Chapter 26 #3
For a moment that seemed to stretch on forever, he didn’t move, and he didn’t speak. My own emotions were so conflicted, I couldn’t begin to make sense of his. I wondered if he’d figured out the awful truth—if he was warring with the same rage and grief consuming me.
And then he looked back at me . . . and his face brightened into a broad, triumphant smile.
“I knew it.” He held out a palm, where a spark of light flickered to life. His eyes lifted to the sky. “Thank you, Blessed Mother. Forgive me for allowing my faith to waver.”
He was thanking her?
I was too stunned to resist as he wrapped his arms around me with a deep, joyful laugh.
“I prayed for years that Lumnos would come back and save this world from what it has become, but she did something so much better.” He cupped his hands around my face, his smile heartbreakingly wide.
“She sent us you. You’re going to stop him, and you’re going to save us all. ”
I’d never seen him this happy. Not when I won the Challenging, not when we’d reunited, not even when I’d told him I loved him. The pure elation surging through the bond crashed into my despair, oil and water tumbling together in a futile attempt to unite.
“Luther,” I choked, “you don’t understand.”
He smoothed his thumbs over the lines of my anguished expression, trying to erase it away.
“I know you doubt yourself, Diem, but I do not. Blessed Lumnos will guide your hand and help you see it through, just as she has guided me. Whatever she has commanded you to do, I beg you, my heart, have faith. You are our savior, and she will not let you fail.”
A chasm opened inside of me at the knowledge of the excruciating pain I was about to cause. I’d wanted so badly to give him the elusive happiness he deserved, only to become the one tearing it to unmendable shreds. The cruel irony was more than I could take.
So I spread my arms, and I leapt into the darkness.
“Yes,” I said. “You’re right.”
His smile faded at the flatness of my tone. “Is this because he’s your sire? You’re upset because you don’t want to kill him?” He quickly wiped his face clean of its joy. Somehow, that made it worse. “Fuck. I was thoughtless. I’m so sorry, Diem, I know this is difficult for you.”
“I’ll do what I have to do.”
Over the bond, I felt the guilt creep into him, scolding him that he was to blame for my sudden coldness.
“I’m fine,” I insisted.
He didn’t believe me.
I didn’t believe me.
He reached to stroke my hair, and I flinched away.
“I should eat. I need more energy for this to work.” It was the one excuse I knew he wouldn’t question.
He’d been offering to fetch me a hot meal no less than five times per day, shoving a piece of fruit or bread into my hands every time I showed a trace of exhaustion—which, these days, was often.
“Could you get me something from the kitchens? Maybe those spiced figs I like?”
He eyed me skeptically, perhaps knowing, as I did, that the figs required an hour to roast. “You’ll be here when I return?”
“Yes,” I lied. “I’ll keep working on the godstone.”
He held my gaze for a moment before turning for the palace. With every step he took, another crack opened in my spirit.
Maybe Marthe Hanoverre had been right about me. After all the times I’d promised to fight, I was still the same pathetic girl who only seemed to run.
I was not the only one to blame. Luther had placed his faith in Lumnos. Watching him beg her forgiveness for his doubt, unaware that she’d engineered his heart’s destruction, left me quaking with rage.
The two women he’d devoted himself to would be his ruin.
Neither of us deserved him.
My godhood churned within me, feeding on the vicious emotions that turned my thoughts black, and my skin began to glimmer. I felt, ironically, like all those moments before, when I’d lost control.
I needed an outlet.
I needed revenge.
I stormed into the palace and to my suite, past the guards dragging out the last of the furniture from the parlor.
I dismissed them and grabbed an object I’d hidden in a drawer of my desk, then set off on a warpath for the one place I knew I’d find my target.
When I arrived, I threw open the double oak doors of the palace library with a menacing crack.
My eyes scanned the startled inhabitants, cataloging each of their terrified faces before stopping on a familiar one staring outside. I walked toward the latter and slammed the doors behind me with a gust of Meros air.
Despite my dramatic entrance, my brother barely acknowledged my approach. He pointed at a nearby stack of dusty books without looking away from the window. “What do you think of these?”
I grabbed two and held them up. “A Compendium of Curative Ointments? A Study in Sutures? Teller, do not tell me you want to be a healer. You turn green at the sight of blood.”
“They’re not for me.”
I followed his line of sight outside to the palace gardens, where Lily was filling a basket with cuttings of the medicinal herbs I’d planted months ago.
“I asked Mother what books might help with Lily’s training,” he murmured. “She suggested these.”
That alone was a testament to Teller’s desperation to win Lily back. I hadn’t seen my mother and brother in the same room since returning home, let alone seen them speak.
I tossed the books down, and Teller’s gaze finally broke away. He took one look at my faintly glowing skin and frowned. “What happened?”
“Come with me. You deserve to see this.” I marched across the room to a cluster of pink-eyed Descended surrounded by tall stacks of books. I lifted the object I’d retrieved from my room and stabbed it into their table. They jumped back and stared up at me in terror.
“Which one of you can tell me why I found this knife in my father’s chest?” I demanded.
“What?” Teller breathed. He reached for the blade, then abruptly shrank back. “That’s what killed him?”
“No, it isn’t,” Doriel insisted. They rose and stood behind the other Descended’s chairs, laying a hand on each of their shoulders. “I’ve explained to Diem—”
“Her Majesty,” I snapped.
“—to Her Majesty that she is mistaken. No one from my realm had any part in that horrible crime.”
I glowered. “Unlike all your other horrible crimes?”
Teller grabbed my arm. “They’re the ones who murdered Father—you’re sure?”
I could see my brother’s hope begin to surface, mixing with anger and grief. Having blamed himself for Father’s death, he needed the closure of bringing the killers to justice. We both did.
I set my blistering glare on the seated Descended. “You two were at my ball. You insisted on staying in Lumnos for another night.”
“We were at House Benette all day,” one of them said, too scared to even look at me. “Ask them, they’ll tell you!”
“House Benette’s word means even less than yours,” I hissed, though the silence of my Umbros magic had a knot forming in my stomach. “You knew about my family. You threatened my brother.”
Doriel looked offended. “Inviting him to study alongside the smartest minds in Emarion is hardly a thr—”
Books and bodies went flying as an irate pulse of my aura shot through the room. Doriel slammed into a bookshelf that gave a precarious wobble.
“Apparently not smart enough to know when to shut their mouths,” I sniped.
“Doriel, move!”
Obaneryn sailed past me, gold and turquoise beads clinking in his locs. He shoved Doriel to safety as the bookshelf toppled on its side—but not in time to escape it himself. Obaneryn disappeared under an avalanche of heavy tomes and the ominous thud of the heavy wooden shelf.