Chapter 8
DIEM
“Oh, Dessies, Dessies, a loathsome crew,” I crooned at the top of my lungs.
“Cruel and vicious, untrustworthy, too. Beware their charms, stay out of their beds.” I raised a knotted bundle of waterweed, swinging it like a banner.
“If only their dicks were as big as their heads!” I grinned to my left. “Right?”
No one answered.
I cackled loudly. “Come on, Perthe, don’t be offended. I’m sure yours is huge.”
More silence.
I swatted at his gravestone with the plants. “Fine, see if I ever teach you any mortal drinking songs again.” I flopped back on the ground, arms and legs sprawled wide in the grass. It was a beautiful day, sunny and gorgeous. The perfect day for a celebration.
I sighed. “Blessed birthday to me.”
While scavenging my first day on the island, I’d found the remnants of what looked like a makeshift calendar. I recognized my mother’s handwriting scrawled with chalky stone. The reminder of her had sent me into a pit of gloom I didn’t crawl out of for days.
Then, it gave me resolve.
I was walking in her footsteps, reliving the same miserable existence she had endured not once but twice, even while carrying me in her womb. If she could survive this, so could I.
My mother had taught me so many skills in the forests of Lumnos—how to forage for food, how to catch rainwater and make it safe to drink, berries and mushrooms that would feed me and those that would leave me dead.
I’d collected these lessons, thinking little of where she’d learned them (picked up over the years, she’d say) or why she’d taught them to me (you never know what you might need).
Now, I understood. Though I doubted she ever imagined me trapped in the same open-air prison that once caged her, she’d given me the tools I needed to stay alive.
Staying sane was another matter.
I squinted at the sun. “Looks like midday. You know what that means, Perthe. Wanna join me?”
Silence.
I shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
My hands folded behind my head as I curled my forehead to my knees one time for each line on my calendar, once for each lonely, repetitive, dismal day.
I relished the burn that built in my torso, the way the ache cut through my hunger and the fog of my thoughts.
“A healthy body is a healthy mind,” I huffed out, flipping onto my stomach and pausing as the world wobbled dizzily around me.
I flattened my palms and pushed off the ground until my arms were straight, then shakily lowered. “That’s what Father always said.”
I repeated the motion several more times, trying to ignore my spotting vision. My muscles had languished with no trees to climb, no swords to swing, no heavy satchels to carry or horses to ride. Isolation had made me weak.
Physically. Emotionally. Mentally.
I rose and shook out my arms, then began to walk in a circle, dipping in a low lunge with each step. A breeze chilled the beads of sweat forming at my temples. “We have to stay strong, right Perthe?”
More silence.
I’d tried to exercise my mind as well as my body.
The books I’d flipped though in the Sophos library were recorded in my head, but with the island stifling my Sophos magic, my attempts to “read” them were like trying to relive the memories of a well-spent day, the feelings sharp but the details murky.
Then, I’d tried reciting healer knowledge, listing out every ingredient in our inventory at the center, then the recipe for every salve and tincture. That lasted for a while, until I was certain I’d die from boredom before hunger.
Today, I was celebrating my birthday by teaching Perthe the most irreverent jokes and songs I knew. I’d done so before, at the victory dinner after my Challenging, and I’d never seen him laugh so hard.
I’d been overwhelmingly happy that night. I’d felt hopeful for the future and so, so loved.
By one man in particular.
My legs quivered. I fell to my side, panting to catch my breath. “Don’t think about him,” I mumbled. “You know what happens when you do.”
Too late.
Everything began to feel tighter—my skin, my lungs. My pulse picked up speed as two heartbeats stampeded in my chest. I wanted to hurl myself into the sea, even if it killed me, just to feel a tiny bit closer to him.
Memories collapsed like a crumbling building on my head.
His voice, that rich bass that sang of velvet and iron.
His eyes, cold as frost yet ablaze with a fire only I could fully see.
His touch. Gods, his touch. His palms, strong and broad, resting on the small of my back, circling my neck, pushing inside me.
My fingers dug into the soil as I gasped for air. My head throbbed, my skin sizzling like I was bathing in hot oil.
I need him.
I need him.
I need him.
I tore at the collar of my tunic, now reduced to a threadbare rag, and pressed my trembling hand to my heart. The silvery symbol beneath it shimmered to a golden glow.
Instantly, I felt calmer. Safer.
Certain that, once we were together, everything would be alright.
Perhaps then this gods-damned bond would give me a moment of gods-damned peace.
My eyes turned to the sky, azure and cloudless. The weather was warm but not uncomfortably so. For the first day of spring, it was perfect. Annoyingly perfect.
Like the gods were mocking me yet again.
“What good is this doing?” I yelled at them.
“Why tell Luther to serve me, then keep us apart? Why give me Crowns just to trap me here?” I pushed back up to my feet, a bit breathless and a lot unsteady, and pointed to the sea.
“Your people are dying. Do you care for them so little that you would watch them slaughtered while I do nothing?”
A thought struck me like a slap. “Or do you not trust me, either? You think I’ll join him.”
If I was being really, truly, brutally honest . . . I couldn’t blame them. Even before discovering there had been a tenth Kindred named Omnos, and that Ophiucae and I were the only known Descended of his line, I’d felt a connection to my sire that even his evil deeds couldn’t erase.
“I know what I have to do,” I muttered. “I don’t have to like it.”
I looked down at my body. Stains had darkened my clothing, and my skin was caked with dirt and gritty sand blown in from the shore. My once white hair was a frizzy grey-brown nest of knots.
“If Luther could see me now, he’d take off running,” I grumbled.
The mating mark throbbed. Toward you, it seemed to remind me. The only place he’d run is to you.
