Chapter 16
LUTHER
The mortal slid his blade out and laughed as he walked away, leaving Zalaric wobbling on his feet. His blue eyes filled with fear, the scared little boy I’d once saved still visible beneath the strong, confident man he’d become.
When I left Lumnos months ago, Zalaric and Taran had just begun an unlikely romance. My cousin’s heart had been broken once, long ago, in the cruelest way possible. That wound, he’d never healed from. This one might crush him forever.
“Turn around,” Ophiucae said, voice booming with the compulsion of Umbros magic. My body betrayed me and obeyed. “You were trying to hide something from me earlier. I want to know what it is.”
He heard every clang of the alarm bells in my head, and it heightened his interest. He grabbed my hair and yanked my skull back to expose my throat, then pressed his godstone blade to its flesh.
“Withdraw your magic,” he ordered.
My godhood howled, equally enraged but equally bound. The shadows around the palace fell away, and the mortals’ victorious shouts grew muffled as they breached its doors and disappeared into its halls.
Ophiucae’s gaze drilled into mine. “Show me everything.”
Though I fought with all that I had, I did.
He dove into my memories with eager interest, drowning himself in everything I’d never wanted anyone to know.
I could feel his determination to leave no stone unturned and no secret unrevealed.
It reminded me of Diem gorging her curiosity in the Sophos library, how her captivating eyes had grown bright with her warring urges to examine every page at length or hastily devour as many as she could.
Just thinking on those two cherished days she and I had spent alone brought the memories to the surface, and a rapt Ophiucae watched them all.
Every vow and confession. The fleeting peace we’d found among the bookshelves and my indescribable joy at holding her and knowing she was mine.
The happiest memory of my life—and the one I was most desperate to keep sacred.
To my relief, he passed over our more intimate acts, but the others he lingered on, studying her words and mannerisms, judging mine.
“Is this what you fear me seeing?” he asked. “Or is there something more?”
He prodded deeper, and the gates gave way.
It was no secret that I’d shown Diem a side of me I kept private, but so had she. In the safety of my arms, she’d let her grief and doubt consume her. She’d let herself shatter, knowing I’d keep the pieces of her safe until she was ready to put them back together and face the world again.
Diem hated to show weakness, but I had painstakingly proven I would never see her for less than the warrior she was. In return, she’d let down her guard, trusting me to keep the most vulnerable parts of her between only us.
And I’d failed her. Again.
Ophiucae’s brutal search of my mind continued.
The distant sounds of a roaring gryvern, crackling flames, and terrified screams went unheard beneath the suffocating presence of his control.
I had the sense that time was passing—the sky growing darker, the air turning chill—but I had no idea whether it was minutes or hours.
“We found ’em all,” Vance called out. “These two”—the sound of bodies hitting the soil—“might as well be dead already. We caught the other two”—two sets of footsteps stumbled forward, as if pushed—“trying to untie a boat at the pier. And she”—a soft, feminine whimper—“was trying to claim safe haven with the Guardians. The other Guardians.”
“And the others?” Ophiucae asked.
“Killed the ones we saw. Couldn’t find their brats, though. They hid ’em somewhere.”
A small relief. If the children were safe, perhaps Lily, Teller, and Eleanor were, too.
But Alixe, Taran, Zalaric . . .
“I sent my gryvern to burn their city,” Ophiucae said.
His gaze dropped to me. “I was just finishing with the Prince.” He pressed the flat of his blade beneath my chin, forcing me to lift it toward him, then tilted his head with a pensive look.
“I watched my siblings waste away because of the promises they made to their mates. I told myself I would not make the same mistake. I would never succumb to a petty weakness like love, because I was stronger—and I was. That’s why I’m here and they’re not. ”
A crack of thunder boomed in the distance. The air vibrated with the steady thump of an approaching gryvern, yet Ophiucae held my stare.
“I’ve had a very long time to think on it, and I understand now that I was wrong. Love is powerful, indeed. It’s one of the most formidable forces in existence. It doesn’t make you weak . . .” He bared his teeth. “It makes you blind.”
The wingbeats grew louder. Murmurs rose from the mortals as an ecstatic reptilian trill preceded the click of a gryvern’s talons landing on stone.
Ophiucae leaned his face closer to mine.
“Love,” he said, spitting the word with disgust, “makes you hold on to a person against all reason, even when it destroys you. Even when protecting yourself means letting them go.” He rotated the blade until its edge hovered over my pulse. “Perhaps I should do it for her.”
“I agree—you should let him go.”
My heart stopped.
That voice.
That voice.
That beautiful, fearsome voice, whose command I would follow into hell itself.
“And if you spill a single drop of his blood,” the voice spoke again, “I’ll make sure your head lets go of your neck.”
Her, my godhood roared. Her. Her. Her.
The soft caress of her aura brushed my cheek, and hope turned into violent, explosive need. My rabid godhood thrashed at Ophiucae’s hold. Its hunger was so visceral, his nostrils flared in surprise.
“Let . . . me . . . see her,” I managed to force out. He withdrew his magic just enough to let me turn my head.
Diem.
My Diem.
Her long white hair, flowing wild and unbound over her shoulders, and those spellbinding eyes, dark as the brewing storm yet glowing with sparks of her power. That awe-inspiring inner fire I loved so dearly, unmissable in the lift of her chin and the set of her jaw.
I met her gaze, and my heart sang. Another swell of her aura curled around me, and even trapped as it was, my magic rose in fiercely devoted response. I needed to touch her, smell her, taste her, breathe her in, hold her so close our bodies might melt and forge together like iron.
Though her body was hidden beneath a cloak of billowing shadows, her face was gaunt, rendering her stare viciously severe. And her Crown . . .
Blessed Kindred, her Crown.
