Chapter 1 #2
I tucked it into my pocket instead. “I’m going to check on Sorae.”
“You can bring her closer to camp, you know. I won’t let anyone hurt her.”
“Are you going to dismantle your ballista and burn the godstone bolt so no one can use it against her?”
No response came.
“Then Sorae will stay where she is.”
“Luther . . .”
“I said no, Auralie. Diem would have my head if she knew Sorae was this close to them as it is.”
“It’s not that. A messenger hawk arrived this morning.” She held out a scrap of rolled-up paper, her expression grave. “Vance is in Lumnos.”
My blood went cold. Visions of a burning, crumbling palace filled my mind, the imagined screams of my sister Lily ringing in my ears.
“Is Ophiucae with him?” I asked. “Did they attack?”
She shook her head. “He only brought Francis, his third-in-command. They’re recruiting for Ophiucae’s army.”
Her answer brought little relief. Vance and Ophiucae had formed an unlikely alliance, bonded by their shared wish to see all Descended dead. Where one went, the other might not be far behind.
“And if they do more than recruit?” I asked.
“We talked about this, Luther. We agreed it was a risk we had to take. Lumnos is well fortified against an attack.”
“So was Fortos. Now half the city is a pile of rubble.”
Her expression softened with a maternal concern I wasn’t sure what to do with. I hadn’t seen a look like that since my mortal mother was alive. “My offer still stands,” she said. “I can have my people get your sister and bring her here—”
“No,” I cut in. “Keep your people away from her.” Though I’d allied myself with the Guardians, I saw the way their hands tightened on their blades when I passed. Lily was no safer here than in Lumnos.
“Very well. If there’s anything else I can do . . .”
I turned away, unsettled by her compassion. “Tell me if you hear more. If Ophiucae gets anywhere near Lumnos, I want to know.”
I found Sorae in her usual spot. Though I was unwilling to let her come near camp, she was equally unwilling to let me too far out of sight.
We’d compromised on the trees by the Arboros coast, out of range of the Guardians’ ballista but close enough that if Diem got free, we could be airborne in minutes.
Today, though, she wasn’t alone. She was sprawled on the shore with Teller, who sat nearby on a boulder, holding a fishing rod he’d crafted from wood and horsehair.
Sorae lifted her head and let out a whir of greeting. Her golden eyes shone with the same concern as Auralie’s, though I knew her spirits were as low as mine.
Teller cast me a glance. “Your magic’s back again,” he said flatly.
Again—so he knew I’d been keeping it a secret.
I schooled my reaction. “What makes you think that?”
“Your eyes get brighter. The same thing happened to Diem when she stopped taking the flameroot. Every time it happens, you disappear, and you don’t come back until they’re dark again.”
I stood on Sorae’s other side and stroked a hand down the obsidian scales of her neck. She leaned into me with a restless whine.
Teller pulled in his line, then cast it back out into the water. “Did you tell my mother about your magic?”
“No.”
“You don’t trust her?”
I pulled out the jar with the flameroot balm. “It seems you don’t, either.”
His expression darkened. “She tried to test it on you, didn’t she?”
“She asked.” I tossed it to him. “I declined.”
He caught it and ran a hand through his hair, the late afternoon sun making his auburn curls look the same bright red as his mother’s. “I already know it will work. Everyone else here might be a fighter, but this is what I do.”
He was a damn good fighter himself. Though he’d refused to officially join the Guardians, on his darker days, I’d seen him wander into the sparring rings at camp.
His technique was impressive. His strikes were calculated and precise, no doubt the result of his father’s training.
He kept his cool, even when goaded. And he was strong—he’d been well fed at the Lumnos palace, and every ounce had gone into filling him out with a layer of muscle.
Like me, he’d declined the rebels’ half-rusted razors, and a dusting of copper hair now coated his jaw.
He’d turned eighteen a fortnight prior. His mother’s attempts to celebrate had been met with tense silence. The timid boy I’d first met in the dungeon had grown into a man—an angry one. One who carried the guilt of lives lost on his shoulders.
A burden I understood excruciatingly well.
“I asked Mother why she sent me to the Descended school,” he mumbled.
“I knew the answer. I just wanted to see if she would admit it.” He paused.
“I used to wake and see her taking my notes from my desk or putting them back. I never said anything. I thought she was curious. Paranoid, maybe.” His jaw ticked.
“Turns out she was using me to plan a rebellion.”
“Did she admit it?” I asked.
“She said it was for me and for the Guardians. And for Diem, so we could help her once the truth about her being Descended came out.” His eyes narrowed.
“I would have done it for D. There were classes I could have taken or books I could have borrowed. I could have helped her understand her magic, if Mother had just given me a choice.”
He angrily threw the jar of flameroot balm into the sand. Sorae nuzzled his leg with her snout.
I offered only a nod. I’d seen my cousin Taran in moods like this, mad at the world and needing to be heard without judgment.
When Teller didn’t continue, I stretched out my palm toward the jar and called forth my godhood. I gritted my teeth as it rose in a furious surge. My arm trembled with the effort of holding it back from exploding across the beach and leveling half the forest.
Find her, it growled. Free her. Save her. Touch her.
My godhood had always been defensive of Diem. Protect her, it had commanded me the day I first met her at the palace and every day since.
At the time, I’d resisted, unsure whether it was a message from the Blessed Mother or my own raging lust. Diem was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, and her unapologetic scorn for the Descended world I secretly despised had been more addictive to me than a drug.
After she took the Crown, I thought I had my answer: she was the grey-eyed Queen that Lumnos had commanded me to serve, the leader who would burn this world to ash and build it anew.
But it wasn’t until the day I stormed into a spare palace bedroom in a jealous rage to stop her from fucking that mortal prick Henri that I’d seen the truth: my lust had become something more, and my devotion to Diem had far exceeded the Blessed Mother’s command.
FIND HER, my godhood snarled again. FREE HER. SAVE HER. TOUCH HER.
I dug my heels into the sand as I wrestled my godhood into submission. It grudgingly bent to my will, though its feverish resolve continued to simmer.
The jar’s outline wobbled as if in the distance of a desert mirage. Its edges blurred and its color lightened to match the sandy beach. A moment later, it faded from sight.
Teller balked. “Luther, that mixture took me weeks to formulate!”
My brows knit in concentration. With a twitch of my finger, the jar shimmered back into view—in an entirely new shape and hue.
“An illusion,” Teller said as understanding dawned.
I nodded. “It’s a trick I never mastered. Since you know about my magic, you might as well help me practice.”
The prospect of a challenge seemed to lighten his mood. He dragged in his fishing line and pulled the bait from his hook, tossing it into Sorae’s waiting mouth, then set his rod aside.
I drew in a breath and let my magic expand in a cocoon around my body. The air around me glittered, then wobbled, and my body disappeared.