Chapter 34
LUTHER
Everything was shit.
I never imagined a time would come when I longed for the days before Fortos, but the mood around the palace since our return made the awkward tension of those weeks seem almost delightful in comparison.
Without Ophiucae present, we’d managed to fend off his mortal army, though we’d taken heavy losses. Vance and his men had walked into town undetected and attacked while our guard was down. The knowledge that they could do so again was a constant weight on everyone’s minds.
In the three weeks since, Diem had gone from a dagger—sharp and short, ready to stab if you came too near—to a poisoned arrow, launching herself at any threat she could find.
She was running our soldiers ragged all over Emarion in attempts to thwart Vance’s attacks, jumping at even the vaguest intelligence from her mother’s sources.
We hadn’t spoken since our fight. We’d barely had a chance, since she was rarely home and she insisted I stay behind in Lumnos to oversee the Royal Guard.
She was once again locked on an island, this time of her own design.
So I did now what I had done then: I kept close to her family, I kept them safe, and I continued building her army.
With Diem away in Faunos, today that meant training the Royal Guard’s recruits, including one of its newest—Teller Bellator.
Conditions were less than ideal. Since the Guardians had taken over the training field, we were relegated to a patch of land just inside the magic barrier that surrounded it.
Runa and Enness had set up their group’s camp between the rebels and the Ignios refugees, leaving us with an unfriendly audience on every side.
“Look, it’s baby Bellator trying to play soldier,” one of the Guardians called out, joined by snickering from his friends.
Teller didn’t flinch, holding at attention as I’d ordered. I could see his father’s influence. While Diem had inherited Andrei Bellator’s compelling leadership, Teller had taken his discipline.
His cohorts were not so restrained.
“Can’t we train somewhere else?” one recruit whined, a mortal named Owenran with unruly gold hair and a half-crooked nose. Several others grumbled in agreement.
“You’ll get worse heckling than that when you’re on duty,” I warned. “If you’re Descended, they’ll call you assholes and brutes. If you’re mortal, they’ll call you traitors and sheep. If you can’t handle an insult, you won’t last a week.”
“I could shut them up,” another recruit muttered, a young Descended from House Althiena.
I turned to her. “How do you plan to do that?”
She shrugged, oblivious to the fuse her words had just lit. “A little whip of light magic, I guess.” She shared a smirk with a House Byrnum recruit.
My gaze cut to her friend. “Do you agree?”
She, at least, had the wisdom to wipe away her smile. “Uh, yes, I—” She swallowed at my narrowing eyes. “No, Prince—I mean, um, Your Highn—Mister Corbois . . . sir.”
I almost matched her grimace as she fumbled with how to address me. Technically, I was no longer a Prince, nor was I an officer in the Guard. Even the Corbois name now felt like a lie.
“Which is it, Miss Byrnum? Yes or no?”
She shot her friend an apologetic look. “No, sir. I don’t agree.”
“Very well.” I turned to the first recruit. “You’re dismissed from the Guard.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You can’t do that. I’m from House Althiena.”
“I don’t care if you were birthed from Blessed Mother Lumnos herself. You’re unworthy of the Guard. Turn in your uniform and weapons, and go home.”
She let out a sound that was half shriek, half huff. “You’ll hear from my parents about this.”
I sent a pulse of my aura thumping outward, knocking the recruits to their backs. In the nearby camps, people shivered and craned their necks. I stood over the Althiena recruit, shadows twining at my palms. “I look forward to it.”
Blood drained from her face. She clambered to her feet and ran toward the palace.
“Anyone else?” I growled, eyeing the others as they stood and returned to attention.
“The role of the Royal Guard is to defend the realm and protect its people. That includes the ones you dislike. Our Queen has set the example. She defends her people equally, even those who oppose her.” I glared at the recruits from the Twenty Houses.
“Even those whose families Challenged her and tried to take her life. She strikes only when she must, and when she does, she takes no joy in it. She is . . .” My chest tightened.
“She is mercy, and she is strength. As Her Majesty leads, so shall we follow. Am I understood?”
“Yes, sir,” they murmured.
Only Teller met my eyes. There was a deeper kind of respect in his solemn nod.
“Pair off and start sparring,” I ordered.
“Descended, practice using magic to subdue without causing injury. Keep it in the barrier—if stray magic makes it into any camp, I’ll tie you to a post and let them take their revenge.
