that their mother was the one. Andrei tells his kids about how he heard about Auralie in the army, and had seen her, meeting her once or twice, but then she went on a mission that had her gone for a year or more. He had made the plan to ask her out when she came back, but when she did, he chickened out. Then, she showed up one day with Diem in her arms to say goodbye, and he decided then and there that he couldn’t live without them, so he quit the army to join her. He tells her that you just know, you don’t have to think through, but tells her to take her time.

Suddenly, there is a big boom, and another, and their father points out that there is fire in the sky coming from the Descended City. Diem realizes that the Guardians had used her knowledge to get into the city and destroy something, and blames herself for whoever dies. Ignoring her father’s orders, she runs out with her bag to the healer’s center, where she picks up more medicine, and then races to the city. En route, she runs into Henri and several other Guardians hauling a wagon full of things, and they tell her that she can’t go there; that she can’t be seen. They refuse to let her go, so she agrees to leave with them, and then she runs away. Someone chases after her, catches up with her, so she cuts off her medicine bag, and lets it fall, before making it to the city and finding that the Benette Armory had gone up in flames—the one that she had gotten the map of. She tries to get in but the soldiers won’t let her, until she sees Luther. He seems to mouth at her to go home, but she calls him out and so he comes to her. She convinces him to let her help them, though she doesn’t have any of her medicine as she was attacked en route. So she just sits with the guards that had been burnt or hurt, holding them until they fall silent and unconscious from their pain. She makes it to the last one, who is a woman that is long gone, and it makes her sick—that she was a part of this in some way by giving the Guardians the information. Diem then overhears the conversation Luther is having with two of his commanders—there are guards trapped in the armory and he’s furious that there’s no way to save them. Diem offers to do it because she’s small and able to get through the hole, though Luther tries to dissuade her. She points out that she’s a mortal, so her life is meaningless, and useless, and Luther finally lets her go through to the armory in order to show no weaknesses against the mortal as their future kind.

Diem makes it through and finds one body of a guard that is dead, then she collapses. Suddenly, the voice is in her again, telling her to fight, and there is a cooling sensation in her that has her feeling like she can get through the rest of the armory. She finds two soldiers—one who is unconscious, and another who is trapped by a beam, his legs and hips crushed—and helps them back out to the front door, where Luther uses his magic to pull them through. He also uses his magic to open the area so he can walk to her in the flaming building. In that moment, she has the same vision she had a while back—of her wearing black skin-tight outfit, with a sword, and a circle of felled enemies. She touches her breast where her heart is and then looks up across the battlefield where she sees Luthor make the same sign; she had not been previously able to see him in her last vision. The vision goes away as Luthor comes in and they say each other’s name before she collapses. She continues to wake up here and there, including hearing Luthor speak to Eleanor telling her to help dress her, and Eleanor asking him who she is to him, but then Diem falls unconscious.

Diem wakes up in his room, with Luther sitting in a chair asleep. When he wakes up, they talk and she realizes that she doesn’t have any pain or any harmful thing done to her, and is dressed up in the outfit of a royal guard. She tells him that she has to go, but Luther tells her that he already sent word to her father through the courier, and she groans internally because it means Henri’s father, and that means that Henri will also know that she spent the night there. She decides it’s time to leave, and Luther asks her to help with checking on the King. Diem knows that there is no way to deny that request without bringing suspicion to a rift between Maura and her, so she agrees. She checks in on the King, who is looking even worse, and tells Luther that he doesn’t have much longer left. They speak about the King, with Luther telling her a bit about his upbringing, and then asking her about her thoughts of the King—she tells him that she thinks the progeny laws are cruel, but doesn’t go beyond that because she doesn’t have anything good to say to him. Sorae, a mythical creature known as the gryvvern who is tied to the Crown, had been roaring all day in anguish and Luther tells Diem that he’s never known her to be this agitated but it’s probably because she knows the end is near for King Ulther, and has her own agenda that she thinks she won’t be able to follow if the next in line for the Crown isn’t aligned with her. Diem points out that she has a lot of similarities to Sorae, and asks Luther if he’s the next in line, to which he says that he is, though their powers cannot be quantified. Diem had even tried to touch Sorae when she had come to the room, but Luther stopped her from touching her, saying that Diem truly has no fear for her life.

