Chapter 44
Chapter
Forty-Four
I leaned back against the door as a wave of him hit me. His smell, his presence. It lingered, even after weeks of his absence.
I hated thinking of him as he was now—bed-bound and weakened. The Luther I knew was larger than life, a man from whom even Crowns trembled and shrank. Though he was quiet, an ocean of intensity surged beneath his skin. It seemed unthinkable that this modest room could have ever contained him.
He’d clearly left in a hurry. Pieces of him were scattered across the main parlor. Drawers hung ajar with clothes flung haphazardly to the floor, and weapons and empty sheaths cluttered a table.
The mess was so unlike him, and yet so perfectly apropos. I smiled, imagining the moment when he realized the compass would lead him to me—the ferocious resolve it would have provoked, the struggle poor Taran and Alixe must have had to force him to wait long enough just to pack a bag.
I walked into his bedchamber and sat on the edge of his perfectly made bed, running a hand along the cool fabric of his pillow where I’d woken up the morning after the armory attack.
He finally let his guard down with me that day. He showed me his smile, his laugh, his doubts, his trust. I hadn’t realized it then—and I would have fervently denied it for weeks that followed—but that was the moment the spark between us became a flame, the beginnings of our inevitable blaze.
I’d left here that day questioning everything. Despite all the time that had passed and all that had changed, I wasn’t any closer to knowing who I was.
But I finally knew what I wanted—with all of my heart.
I sighed and wandered back into the main parlor, my attention falling on the place where Luther had shown me his journal, entrusting me with the most vulnerable part of him. I’d hated him then, or at least I’d been trying to hate him, making him the scapegoat for everything I despised about the Descended.
But he never gave up on me. Never stopped fighting—for my vision of Emarion or for my heart.
I glanced at the bust of the goddess Lumnos that sat in a niche along one wall. Gathered at its base was a pile of dried flowers, glossy stones, and blown-out candles. I glared at her for a long moment, hating the calm serenity sculpted on her face as the world she left behind suffered for her mistakes. I rolled my eyes and stalked over, then conjured a single flame of Ignios fire at my finger to light each of the candles. Whatever my own feelings, Luther would want that.
“Why him? ” I shouted at the bust. “He’s done everything you’ve asked of him, and this is how you repay him?”
The bust of Lumnos stared back at me silently, her glossy marble eyes half-lidded and still.
“Choose someone else.” I flung a hand toward the window, the snow-brushed rooftops of Lumnos City just barely visible in the distance. “If our misery is what makes you happy, there’s a whole city of pricks out there in their mansions planning how to crush the mortals under their expensive heels. Pick one of them to torture for your amusement. Pick someone who deserves this.” Hot, angry tears sprung to my eyes. “Pick me . Let me suffer. I’ll take it all. Please, just... not him.” I sank to my knees, my voice turning hoarse. “Not my Luther.”
I wrapped my arms around myself, hunching forward under the unbearable drag of my sorrow. “Is this because of me? Because I haven’t bowed and worshiped your name like everyone else? Is this some depraved attempt to force me in line?”
My palms fell open in front of me, and I let my magic tumble from them unrestrained. Light and shadow swirled in a twinkling fog and spread across the floor, then crept up the walls. Dark clouds coated the ceiling, sparks glittering in the air, until the bust and I were floating alone in an infinite expanse.
“Here,” I pleaded. “My offering of magic. Take it—take every drop I have. Take the Crown, too. If that’s what you want from me, you can have it all.”
More magic began to pour out—a circle of crackling fire, chunky white snowflakes fluttering in a gust of wind that whirled through my hair, flowering vines that pushed through cracks in the stone walls, a cacophony of chirps from nocturnal creatures in the woods outside. I gritted my teeth and forced the magic out of me, screaming internally at my godhood to lay itself bare.
The bust’s silhouette wavered in my watery vision as my sobs grew more desperate.
“If you’re trying to break me, you’ve won. I’ll submit. I’ll be loyal. I’ll do whatever you ask. Anything . Just please ... don’t take him from me.”
The tears fell hard and fast, splashing against the cold stone beneath me. My soul felt as if it were rending in two, and I collapsed forward as I surrendered, with my words and my heart.
