Chapter 20 #3
To save Luther, I had to stay a stranded mate.
Forever.
Outside on the terrace, Sorae’s ear-splitting howl was the voice of my sorrow.
Devastation devoured me, chewing up the last pieces of my crumbling soul.
My happiness, my hope, my heart, all annihilated in an instant.
My godhood did not break the bars of its cage—it melted them down and boiled them to steam, spreading and growing and burning until my spirit was a blackened patch of barren earth.
“Tell me what’s upsetting you,” Luther said, sounding so devastatingly concerned.
“Go,” I whispered.
“Diem, talk to me.”
“I want to be alone.”
Nothing could have been further from the truth.
“No,” he insisted. “Something’s wrong, I can tell.”
Again, my skin began to shimmer. My magic was rapidly spiraling out of control. I was going to explode, just as I had the day of my father’s death, and this time, it felt like I might take the whole world with me.
I pulled the blanket tighter around me, dipping my head to hide my face. “I want to be alone,” I said again.
“I refuse to leave you when you need me.”
“I don’t need you.” The lie grated, sandpaper on my throat. “I went weeks without you. I’ll survive.”
I thought I couldn’t possibly feel any worse, but when a sickening feeling of rejection filled my gut like rancid oil, I finally hit rock bottom.
Because it wasn’t just my pain I was feeling—it was Luther’s.
Eleanor and Taran had told me once that the mating bond allowed you to feel your mate’s emotions, but with the island smothering its magic, I hadn’t experienced it until today. All those strange, foreign emotions I’d been sensing since arriving back in Lumnos had been his.
Luther was hurting. Gods, was he hurting. He was worried and confused and punishing himself with so much guilt, and the woman he loved, a woman he needed as badly as I needed him, was sending him away.
His expression shuttered to the cold, empty mask of the Prince. It was almost impressive, how callous he could pretend to be while his heart was breaking.
His hands dropped to his sides. “Let me stay nearby, just in case—”
“Leave, Luther. As your Queen, I command it.”
He went still.
“As you wish, my Queen.”
I waited until I heard his boots cross the foyer, followed by a door clicking shut, before dropping the blanket. I ripped the golden pendant from my neck and threw it onto my bed, then staggered to the terrace, where Sorae was already waiting.
“As high as you can,” I begged.
With a leap and a few beats of her powerful wings, we were in the clouds. The final, tenuous hold I’d had on the reins of my godhood snapped, and my magic consumed me.
I was fire and sorrow and fate.
And I burned, and I burned, and I burned.
Hours later, when my magic had run low, I buried my despair at the bottom of a dark, emotionless chasm and returned to my suite. I bathed in the now-cold bathwater and climbed into bed. For another hour, I tossed and turned, the soft pillows and luxurious sheets unbearable for too many reasons.
I rose and dressed in the warmest, simplest clothes in my wardrobe. I left Sorrow’s Edge behind, but I grabbed my necklace, using a flash of Ignios flame to weld the broken chain back around my neck. I tucked it beneath my sweater and began to walk.
Out of my room, out of my suite. Through the darkened halls, down the staircase, and out the front doors.
Past the evening guards, who I told to leave their posts and go home.
Down the rows of sheet-covered corpses lining the yard.
Across the grassy training fields, into the heart of the Guardians’ camp.
At this late hour, few were awake. A rebel stationed at the entrance eyed my approach, but either fear or my mother’s orders kept them from stopping me.
I looked around and spotted Cordellia, the Arboros cell leader who’d held me hostage, then set me free, only for me to betray her when I returned to rescue Luther.
She had threatened to kill me if she ever saw me again.
“Mother Dell,” I said.
She looked my way, and her dark features dropped into a frown.
“I’m not here to cause problems.” I held up my empty hands. “I have no weapons.”
“You are a weapon.” She pointed to a large tent across the campfire. “Your mother’s there.”
“I didn’t come for her.” I glanced around. “Are there any empty tents?”
“Don’t you have a palace full of rooms?”
“I’d rather have a tent.”
She looked me over, chestnut eyes thinning to slits.
She jerked her chin to a tent nearby. “Take mine. I never sleep there anyway.” She cast a look at a tall, muscular woman with cropped hair and a pretty smile watching nearby.
Their lips curled up in tandem. “If I want it back, I’ll drag you out and make you sleep with the horses. ”
A different Diem might have laughed.
I started for the tent, and she called out behind me. “Is this going to be a regular occurrence—the Queen living among the rebel commoners?”
“Is that a problem?”
She thought about it for a moment. “Not with me.”
I nodded. “Good night, Mother Dell.”
“Good night, Diem Bellator.”