Chapter 19
DIEM
The rest of the day was a blur of blood and faces.
I walked with a pair of Descended healers through the survivors, mending what wounds we could.
Doriel and Obaneryn huddled nearby as they awaited my judgment.
They both held their breath when I laid my palm on the former Faunos Queen to heal the bones she’d shattered in her fall.
I could sense the question rattling in their brains: Would she heal us if she intended to kill us?
I was wondering the same thing.
When the healers arrived from Mortal City, my mother had a very loud, very weepy reunion with Maura, while I had a very awkward one with Lana, considering I’d last seen her in a passionate kiss with my then-betrothed.
Though we’d ended on civil terms, we each gave the other a tight smile and plenty of distance.
I longed to ask her about Henri. He and I had parted on a harsher note, but two decades of friendship did not simply disappear from a person’s soul.
I had scanned the released mortal prisoners—then, with my heart in my throat, the deceased rebel fighters—for his face.
I didn’t know whether to be worried or relieved when I couldn’t find him in either group.
The healers set to work on a large batch of poultice, and I cut my palm over the mixture, releasing a stream of scarlet until the white paste turned pink and my head began to spin.
When I woozily attempted to help parcel it out, Luther yanked me away to the palace steps, growling under his breath about blood loss and rest.
“Eat,” he demanded, shoving a bowl of stew in my hands. “They’ve taken enough of you.”
I set down the stew. “Luther . . .”
“Diem,” he snapped. “If you won’t take care of yourself, I will.” He grabbed the bowl and put it back in my hands. “Eat.”
Beneath his glare, the truth of his fear smoldered, shouting without words: I cannot lose you again.
That, I understood. I could still feel the echoes of my terror at seeing Ophiucae’s blade against his neck.
“Alright,” I agreed, “but you have to help the healers. I don’t want some angry Descended taking revenge on the nearest mortal. I’ll be right here, where you can see me.” I held up the stew. “Eating.”
His jaw flexed beneath the coarse shadow of his new beard. With his humble clothes and unbound hair, he looked rugged and raw, a strip of leather torn along a jagged edge. Though the Luther I’d fallen for was pathologically clean-cut, I was enjoying this version of him, too.
I leaned forward to kiss his cheek. Our bodies responded like magnets, snapping together. Luther vibrated with a low, throaty noise I felt all the way to my bones.
I pulled back and theatrically shoveled a spoonful in my mouth. Mollified, Luther made his way to Maura wearing his most intimidating scowl, playing the part of scary bodyguard so perfectly, my forced smile was at risk of turning real.
After weeks of roots and leaves, the stew was the most delicious thing I’d ever tasted, yet so rich it made my stomach turn. It seemed that way with everything about the world I’d come back to. I’d been so desperate to get home, and now that I was, everything felt too much.
I set down my bowl and closed my eyes, trying to drown out the grating noises of the busy palace grounds. Though I’d hated being alone with my thoughts on the island, I found myself strangely missing its quiet.
“Diem.”
I opened my eyes.
Doriel and Obaneryn stood shoulder to shoulder. The former looked fearful; the latter looked exhausted. Behind them, the healed Faunos ex-Queen seethed like a pissed-off wildcat. The sight of their collective misery did wonders for my mood.
“Give me back my Crown, you little rat,” she hissed.
“Faunos decided you didn’t deserve it.” I lounged back on my elbows, pointing to my feet. “Now be a good pet and kneel.”
She lunged toward me, but Obaneryn pulled her back. “If you have our Crowns, why are we still alive?” he asked.
I couldn’t bear to admit that I’d saved them, so I feigned a clueless shrug. “Maybe the Kindred are giving you a second chance to set a good example for your people.”
He gave me a dubious skim. “If we do, we’ll get our Crowns back?”
“Or we’ll get them back once she’s dead,” Ailani muttered.
“I’m afraid not. These Crowns will never grace your heads again. But if you’d like to test your theory, Ailani . . .” I conjured a swirl of sizzling light and flashed her a goading smile.
She slowly sank back. Ailani was a viper, but she wasn’t a fool. Without her Crown, she had no magic. Without her magic, she had no chance.
I glanced between her and Obaneryn. “Go home, both of you. Tell your people their new Queen has ordered them to welcome all mortals as equals.”
Obaneryn looked at the empty sky. “Where did our gryverns go?”
“I sent my gryverns to protect my realms.” I gave Ailani a pointed look. “And to enforce my orders.”
“How do we get home without them?” Obaneryn asked.
I smiled sweetly. “Maybe the Guardians will sell you a boat.”
He looked ready to let Ailani go and lunge at me himself.
“What of my fate?” Doriel asked in a quiet voice.
I rose and sauntered down the steps, holding their gaze. Under their cream-pale skin, Doriel’s throat gave a nervous bob.
“Give me your dagger,” I said.
They whimpered, backing away.
“Give me your dagger,” I repeated, lining my words with Umbros magic.
Doriel’s eyes glassed over. They unhooked the buttons on their opal-colored duster and retrieved a small blade from their hip.
“Don’t do this,” Obaneryn begged.
