Spark of the Everflame by Penn Cole EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Penn Cole
- Language: English
- Genre: Sword & Sorcery Fantasy
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
Between the dead patient, the drunk men, and the blood sun, my day was
not off to an auspicious start.
A stream of inebriated revelers stumbled through the dusty alleys of
Mortal City, their catcalls and slurred words an unwelcome refrain on my
walk home. Though I gave their roaming hands a wide berth, I couldn’t avoid
the hooded, red-rimmed eyes that followed me with too much interest.
The blood sun wasn’t helping. At dawn, a thick haze had settled across
the sky, bathing the city in an eerie scarlet glow. As the sun rose to its
midday peak, it seemed to make the early summer heat scorch hotter, thicker,
angrier.
“I hate days like this,” Maura muttered.
I glanced at the short, ruddy-faced older woman at my side. She paused
and leaned on her cane as her honey-brown eyes turned skyward, the corners
of her lips hooking into a frown.
“Forging Day is bad enough without this infernal heat,” she said.
I hummed in agreement. Rising temperatures brought rising tempers, and
that meant more fights, more injuries, and more patients.
“The healers’ center will be a madhouse this evening,” I said. “I can come
back with you, if you’d like. I’m sure the apprentice healers would appreciate
the extra hands.”
“Your mother and I can handle things for the rest of the day. Go on home
and rest, you had a rough morning shift.”
I flinched at the memory.
Maura set her age-worn hand on my forearm and gave it a squeeze. “It
wasn’t your fault, Diem.”
“I know,” I lied.
A patient had died on my watch.
He’d been young—far younger than his weathered features suggested,
orphaned and swallowed up by the slums of Mortal City. On the brink of
starvation, he’d tried to poach a roast duck from a vendor’s cart and received
a knife between the ribs in return. By the time I arrived, he’d lost too much
blood, his breath raspy and wet from a collapsed lung.
I could do nothing but hold his hand and murmur the sacred Rite of
Endings. The life had dimmed from his carob eyes while the merriment
continued around us uninterrupted. No one had paused to pay respects, not
even as I’d struggled to haul his body to the forest surrounding our village so
he could decompose in peace, eternally slumbering under a blanket of
whatever fallen leaves I could collect.
The unnecessary cruelty of it had set my temper ablaze. Every patient’s
death lay heavy on my soul, but this boy had been so young, his death so
preventable, that I couldn’t help feeling the weight of it on my shoulders. It
had lit a spark deep within me, a need for justice, that I was struggling to
ignore.
“Strange to have a blood sun on Forging Day,” I said, eager to change the
subject. I tucked a wisp of white hair behind my ears, its unnatural hue made
all the more bold against the dark tan of my sun-drenched skin. My focus
rose to the crimson orb glaring down at us. “Feels like a bad omen.”
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