Chapter 11
DIEM
“I’m sorry—who did you just say you are?”
“The Kindred,” the woman repeated. She touched her chest. “Your people gave me the name Lumnos.”
I gawked around the Temple as my brain tried to accept what I was seeing. Nine pairs of grey eyes stared back from faces that were distinct yet unquestionably related.
“Impossible,” I gasped.
“Nothing is impossible,” the man under the Sophos arch corrected, “for those willing to search for an answer.”
“How is this happening?” I asked him.
“You took the God’s Horn, did you not?”
“It seems you are capable of doing what you’re told,” Umbros said dryly. He swept a loose braid of his long, silky hair over his shoulder. “We were beginning to wonder.”
I shook my head. “God’s Horn . . . that’s just a myth. A story. It can’t—you’re not—”
“It can, and we are,” Fortos said. He was brawny and broad, built like a brick, exactly how I would have pictured him.
“Great power lies in stories,” Montios said softly. She was the most petite of the group, mild and unassuming, but her features carried the heaviness of quiet wisdom.
“Indeed,” said the woman under the Ignios arch. She reminded me of Alixe—fierce, hardy, clearly a warrior, yet with an approachable warmth. “There’s one story in particular we’ve come to share with you.”
I stared down at my palms, then pressed them to my cheeks. My skin felt flushed, but my hands were clammy—the effects of rosebane toxin, most likely, along with these wild hallucinations.
“You’re not hallucinating,” Umbros said.
Umbros—the god of thought magic.
My eyes snapped up. “Did you just read my mind?”
“I didn’t need to. You, Daughter of the Forgotten, are painfully easy to read.”
I walked around the Temple, taking them in one at a time.
They were so much like the Descended of the realms that bore their names.
Umbros wore the smirk of a man with many secrets.
Sophos looked . . . well, like he lived in a library.
Faunos was preternaturally still, staring like he might pounce at any moment.
All of them were beautiful in their own way, their skin illuminated with unearthly light.
When I reached Lumnos, I paused. Something in me felt drawn to her, even more so than the other Kindred whose Crowns I wore.
I took a step closer, and so did she. Her hand rose to my face, her fingertips lightly lifting my chin.
The moment her shimmering flesh touched mine, my skin blazed with the same starshine glow. Though her touch was neither warm nor solid, it felt like being enrobed in the calming embrace of a loving, protective light.
It felt, somehow, like him.
My hand rose to my mating mark. Lumnos noted the gesture and smiled. “I hoped you might open your heart to my Prince. He does love you so.”
. . . Her Prince?
My awe shifted, sharpened, hardened to steel. How dare she claim Luther, after all she’d put him through? He’d sworn himself to her service and received only pain in return.
“If you really are the Kindred . . .” My eyes narrowed. “Then fuck you.”
Her smile dropped.
I recoiled from her touch and pointed at each of them. “Emarion belonged to the mortals. This island belonged to the Old Gods. You stole it all to feed your own egos.”
“We stole nothing,” Fortos argued. “We used our magic to help the mortals, and they welcomed us.”
“Not all of them,” I snapped. “That’s the lie you wanted us to believe, but I read the books you banned. I know the history you tried to burn.”
“That was done after we passed,” Ignios said. “We wished to live alongside the mortals, not eliminate them.”
“That’s not entirely true, sister, is it?” Umbros said. “We bid our children to intermarry with the mortals and repopulate our kind in this world.”
I balked. “You wanted to replace us?”
“Not a replacement—a union,” Arboros said. “Our people and the mortals, becoming one.”
“By breeding us out of existence?”
Faunos shrugged. “It will happen eventually. The stronger blood will always prevail. Such is nature’s way.”
“Now you sound like our youngest,” Meros muttered.
At that comment, they all went quiet.
“You’re all a bunch of monsters,” I said.
“Selfish, arrogant monsters. You came to our world and you thought you knew better than the people who lived here. You thought your magic, your Crowns, your blood, even your names were better. The mortals thrived before you came. We had communities full of art and learning, too. We had our own gods, our own history, and the most beautiful stories. You didn’t take any of the bad parts from our world—the wars or the disease, the distrust of anything different.
You just erased the parts that made it ours.
” Emotion choked me. “Maybe compared to whatever world you came from, ours was no special thing, but it was special to us. You took away our home, and we’ve filled the Sacred Sea with blood trying to get it back. ”
Umbros folded his arms and leaned against his arch, a troubled look in his eyes. “Ironic, isn’t it?” he murmured. “We became the very same evil that we fled.”