Suddenly, guards come into the King’s room, and tell Luther something. He asks Diem to stay in the room with the king and not come out until he comes back, which confuses her as she has two swords strapped to her, and a dagger made of something that can kill a Descended. She thinks about handing over her weapons, but then decides to sit with the king and talk to him. Suddenly, he wakes up and talks to her in a hoarse voice, telling her that he’s not afraid, and quoting some kind of prophetic stuff, which makes Diem think that he’s delusional. Suddenly he lets go and flops back, causing the dagger she received from Brecke to fly out. In her attempt to get to it, she trips over a chair and knocks it over, and just as she grabs the dagger, the guard comes in accusing her of doing something when she hasn’t done anything. Luther comes in, and seeing her holding the dagger, he checks the king over. Diem tells him to either arrest her or let her go, and he tells her to go, so she runs out of the palace and into the grounds. Luther follows her, catches up to her, and they have an argument by the side of the building, where he tells her that she’s so full of denial to herself—at first he thought she was a good liar. He points out that she can tell his power, as he can tell hers, and that she’s not a mortal—at least not fully. Diem holds the dagger to his throat, asking him why she shouldn’t kill him then and there. Blood starts seeping from his neck, as he tells her to go ahead and kill him, and put him out of his own miserable life since he’s been living on borrowed times. But he asks her a favor—to let him kiss her before she kills him, and then he kisses her. It’s an all consuming kiss for Diem, and she has a hard time letting him go, but she does, and when Luther tells her that he wants her to be the palace healer, but not to replace her mother as that agreement is between him and Auralie, she tells him that she’s quitting her job as a healer. He tells her that they won’t be seeing each other again, then, and she tells him that they will not. Luther lets her leave, with sadness, though he tells her that he knows that she saw that vision before she collapsed in the fire, and asks what if this is the beginning of their story. Diem laughs it off and leaves.

She goes to Maura first and tells her that she is quitting the healer’s center, which Maura is relieved to hear. Diem then goes to see Henri, but it takes her so long to knock on the door that Henri shows up behind her as he had been out. They get into an argument, where Diem realizes that Henri knew that they had poisoned the girl to get her in, and his argument against all the damage that the Guardians did to the Descended with the girl and with the armory is that there are way more mortals who are killed by the Descended anyway. He also reveals that Diem’s father is not a hero that she thinks he is, and that he had acquiesced to the order to come fight in a far off realm a week ago. Henri also tells Diem that the mortals who go to Sophos never come back because they become experimented on when they use their usefulness. Diem is furious, and returns home with a lot to think about.

But when she returns home, she finds her father waiting for her and he demands her to sit down. He tells her that he had never ever been inside the palace beyond the foyer and the sitting area, so to hear that she had been in the prince’s quarters is shocking. They get into an argument with each other, it escalating until it brings Teller in, and Diem reveals that Andrei is planning to leave them for the battlefront again, but that the decision wasn’t up for discussion as he claims in their argument, since he had written back over a week ago. She reveals that she quit her job as a Healer, and when she refuses to go back to it, her father tells her that she will marry Henri to take care of them both while they are gone. Diem refuses, telling him that she might work on Paradise Row, though Andrei tells her that no daughter of his will do that. She screams at him that he’s not her father, and he tells her to get out. Diem runs out feeling like she’s on fire, and the voice in side her head has been screaming to fight, and then to release her. She ultimately does, running away, while Teller follows her calling her name, when she bursts into fire and a crown settles upon her head. Teller tells her that she is the Queen of Lumnos, and that King Ulther had died.

In the Epilogue, the woman has been living in some obscure place, counting down the time with her chalk. She has been gone for over six months, and has been waiting for the king to die. Auralie wanders around looking at the place she used to live, and checking there to see if the man was still alive, but he isn’t and that means that both she and Diem are safe. She then watches the pillars as light comes in—revealing that the King had died, and now she can come back in thirty days.

My Thoughts:

I think the world building is interesting in this book, and I am looking forward to learning more about this world and what this now means for Diem that she is the Queen of Lumnos. That said, I’ve gotten more irritated with this book and the plot after I finished reading it. It’s a book that I did indeed read in a day, but it was not sitting right with me for a variety of reasons, though the main one is all the secrecy and the naivete of Diem. I understand that this is more of a fantasy with a slow burn romance on the side, and I don’t exactly expect Luther and Diem to get at it from the first go, so I understand why they don’t communicate. But the rest of the story is just annoying.