“Is my magic not enough? Do you need my blood, too?” I pulled Aemonn’s blade from the sash at my waist and slashed it across my hand, the blade cutting deep enough to scratch against bone. Blood gushed out in a heavy stream, though I felt no pain, my body already overwhelmed with a greater agony.
I threw the knife against the wall and offered up my bleeding palm. “Here. A bonded bargain—his life in exchange for whatever you want. My life, my soul. I’ll fight this war in your name. I’ll die for it, if you wish. I’ll pay any price you ask. You hear me? Any price .” My head sank low, too heavy to lift, my voice choking beneath my sobs. “Take it. Please. Please . I’m begging you...”
Words gave way to a long, sorrowful wail as I collapsed forward and succumbed to my despair. I knew my prayers would go unheard.
She wasn’t listening. The gods never listened.
But as my tearstained cheek pressed to the rough, cold stone, an unexplainable instinct lured my gaze back up.
And my breath caught in my throat.
Streaming down the smooth marble of the bust, beginning at the eyes and rolling over the apples of its cheeks, were tears. Dark, crimson-black tears.
Blood tears.
My heart seemed to still, watching, as I climbed to my feet and slowly walked closer. I reached out and brushed a finger across them, my eyes growing large as the blood trickled down my palm and mixed with my own.
“ Diem! Diem, are you in there? ”
Lily’s voice rang out from the corridor, shrill and panicked, followed by a string of rapid knocks.
I dissolved my magic, then sprinted to the door and threw it open. “What happened?”
Her face was ghastly white. “Come quick—it’s Luther.”
A delicate hope sprouted inside me. Had it worked? Had Lumnos answered my pleas?
I ran beside her down the hallway, through the parlor, and into my bedchamber. Remis and Avana were standing in front of the bed, clutching each other and blocking my view.
I darted around them—and froze.
Luther was convulsing, his body stiff and jerking in sharp, erratic jolts. Choked sounds rasped from his throat as he struggled to breathe, and lines of blood streamed from his nose.
“No,” I breathed, shaking my head.
I ran to the bed and grabbed his shoulder, grunting as I fought to turn him, but his body was too heavy, and my quivering hands were too weak.
“Help me,” I screamed at Remis.
He startled, his face as pale as Lily’s. He stepped forward and slid his hands beneath his son’s back, then pushed him onto his side.
The web of poisoned veins had grown significantly in my brief absence. Their spindly lines now stretched across Luther’s face and swirled around his temples.
I threw my magic into him and let out a sob when his godhood did not stir in response. I couldn’t even feel it now, the blanket of poison too thick, too smothering. His heart was almost invisible beneath the blackened cage of the godstone’s grip. When I listened for its beat, the thumps were soft and defeated and so, so few.
Luther was dying.
Not eventually.
Not soon.
Now.
I bowed my head. “Go get the others, Perthe. Tell them to hurry.”
His face twisted with sympathy. “At once, Your Majesty.”
Lily sat at Luther’s back and laid her arms around him, weeping quietly against his skin. She knew what my order implied.
I stroked my fingers through his hair. “My Prince. My brave, kind, handsome Prince. Please don’t go.”
His breathing cleared, though it was shallow and labored. His features pinched as guttural groans of discomfort rolled from his throat. He was clearly in pain, and from what I knew of a godstone death, it would be excruciating.
I looked at the small jar on my nightstand—the one Maura had given me before she left.
I can’t do this without you , I’d told him back in Umbros.
You can , he’d answered. And you will.
There had been so many times he had tried to warn me. To prepare me.
I will always be with you.
You have a world to lead.
I believe in you, Diem. Don’t ever forget that.
Go, my Queen. Live.
My trembling hand closed around the blue-green vial. “Is this what you want—for us to let you go?”
Lily raised her head, her stricken expression shattering what little was left of my heart. “What is that?”
“It will take away his pain. It will give him...” I let out a shaky breath. “... peace .”
I held her eyes until I saw that she understood what I wasn’t saying. She sobbed and pulled him tighter to her, but after a long moment, she looked back up and nodded through her tears.
When his convulsions faded, I propped pillows behind him and carefully eased him onto his back. My palm curved around his cheek, and I placed my final kiss on his lips, lingering as my tears fell and streaked over his skin.