“You carry our blood, too, girl,” Fortos told me crossly.
I scowled. “Don’t remind me. You think I’d be related to you by choice?”
Faunos chuckled. “I’m starting to like her. She doesn’t kneel like the rest.”
“There were others like her.” Meros flashed a wide grin. “I married one of them. He put two blades through my gut and one in my thigh before we—”
The other Kindred collectively groaned.
“We know, sister,” Arboros said. “You retell the story of how you conceived your firstborn at least twenty times a century.”
“We had such delicious fights, he and I.” Meros’s laughter faded, and her features turned pained. “Oh, how I miss him.”
“We all miss our mates,” Lumnos said softly.
The shadow of loss darkened their moods. Even the prickly Fortos and flippant Faunos seemed taken by sorrow that blunted my temper’s edge.
“I thought you gave up your immortality to be with them,” I said.
Anger rippled across their faces. Scattered eyes shifted to Sophos, then around to one another.
Montios offered her hand. “This is the story we’ve come to tell you, Daughter of the Forgotten. Will you hear it?”
A sudden gust of wind fluttered my hair across my cheeks, and a memory rose of the joyride Sorae and I had taken through the clouds over the lavender mountains of Montios’s realm. I thought of Rymari—the gryvern whose grave we’d paused at to pay respects.
I met the stony stare of Umbros, whose gryvern’s corpse lay rotting and alone, another victim in the long saga of the Kindred’s curse. Once again, he seemed to see right through my thoughts. His eyes closed in grief-stricken understanding.
My jaw tightened. “No. I don’t want to hear a word any of you have to say.”
Fortos grunted. “I knew it was a mistake to give her our Crowns. We never should have chosen her over our own.”
“You think I want this?” I jabbed a finger at the four-peaked Crown floating over my head. “All these have done is cause me pain. They’re the reason my father is dead and I’m stuck here.” I let out a disgusted noise. “Freeze in hell, the lot of you.”
I stormed past Umbros on a warpath toward the stairs. I was halfway down when I heard his voice.
“Would you like to get unstuck?”
I stilled mid-step. “Are you saying you can get me off this island?”
A long silence passed.
“There is a way,” Sophos said.
I trudged back up and stopped, arms crossed. “Let me guess, you want something in return?”
The Kindred exchanged a solemn look.
“Hear our story,” Lumnos said. “That’s all we ask. Let us tell you of our greatest mistakes and all they cost us.”
I looked around at the others. I sensed a current of words unspoken, the hum of a deeper truth they kept concealed. Angry as I was at them, my instincts told me this was a story I needed to hear.
And yet a sinking feeling told me it was a story I might soon wish I never knew.
“We know you’ve heard the history of our arrival to your world,” Sophos said as we strolled the path to the northern shore. The others were gathered behind us, Arboros grazing her fingers through the tall grass while Meros turned her face to the sky, smiling at the kiss of the breeze.
“Only what the Descended deemed mortals worthy to know,” I said tartly. “Was it a lie, like everything else?”
“Not entirely. In the world we first called home, our people were the caretakers of a very powerful force. It made us immortal and made our bodies strong, and it blessed our bloodlines with magic. Our people kept it a closely guarded secret, because we feared outsiders might try to steal it and use it to do terrible things.”
“It wasn’t the outsiders we should have feared,” Lumnos said.
Sophos nodded. “Among our own kind, there were those who wished to use the force for more. They claimed they were acting in our people’s interests, but others believed they wanted the power for themselves.
The disagreements turned violent, and war broke out.
Our leaders threatened to use the force against those who opposed them.
They were warned it would destroy us, but they did not listen. ”
I frowned. “You weren’t the leaders?”
“Not at all. In our world, we were merely clerics.”
Lumnos came up beside me. “What you must know is that we tried everything we could to save our world, and we failed. We did not come here to conquer your people, Diem. We had only one goal: to survive. We are the last of our kind.”
I saw the pain in her expression and the shared grief that turned her siblings quiet. Much as I wanted to hate them—much as I did hate them—my foolish heart hurt for the sorrow they must have felt leaving everything they knew behind.
We reached the edge of the path. Montios and Meros walked together to the shore, the latter kneeling to smile at the lapping waves while the former stared pensively toward the distant mountains.
Arboros had wandered into a patch of wildflowers, cupping her hands around their blooms. Even Lumnos seemed to lose herself gazing at the sun.