Chapter 26 #2
“You do,” Luther said calmly. “And you will not do it alone. Eleanor is managing Lumnos City. Nidara is doing a fine job looking after her people. Let Alixe handle the army, and let your mother lead the mortals. You have worked hard to earn the trust of so many. Let them help you.” His eyes danced between mine. “Let me help you.”
I didn’t answer—but I didn’t pull away.
I needed Luther. Even before the mating bond had tied my sanity to his touch, he had been the guardrails that held me in place every time the world sent me tumbling.
But letting him get close now felt selfish.
Isn’t that what I’d done to Henri, allowing his feelings to grow deeper because I refused to accept that our future was doomed?
Only a monster would take what I needed from Luther and leave his shattered heart behind.
Then again, Ophiucae’s blood ran in my veins, and his vengeful darkness felt like it had taken root in my soul. Maybe monster was exactly what I was.
“What do I do?” I whispered, the question loaded with so much more weight than Luther could possibly know.
“Focus on what you need to stop Ophiucae—creating the godstone, building your army. Let your advisors worry about everything else.”
It wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear, not when stopping Ophiucae might be the last thing I ever did, but it did give me much-needed focus. I looked at the smoking ashes of the chair. “You think emotion will help create the godstone?”
“Unless you can think of any other similarity between the Challenging and the day your father was killed.”
I let out a resigned exhale and unclasped Sorrow’s Edge from my belt, then unbuckled the Ignios fist I’d taken to wearing every day.
I handed the harness over and started to back away, then stopped.
I reached to my neck and pulled the golden pendant he’d gifted me from under my top, slipping the necklace over my head.
“You still wear it,” he noted quietly.
I pressed it into his palm. “Every day.”
His fingers curled around mine as I slowly, reluctantly, pulled them away.
With nothing left on me but my clothes, I put some distance between us. I shook out my hands, trying to ignore the lingering feeling of him on my skin. I blocked out the sounds of the nearby camps, the warmth of the spring sun, the breeze that tangled in my hair.
In my head, I edged toward the memory of the Challenging, the safer of my options.
The voices of the arena crowd came back first: Jeering and judging when I was losing, shouting for Rhon Ghislaine’s blood when I was winning.
How their loyalties shifted as easily as the sand on the arena floor. How angry that had made me.
Those emotions were easy to find—the outrage, the disgust at how far from their humanity the Descended had strayed. But every time I’d fractured, it was not my temper that struck the shattering blow. At least, not just my temper.
It was despair. Hopelessness. Defeat.
The feeling that, even if I won my war, it would not be worth everything the victory had cost. And the closer I crept to those emotions, the more I felt like that was a fire even a phoenix couldn’t survive.
I recoiled with a jerk, shaking my head. “I can’t.”
Luther set down my things, then unstrapped the Sword of Corbois from his back.
He pulled the Meros compass from his pocket, tossed them both on the pile, and walked toward me.
I stumbled back with a visceral urge to escape—not him, but everything he represented, the feelings I couldn’t let myself embrace.
He continued, undeterred. “Run, Diem, if that’s what you need. Wherever you go, I will follow. At a distance, if I must, but I will not let you walk this road alone. Do you understand?”
“Luther,” I begged, unsure what I was begging for.
He caught up to me and snagged me by the waist, his grip rough in a way that sent heat through my blood. “Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I breathed.
“Good. Now try again.”
I glanced around. With the Ignios Descended to our left, Guardians to our right, and the palace and its many windows behind us, we were surrounded by curious eyes.
“They can’t see us,” he said. “Whatever happens, it’s between you and me.”
“Luther, everyone can see us.”
He looked at the Guardians, where his cousin was walking through the tents carrying two wooden casks of ale on his shoulder. He cupped a hand around his mouth. “Taran!”
Taran’s head whipped toward us. “Who was that?” His narrowed eyes roamed over us, never stopping, until they stopped on the Ignios camp. “Zal, was that you?”
Across the field, Zalaric paused his conversation with a group of women wearing the leather fist of the Ignios Royal Guard. “You’re hearing things, old man,” he shouted back.
“Hey, you think you could talk them into selling me one of those strappy leather things?” Taran puffed out his chest. “I think I could pull it off.”
“Sorry, handsome. I don’t think it’ll fit over that giant boulder you call a head.”
From the stars in his eyes, I wasn’t sure Taran had heard any word after handsome.