It’s obvious to me that Diem is a Descended or at least a part mortal, part Descended child, whose mother had hidden under the guise of a childhood illness that gave her the white hair and silver eyes. That to me means that everyone in Diem’s life—from her mother, to her father, to even Maura—has been lying to her. And then they continue lying to her even after they really have no reason to do so. I don’t believe the story that Maura has known her to have brown eyes and so that is what she told Luther when Luther came around asking questions, especially because she tells Diem that “it’s none of her business” when Diem asks if she said that Andrei is not her biological father, and then later tells her that her mother kept her away from the Descended for a reason, but is relieved when Diem quits? Why in the world would Maura be relieved when her best Healer and student quits the center? Maura even picks up on the vibes between Diem and Luther long before they kiss, and Maura does know that there were “other” things that Auralie was doing for the Royals beyond healing. But she never reveals it. If you want to protect her from the Descended, wouldn’t the right thing be to keep Diem in your line of sight, and that means that she will be working at the clinic?

Furtherly, I think Andrei is in on the whole schtick about Diem being a Descended. I’ve no clue what the “Daughter of the Forgotten” means at this stage of the book series, but the way that he freaks out about the Flameout powder, telling Diem that he knows she hasn’t taken it for 10 days, and the way that he loses his composure when he learns that she had been in Lumnos city when she has been expressly forbidden to go there, and then the way that he knowingly hints at the fact that Auralie is coming back but refuses to say anything about where she might be, it all gives me the creeps. I also now officially hate the guy because he is basically forcing Diem to get married to a man she doesn’t love, all because she refuses to work and have money for her and Teller to surive while Andrei is gone. Like, what, Andrei isn’t going to make any money while in his role as Commander? He can’t send money back? What is he, a gambler, an addict? What kind of backwards fuckwad has this guy become now that he’s going to the front lines? He taught her to fight and defend, but now that she’s not willing to do what he says, he expects her to fall back in line and be a docile woman, one that she has never been?

Henri annoys the living life out of me. He’s just tedious, and acts like a puppy following its master because he’s in love with Diem. I don’t think he’s in love with her, but rather I think he wants to control her because he thinks he is in love with her. And he hates the descended because his mother died as they refused to help her, so when he sees a child get trampled by a Descended, he sees all red. There are a ton of red flags with this guy, man, oh, man. Vance is another man that gives me the creeps—ultimately Diem recognizes him as looking in through a window into the healer’s center and then speaking with her mother.

So does this mean that her mother, Auralie, has been up to something all this time? What is she doing, and why? Part of me wonders if Auralie is the daughter of one of the kings of the realms and she fell in love with a mortal. But another thing that is more likely based on her history is that she went to one with a mark as a spy, and ended up pregnant with him, so went into hiding to have Diem, which is why she was gone for over a year, when she should’ve been back sooner. But the man found out or something and was abusive—why else would she be tentatively checking that room where she sees blood in the end and staying 12 steps into the entrance? Clearly the lady has some dark demons and trauma to deal with. But what I cannot understand is why lie to your daughter? Why wait for the king to die? If she’s waiting for Diem to become the Queen—how does she even know that Diem would become the queen, seeing as magic is not quantifiable? And if that’s what she’s waiting, why not come home to tell Diem the truth? It seems very cruel and vicious of Auralie to leave her daughter to figure out that she’s a Descended or part one on her own without guidance from the one person who would know the truth and could help her get control. If any of my guesses about this woman are true, may she be condemned to hell for all this.

At least I appreciate Luther for being honest in the end and telling Diem that she knows what she is but that she’s in denial. He’s the only one who while has secrets, these are not the secrets that impact Diem right now—he’s pulling on the thread that she is lying to herself, which is the truth. So far, he’s the only one who is not untrustworthy in this book along with Teller. Everyone else has ulterior motives and I have zero reason to trust any of them. I do hope that the next book in the series is better, though I’ve been warned by my friend that it gets worse before it gets better. Let’s see.