I sulked toward some nearby flowers to gather an offering for Perthe. When I reached for a handful of stems, my focus caught on a single flower with eleven ruffle-edged, yellow-red petals. Its hue was so similar to the bright crimson of the flameroot, I’d almost overlooked it.
I plucked it free. “You’re only supposed to bloom in summer,” I murmured. “And never in sandy soil.” I rolled the stem between my fingers. “Hey, Perthe, I found you something special.” I held it out toward him. “Look—rosebane. Isn’t it lovely? It’s very rare, you know.”
He didn’t seem impressed.
“They used to call it God’s Horn. Some people say the right dose will get you just close enough to death to speak with the gods.” I smirked. “Should I see if it works?”
The gravestone gave off a distinct air of disapproval.
I rolled my eyes and wedged the flower’s stem beneath the rock. “Fine. I like giving presents better than receiving them, anyway.”
I let my gaze drift over the island, searching for a distraction from the bittersweet memories of what my birthdays had once been. What it might have been today, if I wasn’t stuck here.
My attention stopped on the Kindred’s Temple, where Yrselle’s gown billowed in the wind. Her face was turned to me, the dark hollows of what used to be her eyes fixed in a macabre stare.
I’d tried hard not to look at her corpse these past weeks. It felt wrong to remember her like this instead of the intimidating beauty she’d been in life.
Today, though, I couldn’t look away.
The future is so much darker now, she’d said. If there’s even still a future at all.
Though the air was balmy, a shiver rattled down my spine.
Blessed Father Umbros warned me that our fate hung in the balance of your choice. He urged me to trust you. Instead, I tried to force your hand. That decision cost me much. This decision will cost me everything.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I yelled. “I would have helped you, Yrselle. I could have stayed in Umbros. I—”
Would I have stayed, with Luther dying of godstone poisoning? Would I have sacrificed him to save thousands of others? Was that a betrayal, or was the real betrayal letting him live with those deaths on his shoulders? I knew what Luther would have wanted, had he known the cost.
Rosebane.
I blinked at the sudden thought.
Hadn’t Yrselle said something about rosebane? I pressed the heels of my palms to my brow as I waded through the muddled memories leading up her death.
Take the rosebane. Use my key. Heed my warnings—especially about my heir.
My eyes grew wide.
Take the rosebane.
I stared down at the abandoned flower. In the wrong amount, rosebane could be lethal, even for Descended. If you were lucky enough to survive it, its hallucinations were said to make you lose all touch with reality. In a place like this, that could get me killed in a hundred different ways.
Taking it would be foolish. Reckless. Suicidal. Utterly insane.
My gaze lifted again to Yrselle.
Take the rosebane.
And don’t forget what you pledged to sacrifice to see your plans through.
I reached down and plucked a velvety petal from the flower, then took a deep, uncertain breath. “May the Everflame save me.”
Before I could talk myself out of it, I popped it into my mouth and swallowed it whole.
I froze, fingers still perched on my lips.
Oh, gods.
Oh, gods.
“By the Flames,” I breathed. “What the hell did I just do?”
I sprinted toward the brush and doubled over, jamming two fingers down my throat to force a gag.
Tears formed at the corners of my eyes. As wretched as my situation had become, I didn’t want to die.
I had family and friends, I had a mate—an unknowing, unbonded one, but one I loved with all my heart.
I had hope.
And I wanted to live.
I moaned with relief when my stomach spasmed and an acrid burn hit my tongue. There was little in my belly to come back up, but it did, along with one wilted, yellow-red petal.
My body shuddered, the lingering effects of adrenaline and nausea mixing with near-hysterical laughter and no small amount of fear. It had been on my tongue only a second, in my stomach for little more. Was that enough to be lethal?
I scraped savagely at my lips. “Shit shit shit.”
“Such language,” a voice crooned.
I froze.
“Did your father teach you to speak that way?”
I whipped around, nearly tumbling backward, but there was only Perthe’s gravestone and the tall, fluttering grass.
“Hello?” I called out.
I crept forward, peering at the nearby Lumnos pier. There was no boat docked, no sign of visitors to be found. But that voice . . . I was certain I’d heard—
“Wrong direction, girl.”
I sucked in a breath. The first voice had been rich, masculine, with a teasing lilt. This voice was female and annoyed—and it had come from further inland. I spun again to the Temple, but there were no living souls to be seen.
I scrubbed a hand down my face. “I really am going crazy.” I shook my head with a nervous laugh. “Thank the gods no one can hear me.”
“We always hear you, Diem.”
That voice.
That voice.
I’d heard it before. In a bedroom, in a palace, from a body to which it didn’t belong.
My heart hammered uneven drumbeats—one calm, one racing. A rustling sound caught my attention near the Temple, and I took off running until I reached its steps. “Who are you?” I shouted.
“The real question is, who are you?” a fourth voice taunted, this one seeming to somehow come from above.
My head jerked up to the dais. The godstone obelisks atop the arches stretched into the sky, each one topped with a cauldron of flames.
But the flames weren’t flickering—they weren’t moving at all. Each fire was suspended in an impossible pause.
I held my breath, eyes wide, as I crept up the Temple steps. When my gaze broke above the platform, a scream strangled in my throat. Nine figures stood in a circle wearing robes of moonlight silk.
Ice-white hair. Silvery, stardust skin.
And matching eyes of smoky grey.
A woman with a kind face and a heartbroken gaze stepped forward from one archway—the one carved with a crescent moon in a fiery sun. “Hello, Diem,” she said. “There’s no need to be afraid.”
“Who . . . who are you?” I rasped.
But I already knew the answer.
Her patient smile said she knew it, too.
“You know us as the Kindred. And we’ve been waiting a very long time to meet you.”