I snatched the dagger. It was just as I remembered seeing it on the boat to Coeur?le—glittering peach-pink gemstones set among distinctive copper swirls. “Such an interesting design,” I said, my tone deceptively light. “Custom-made just for you, isn’t that what you told me before?”
“Y-yes,” Doriel sputtered. “A gift from Ulther.”
I tipped its point to their heart. “Then why did I find one just like it in my father’s corpse?”
They turned an ashen grey. “I had nothing to do with that! I was in Sophos when it happened.”
My eyes narrowed. “Your representatives were here for my ball.”
Obaneryn slid between us. “What reason would anyone from Sophos have to kill your family?”
That was the question I couldn’t answer. In all my obsessing on the who and how, not once had I come up with a why.
“You have Umbros magic, don’t you?” Doriel asked. “Use it. You’ll see I’m being honest.”
Unfortunately, I already had. At Doriel’s first proclamation of innocence, my godhood had set to work searching for any trace of half-truth or deception, then gave a satisfactory purr at finding none. But that couldn’t be. That knife was too unique.
And it was the only lead I had left.
“Where are the Sophosians who came to my ball?” I demanded. “I want to speak with them before I decide what price you’ll pay.”
“I’ll send for them,” Doriel insisted. “I have nothing to hide. I’m innocent.”
The most maddening part was how deeply they believed that to be true. All the Crowns did, unmoved by the suffering they caused because they’d deemed it in service of a greater good. Greed and selfishness and obsession with control became holy acts, once done in the Kindred’s name.
Shouting caught my attention. An orange-eyed man in linen robes broke from a group of healers and stalked toward me. “You have a cure for godstone. Give it to my brother.”
I waved him off. “The healers will treat him with the other soldiers.”
He scoffed. “My brother isn’t a soldier. He’s a King.”
Fucking Ignios.
I lowered Doriel’s dagger and turned to the man—a younger yet equally hateful version of the man who stabbed me on Coeur?le.
He jabbed a finger at Luther. “That bastard won’t let the healers treat him.”
Luther held the bowl of poultice in his hands as thorny vines of shadow swirled around it. Our eyes met, and in the smoldering blue-grey glow of his lay a request: You’ve saved enough lives. Let this one go.
Luther had always praised my mercy. When the rest of the world called me naive for believing the darkest hearts could be redeemed, he alone had filled with pride.
But even he had his limits.
And so did I.
“Then let him die,” I growled.
The man balked. “This is an act of war against Ignios. He is our Crown—”
“I am your Crown!” I exploded. My godhood roared through my blood, my skin glimmering with a furious silver glow.
“I don’t care if the entire fucking continent comes for me.
I have been broken, bled, and buried alive.
If you want to burn me, then bring on your gods-damned flames. I’m not afraid of the fire.”
Silence overtook the yard. Not a soul dared to move and risk my notice—save for my Prince, whose hand pressed to his chest in salute.
“Diem,” Obaneryn said carefully. “You’ve always struck me as a woman of kindness. Letting a man suffer when you can save him . . . it’s cruel.”
My ears rung. My hands began to tremble.
“Whatever he did to you, you clearly survived it,” he went on. “No harm done. You have his throne and his realm. Have a little heart, and leave him his life.”
I closed my eyes. Rage consumed me, searing through my veins like molten lava. My skin grew brighter, hotter, as magic crackled at my palms.
Amid the firestorm igniting inside me, there was a glimmer of something else.
Something like guilt and regret and concern, all tied into a churning knot.
It couldn’t belong to me, because when I thought of condemning Ignios to a slow, torturous death, I felt no guilt.
And when he met the end he deserved, I wouldn’t regret my part in it at all.
When I opened my eyes, flames thrashed at my feet, their fluttering points an angry whirl. The people around me stumbled to get away as the air wobbled in the rising heat.
I flung out a hand. Backs arched and eyes unfocused as my Umbros magic branded an image in their thoughts: trails of skeletons, picked clean by vultures and bleached white by the sun, lining the sand dunes outside the Mortal City of Ignios.
“He exterminated them,” I yelled, voice shaking with fury. “He could have let them flee to another realm. Instead, he made them burn while he and his guards watched.” I turned my glare on the former Crowns. “And you all let him do it.”
Ailani shook her head, trying in vain to clear the sight from her eyes. “It wasn’t our place to intervene.”
My skin blazed bright enough to light the yard, my hair swirling over my shoulders in an ominous breeze.
“You made it your place to trap me on the island. You came to my realm and locked up my people. If the King of Fortos had kept all the Fortosian steel for himself, you would have made it your place to storm his realm and stop him. When there’s something you want, you find an excuse to intervene.
But the Ignios mortals had no wealth to bribe you with and no resources to trade, so you looked away. ”
I dissolved the mental image to force them all to meet my glare, but their expressions were stubborn, their belief in their innocence undaunted. My anger darkened, icy and inhumane—terrifyingly close to what I’d felt the day I ordered the Fortos High General to slit his own throat.
“If their lives meant nothing to you, then yours mean nothing to me.” My gaze turned to Luther. “If anyone tries to give his brother the poultice . . . kill them.”