He handed off the casks to some of the Guardians, who—to my surprise—smiled and clasped his wrist, then jogged across the field toward Zalaric.
Luther pulled me against him just in time to keep Taran from walking right into me.
“See?” Luther said, squeezing my hip. “They can’t see us.
No one can.” His fingers twitched against my side, and I felt the caress of his magic brush my skin.
“We’re hidden behind an illusion. I’ve been working on them while you were away.
So you and I can have . . . privacy.” His gaze dropped to my lips, and my pulse picked up speed. “Close your eyes.”
My stomach fluttered as I obeyed.
“Good. Put your hands on me. Anywhere—just so you know I’m here.”
My hands rose to the thick muscles of his torso. One roamed higher to rest atop his heart. Its steady thump resonated through my blood, matching the ghostly beat that had joined mine.
“Good,” he said again, slower—huskier. “Now go back to that day.”
“The Challenging?”
“No. The day your father died.”
Panic flared. Luther’s hand shifted to the small of my back and spread wide, pressing me close.
“Don’t think,” he said, “just feel. Let yourself go back to the moment your magic took over.”
Everything in me resisted. The loss of my father had become more like a bruise than a wound: unpleasant to look at, but tolerable. Survivable. Painful only when touched. Reliving that moment would mean slicing it open, and hadn’t I bled enough?
I opened my eyes. “I can’t go back there.”
Luther frowned. “Is this why you haven’t questioned the Sophosians who were at your ball? They arrived days ago.” I looked down in shame, and he studied me for a moment. “Let’s try the night you returned from the island.”
“I didn’t create godstone that night.”
“But you did lose control. It’s that, or your father’s death. Your choice.”
My deepest cut or my freshest. Luther’s ability to root out everything I hid from was merciless in its precision.
Grudgingly, I let my mind drag me back to the night I returned, standing naked in my chambers with Luther at my back, his arms wrapped around me. Despite everything, there had been joy in that moment, anticipation of the forever I was sure we would get.
Instead of the crushing sorrow that came next, my thoughts wandered to what could be. What if I told him about the bond? What if I didn’t have to die? What if I could wake up every morning to his hands on my skin and his quiet, brilliant smile?
My fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt, my body pressing closer.
Beneath my palm, I felt his heart begin to pound.
I breathed him in, my senses savoring his woodsy musk.
Gods, I’d forgotten how he smelled of the forest. That was where we belonged, not pampered in a palace or shivering in a tent.
The hand on his chest drifted higher until I found skin. My fingers grazed his throat as it rumbled with a dark, hungry noise.
“This is what you really wanted that night, isn’t it?” he murmured. “You didn’t want me to leave. You wanted this.”
His hand curved around the nape of my neck, fingers threading through my hair and forcing my lips closer. I arched into him with a quiet whimper that was both plea and protest.
“Tell me,” he growled.
Still too much of a coward to say it aloud, I managed a nod.
He placed a kiss at the corner of my lips. “You wanted this.” His mouth roamed, pressing to the soft spot beneath my ear, then again to the column of my throat. “And this.” His hips rolled into mine, his hard arousal impossible to miss. “Say it, Diem.”
“Yes,” I rasped. “All of it.”
Bone-shuddering relief flooded over the one-sided bond. “Then why send me away? Was it something I did?”
I shook my head.
“Something with the sword?” I tensed, and he took it for the admission it was. “You put your blood on the blade. You said something was inside it.”
Not something, I thought with a shudder. Someone.
My eyes opened to find him watching me. His grip on me tightened, like he could tell I was an inch from fleeing and a breath from giving in.
“You spoke with the Kindred, didn’t you?” he asked. “They told you about the Everflame—about how the godstone was made.”
My lips parted, the truth on my tongue. Maybe it was selfish to drag him into my misery, but I was sick of bearing this secret alone.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“They told you how to stop Ophiucae.”
“Yes.” With each confession, the burden I’d been carrying began falling from my shoulders. “He’s not the son of Omnos—he is Omnos. He’s a Kindred. He’s been trapped in that cell for thousands of years. He never gave up his immortality like the others.”
Luther’s furrowed stare drifted as he worked through the consequences of my revelation. “So he can’t die.”
My heart wrenched. “He can . . . just not by normal means.”
“The sword. You need that to kill him. That’s why they gave it to you.”
I swallowed. “Yes. It’s the only way.”