Mortals, use your wits. The Descended you’ll face on duty won’t hold themselves back. ”
The recruits split into duos and spread out to begin their fights. As I wove my way through, barking feedback, the Guardians continued their mocking comments. The Ignios soldiers had also taken an interest, shaking their heads at the novices’ sloppy methods.
“Baby Bellator spent a few years at a fancy school, now he thinks he’s one of them,” a rebel called out. “Who’s gonna tell him he bleeds like us?”
Despite their sneers, or perhaps because of them, Teller spun forward with a flawless swing of his wooden sword into his partner’s ribs.
“Good, Bellator.” I shot a withering look at his opponent. “Do they not teach their sons how to shield in House Benette?”
Teller went rigid. His eyes dropped to the sigil on his partner’s uniform that marked him as a Benette.
The man climbed back to his feet, rubbing at his side and scowling. He raised his shield, and they began again, though Teller’s moves were less certain than before.
“We’re picking on the wrong recruit,” another rebel joked. “That pathetic Descended can’t even handle one mortal.”
The Benette recruit gritted his teeth at the ridicule. He shot out a sloppy burst of dark shards that Teller easily dodged. The Guardians dissolved in laughter, while the nearby Ignios spectators clicked their tongues in disapproval.
The Benette recruit’s eyes darkened. He circled Teller, jaw tensed, muscles tight.
He took his shot, casting a cloud of black to obscure him as he lunged.
A clever move, but Teller’s instincts were sharp.
He closed his eyes to focus on his partner’s pounding footsteps, and he angled his blade at just the right moment.
When the shadow magic cleared, the Benette man was on the ground, holding his gut and moaning.
The Guardians whooped. “Come on, baby Bellator, finish him off,” a rebel shouted. “The only good Descended guard is a dead one.”
“Shut your mouth,” Teller snarled, turning toward them. Their cheering turned to delighted laughter at finally getting a rise.
“That’s enough,” I warned them. “Find something more useful to do than interrupting my training, or I’ll have Auralie put you on latrine duty for a month.”
They rolled their eyes and grumbled, then started to disperse. One elbowed another as they walked away. “At least when they’re dead, they don’t go to the Undying Fire. They rot in the ground where they belong.”
Teller’s sword thumped to the soil.
Within seconds, he was on the rebel’s back, slamming a fist into the side of his jaw. The other recruits—mortal and Descended—roared their support, but when the rebel landed a return blow across Teller’s temple, their amusement turned abruptly to rage.
“For Teller,” Owenran shouted, raising a fist. He shot toward the rebels, the others followed, and the scene turned to chaos.
“Break it up,” I ordered. Cords of hissing darkness flowed from my hands and coiled around ankles, yanking them out of the fray one by one. “I said, break it up.”
I stalked forward and grabbed Teller by the collar, dragging him off his bloodied victim. He fought me the whole way, thrashing and swinging at an enemy that was no longer there.
I yanked his face up to mine. “This is not how you honor Perthe,” I hissed, quiet enough so only he could hear. His eyes dropped, though his jaw was still tight with fury. “You think this is going to help Diem earn the rebels’ trust? You’re her brother. What you do reflects on her.”
He wiped the back of his hand across his brow, smearing blood across his face. “Why does everything always have to be about her?”
I sighed and shoved him toward the palace. “Clean yourself up, then wait for me in the foyer.”
I turned to the others. More Guardians had run from camp to join the scuffle, outnumbering the recruits three to one.
Nidara’s second—bless the Kindred for her—had seen the tides shift and sent her soldiers to intervene before a simple fistfight turned into something worse.
I gave her a nod of thanks, then sent another burst of magic into the fight.
Bands of blue light wrapped over the eyes of the worst offenders, blinding them and sending them stumbling apart.
“Get your asses back to your camp,” I barked at the rebels.
“We don’t answer to you,” one shouted back.
“You answer to Auralie Bellator. What do you think she’ll say when she hears you assaulted her son?”
They skulked away as they tossed dirty looks at the recruits.
One particularly feisty woman remained, waving a finger in my face.
“You spent all that time with us in Arboros. We thought you were one of us. Now you’re defending them.
This is why Descended can’t be trusted. Your kind only looks out for themselves. ”
“Teller Bellator is a mortal,” I snapped. “So are half the recruits you just attacked. Where’s your loyalty to them?”
She sneered. “They joined the Royal Guard. They made their choice.”