It felt surreal to gaze upon such a large expanse of it now. As my eyes roved over the elaborate architecture, its black stone twinkling like the surface of a sunlit sea, something hovered at the edge of my memory. Something familiar. Something important, but just out of reach.
Nearby whispers reached my ear. I spun around, expecting to see the three Crowns I’d left behind, but there wasn’t a soul in sight.
“Hello?” I called out.
My gaze hooked on a flutter of movement in the grass. I crept closer, my focus fixed on the swaying blades as they rippled back to stillness.
“Is someone there?” I shouted.
I stepped off the gravel path and onto the springy soil. A few more steps took me into the tall brush. I nudged at the roots with my toe, hoping to stir up some wild creature to blame for the disturbance.
“Hello?” I said again, softer this time, and took another step. I fell still, the way I’d learned during years of hunting in the forest, honing my eyes and ears for the faintest rustle.
After a long, silent minute, embarrassment rushed through me. Coeur?le was the most well-guarded place in Emarion—what was I expecting to find?
As I turned back, rolling my eyes at my own foolishness, I reached down to snap a handful of the red wildflowers from their spindly stalks. I raised the blooms to my nose and closed my eyes as I slowly breathed in.
My back instantly went stiff.
The smell was crisp and vaguely smoky, the scent of a distant fireplace on a brisk winter night, with a hint of bright citrus. It was an aroma I knew intimately—far too intimately.
My mind was transported back to so many mornings, sitting at the kitchen table, teasing my brother as my mother poured me a cup of tea. I could almost feel the hot steam rising to my lips, the bitter taste on my tongue. And in my mind’s eye, I could spy it there on the counter—a crescent-shaped jar, filled with a powder of vivid scarlet. The very same color as the petals wilting in my fist.
Flameroot.
These flowers had to be the origin of the powder my mother had used to suppress my Descended abilities.
Of course—if the island’s soil could nullify magic, then the flowers must be imbued with that same trait. That would explain why the Fortos King kept it so guarded, and why the other Crowns had been alarmed at the idea of it growing on the mainland.
But if it only grew here, how had my mother obtained so much of it? And why had that knowledge upset Luther so deeply?
A glint of light sparkled deep within the brush, like sunlight reflecting off metal. I strained to peer through the tall foliage. “Hello?” I called out again.
“What the hell are you doing?”
I whipped around at the harsh snap of a masculine voice. The Crowns of Fortos, Arboros, and Faunos were standing behind me.
“I told you to stay on the path.” The Fortos King stormed over and grabbed my arm, swatting the crushed red petals from my hand and dragging me back to the trail. “Those flowers can’t be harvested without the permission of all nine Crowns.”
“I wasn’t harvesting anything,” I said archly. “I thought I heard voices, so I was investigating.”
“And you thought the flowers were speaking to you?” the Faunos Queen said with a laugh. “Perhaps you belong in Arboros rather than Lumnos.”
The Arboros Queen’s face turned thoughtful. She walked forward to kneel at a clump of wildflowers and graze her fingertips along their fluffy petals. “I would love to talk to these pretties. I imagine they’ve seen such fascinating things.”
“The plants speak to you?” I asked.
“Not in the way a human speaks. But every living thing has a story to tell, for those with the power to listen.”
The Faunos Queen murmured an agreement, and despite their earlier arguing, the two women shared a knowing look.
“Do the shadows not speak to you, Lumnos?” the Arboros Queen asked. “Does the light not have its own truth?”
The Fortos King pushed me forward. “I don’t have time for this. Let’s get to the Temple so I can return to my realm.”
I reluctantly obeyed. His ire radiated from him for the rest of the walk, leaving me stewing in its heat at his side.
I chewed on my lip. I needed to fix this and restart our interaction on the right foot. His army would be critical in defusing the war.
“Thank you for the gift you sent for my ball,” I chirped with forced enthusiasm. “It was a very fine blade.”
He grunted, his attention never leaving the Temple that loomed nearby.
“The craftmanship was quite impressive. Was it made by Brecke Holdern, by any chance?”
His gaze cut sharply to me. “How do you know him?”
“He’s a good family friend. He worked with my mother in the army.”
He swiveled to block my path. “Impossible. Brecke didn’t enlist until after your mother left.”
A sinking feeling pooled in my gut. Brecke had lied. But if he hadn’t met my mother in the army…
“My mistake,” I mumbled. “I… I must be misremembering.”
“Brecke disappeared from Fortos earlier this week, along with a very important stash of weapons.” His gaze narrowed as he leaned close. “I don’t suppose you know anything about that.”
“Obviously not.” I forced a haughty tone into my voice to mask my panic. There was only one reason for a mortal soldier to vanish with an arsenal of Descended weapons.
So much for restarting on the right foot.
The Arboros Queen slid a shoulder between the two of us, placing a delicate hand on the King’s chest. “Fortos, making accusations is not how we welcome a new Crown. The poor woman hasn’t even been coronated yet.”
His garnet eyes sparked with malice. “If she’s fraternizing with Guardians…”
“It sounds like you’ve been fraternizing with him, too. Shall we condemn you both?” He shot her a glare that would have decimated a lesser person. She pressed harder, forcing him to yield a step. “Let’s finish the Rite. Then we can discuss the matter with cooler heads.”
He held his fighting stance a moment longer, his eyes drilling into me in warning, then turned and stalked away.
“Thank you,” I breathed. “I had really hoped to get through this without any dramatics or fighting.”
The other two Queens shared a look and burst into laughter. “It’s a meeting of the Crowns, lamb. Dramatics and fighting are what we do best.”
If the Kindred’s Temple had looked imposing from afar, at its base it was outright ominous. The towering obelisks stretched into the sky like the bars of a cage, each topped with a flame-lit cauldron. The distant sound of waves crashing on the shore mixed with the crackling of the nine fires.
No, not nine—one cauldron remained unlit.
I followed the others up the staircase that curved around the platform. The enormous scale of the Temple had me feeling at once insignificant and powerful beyond measure. There was a grim, lethal energy that buzzed beneath my feet, as if the stone itself were charged with dark magic. The air around me felt somehow ancient, a vacuum where time and space sat in wait and the impossible became reality.
“That’s the Lumnos portal,” the Arboros Queen said, nudging me toward the stone arch beneath the unlit cauldron.