Not three peaks, but nine—one for each realm. No longer merely the Queen of Lumnos, or Fortos, or Montios.
The Queen of Emarion.
“I see my siblings gave you a few more toys,” Ophiucae said bitterly.
“Well, it is my birthday,” she said. “If you’d like to give me a gift, you can start with him.”
Even her voice thrummed with new currents of power. Her aura felt stronger than I remembered, and her skin was bright with the same shimmering glow as her sire.
“But the Prince and I were having so much fun,” he said. “As your father, it is my job to test him.”
A muscle flexed on Diem’s throat. I could almost hear her rising retort: You’re not my father. For some reason, she held herself back.
She dismounted Sorae and looked around, taking in the crowd of mortal soldiers, the palace—countless windows broken and wooden rafters aflame—and the bloody, motionless bodies strewn over the ground.
Including Zalaric’s.
She reached into the dark wisps of her cloak and pulled out a long sword, its dark blade etched with golden lines. “You’ve had enough fun for today.”
Ophiucae sneered. “That thing again. Be careful. Its last owner ended up with its blade through her heart. Put there by her very own daughter.”
“This realm is under my protection,” Diem warned. “Take your men and go to Omnos. The northern lands are yours to claim.”
“The entire continent is mine to claim,” he snarled.
Diem, my fearless Diem, took a few steps forward. “My Crown says otherwise.”
His silent pause stretched on, growing heavy with tension and threat. When at last I was certain he would try to strike her down, he pulled the blade away from my neck and sheathed it at his hip.
“Keep your lover. And your palace.” He released me from his magic and strolled toward the former Crowns. “I came for them.”
Diem glanced at the dethroned monarchs. Mireille was weeping. Doriel and Obaneryn clung together, trembling in each other’s arms. The other two looked like they might be dead already. Their pitiful state brought no trace of compassion to her face, only a cold, hard stare of hate.
I’d always prided myself on knowing Diem’s heart, its values and its limits, but this was not the same Queen I knew. I had no idea what she was thinking—or what she was going to do.
She tucked her sword back under her cloak. “I’ll handle their punishment. I’m the one they trapped on the island.”
He shook his head. “You spent weeks there. I spent millennia.”
She took another step. “Omnos—”
“My name,” he growled, “is Ophiucae.” He raised both palms, magic swirling through his fingers. “And I will have my revenge.”
Diem’s lips pressed thin. She closed her eyes for a heartbeat, drew in a breath, and—
The ground began to rock. A deep crevasse split open around the former Crowns, trapping them, rather ironically, on an island of their own. Cobblestones lining the path to the palace wrested free of the soil and wedged together above them in a dome.
Ophiucae looked more amused than angry. “Children always think they’re smarter than their parents.” His fingers twisted, and a strange, hollow feeling filled the air, followed by muffled chokes. Ophiucae was suffocating them inside their rocky cage.
Diem’s eyes narrowed. She raised a palm and funneled a breeze through the cracks between the stones.
Ophiucae’s aura throbbed, and a bolt of lightning splintered down from the now-blackened sky. Diem barely managed to raise a shield above the dome before it struck.
He poured more power into his attacks, and Diem’s shield met him blow for blow, a rainfall of sparks glittering around us. With Ophiucae distracted, I slowly edged toward her, careful not to draw his eye.
“Twice you defied me,” he seethed. “I warned you I would not allow it again.” His eyes blazed with silvery light. “When a child has gone astray, the parent has no choice but to bestow . . . discipline.”
His head turned, then his outstretched hands and the malicious magic flowing from them followed. Away from the former Crowns—and onto me.
Diem screamed. The depth of her terror was so raw, it felt like it sprung from inside my own chest. Ophiucae fired his volley, and I steeled my shoulders for the impact.
A blur crossed through my vision, then light exploded around me. Diem’s aura vibrated, pulsing and shuddering and blooming with new power. When the blinding brilliance faded to a feminine silhouette standing between me and Ophiucae, the shock on his face matched mine.
Diem had thrown herself in front of me, sacrificing herself to take his lethal blow.
And it had only made her stronger.
If there was anyone alive whose magic might be strong enough to kill Diem, it would be her sire. We’d wondered, feared . . . now, we knew. Ophiucae was immune to Diem’s magic—and she was immune to his.
He staggered back a step, then fired again with a blow so staggeringly potent, the ground between them fissured and steamed. Again, it disappeared into her skin, and her magic flared with newly captured strength.
She raised a hand toward his army of mortals and clenched it into a fist. A fracture split across the shield he’d placed over them, accompanied by a foreboding crackle. His soldiers’ murmurs turned to shouts. Several took off in a sprint for the coast, their mission abandoned.
Ophiucae looked Diem over as if seeing her anew. As if seeing her, for the first time, as a genuine threat.
Diem pulsed her aura in silent challenge. When Ophiucae didn’t answer with a burst of his own, I knew we’d won. Shielding the mortals for hours had drained him, and Diem had just absorbed much of the power he had left.
A different day, a different battle, and we’d all be corpses . . . but not today.
“Xipherus, come,” he growled. A faraway howl answered back. He glared at the mortals. “Return to the boats.”
“This is not what we agreed to,” Vance said, scowling. “You said we would take back the re—”
“Back to the boats,” Ophiucae roared. The mortals stiffened in uncanny unison, then shuffled away, eyes glassy and faces blank. His gryvern swooped in and landed beside him, and his muscles drew taut with the fury of failure as he mounted its back.
“Let’s talk peacefully, Ophiucae,” Diem called out. “I don’t want this to end in violence and death.”
“Don’t you worry, Daughter of the Forgotten.” He reached forward and plucked something from the air. Diem stumbled forward, hands flying to her neck. “This is far from over.”