“You thought you failed me. You never did. Never. I’m so very sorry, my love. I was the one who failed you.” I pulled the cork from the vial and raised it to his mouth. “Please forgive me.”
The glass rim pressed into his lip, and the last rays of light in my soul went dark as I began to tilt it forward.
The sound of metal jingled behind me—from where I knew no one stood.
I stopped and glanced over my shoulder. As I thought, the room was empty at my back. Then a glint of metal caught my eye near Luther’s palm.
I sat up straighter and pulled the vial away. A glimmer of something sparked deep in my gut.
An instinct. A hunch.
I pried his fingers open. Tucked inside was a small golden disc—the Meros compass. Taran must have grabbed it when I’d dumped out Luther’s bag earlier.
Put that in his hand , he’d said. It calms him to know he can always find you .
I grabbed the compass and flipped it open in a frantic prayer that its magic might lead me to a last-minute solution, but its quivering red dial only pointed to Luther, just as it had every time I’d looked at it since the night of the Challenging.
“What is it?” Lily asked, looking hopeful.
My shoulders sagged as my hand flopped to my side. “Nothing. It’s noth—”
The compass shuddered with a strange whirring sound. I looked at it again and squinted, then glanced up, my eyes following the line of its arrow to Luther—then further, to an area of the room just beyond him.
“What’s going on?” Remis asked.
“I’m not sure,” I mumbled. I stood up and walked around the bed. Remis and Avana began pelting me with questions and demands, but I didn’t listen, my brows dipping as I strode toward my desk.
I’d thrown everything off it when I arrived, but one object had escaped my sweep. Another vial—this one a dark emerald green, a gift from the Arboros Queen at my Ascension Ball.
I turned to Remis, interrupting him mid-sentence. “Arboros—do they have a cure for godstone toxin?”
“You’re asking this now? ”
“Answer the question,” I shot back.
He looked at his son and sighed. “No, they do not. Arboros and Sophos have been researching it for centuries.”
“Is it possible they lied? Maybe they found one but kept it secret for only their use?”
“Unlikely. A cure would give them all the leverage they could ever want over the other Crowns. They could trade it for any demand they pleased.”
I looked back at the vial on my desk, my frown curving deeper. The Arboros Descended had claimed the potion could cure any disease—except for ailments sent directly from the gods.
“What are you looking at?” Remis asked.
I didn’t respond.
“ Answer me ,” he snapped.
My fists clenched at his entitled tone, aggravating the gash I’d cut in my palm and sending a fresh torrent of blood dripping from my hand. I snatched the vial from my desk and whipped back around to hiss some furious reply—then stopped stone-still at the sound of a click .
A burst of heat shot up my arm. I slowly raised my palms and unfurled my fingers. In one hand, the vial from Arboros. In the other, the compass—its arrow now missing, the blood-smeared dial aglow with a brilliant light.
The compass’s sign that I’d just found what my heart most desired.
Numb and stunned, I shuffled back to Luther. My body moved on its own, my mind trapped outside myself, watching each step with bated breath. My hands uncorked the Arboros vial and raised it to Luther’s mouth, letting the tonic trickle down his throat.
When only a handful of drops remained, I swore and jerked it back. I’d assumed it was meant to be swallowed—but I didn’t know for sure.
I peeled the soiled gauze from his wound and grimaced at the grey, decaying flesh. I turned the vial over and shook it hard as blood splattered from my hand across his skin. I scraped my fingers inside the glass to collect every last drop, then pressed them directly into his wound, the healer inside me cringing at the crude yet effective method.
“What was that?” Lily asked. “Will it help him? Or...” She swallowed. “Is it like the other vial?”
I had neither honesty nor false hope to offer. I gave a vacant blink and shook my head. “I truly don’t know.”
We shared a long look, neither of us saying any more.
I crawled into the bed beside him and laid my cheek over his chest to listen for his heartbeat. It was unchanged—still weak, still struggling.
Lily followed suit and nestled into his other side. She tucked under his arm and set her head on his shoulder. She reached out for me, and I took her hand, our fingers entwining as they lay joined on his chest.
I closed my eyes and focused on the rhythm of his heart—the one I cherished more deeply than any other.
Listening.
Praying.
Hoping .