Chapter 38
DIEM
The flight back to Lumnos was grim.
Zalaric and Taran had decided to stay with the half-mortals, and I’d ordered Tybold to escort them safely home.
Teller had pleaded for a little more time in the library, especially when I told him we would never be coming back, but I couldn’t shake the crazed look in Symond’s eyes as he’d choked the life from my lungs.
And the memory that had slipped free . . .
Symond had lost someone he cared for to godstone, and he blamed me for their loss. Though he’d stopped short of killing me, I wasn’t willing to gamble that he’d extend the same restraint if he had the chance to take someone I loved from me.
So Teller and I stole as many books as we could carry, and we fled across the sea.
Beneath us, Sorae trembled with a whimper.
Though our bond had gone dark from the flameroot, I knew she had to be exhausted.
The flight to Umbros was long, and we’d barely touched down before taking off again.
I had no magic to heal her aching muscles or conjure a helpful wind as she fought through the pain to get us home.
“Almost there, girl,” I murmured, stroking her scales. “Look, I can already see the Lumnos coast. When I get my magic back, I’ll grow you all the apples you can eat.”
She let out a weak but happy trill.
“I bet none of the other gryverns could have done this,” Teller said loudly behind me. “They would have had to stop to rest.”
Energized by his praise, Sorae gave a few powerful beats of her wings, sending us soaring back above the clouds.
I twisted around, silently mouthing thank you to my brother. His answering smile faded fast as his eyes dropped to the dark, hand-shaped bruises on my neck.
“You alright?” he asked
I shrugged, not bothering to mask my weary defeat.
Sorae wasn’t the only one scrounging for her last bits of resolve.
I was so very tired—tired of making mistakes, tired of letting people down, tired of guilt and shame and every success dwarfed by a larger failure.
Tired of secrets I didn’t want to keep and burdens I didn’t want to carry.
Tired of running away.
“Did you find anything in the library?” I asked.
“Not really. I only had time to skim a few books.”
My heart sank. “Maybe the Centenaries will come around and we’ll get another chance.”
He glanced at the swollen lump on my temple. “Yeah. Maybe.”
I could force my way back. Once my magic returned, I could compel the Centenaries to stand down as long as I pleased. But what happened in that room had shaken me more than I wanted to admit.
Could I have changed the outcome of Ophiucae’s attack if I’d stayed in Umbros?
Each time I’d faced him directly, he’d walked away.
And the people who wasted away from godstone poison in the weeks after—that, I knew with certainty I could have stopped.
Its effects worked so slowly, even a visit after the island might have helped.
The Ignios King had held on that long. What if some Umbrosians had, too?
I’d been avoiding Umbros out of shame. Now my shame was so deep, I wasn’t sure I could ever come back.
My successor will be your most difficult adversary. They will stand in the way of what you need to do. They will drive a wedge between you and those you love, they will cost you a terrible price, and there’s a strong chance they’ll put you in a premature grave.
Yrselle’s warnings to me about her heir—about me—had been tumbling in my thoughts the whole way home. With her dying words, she’d urged me to heed them, even though she’d spoken of an unchangeable fate. Was it a final jab at my failures, or was there one last piece of advice hidden in her words?
“I did find something,” Teller said slowly. “I’m not sure it’s even meaningful. In Montios’s journal, she said the mortals had restricted access to Coeur?le. She said it had been that way for hundreds of years before the Kindred arrived.”
“They probably didn’t want anyone to do what the Kindred did and cut the Everflame down,” I said.
Teller shook his head. “They didn’t restrict everyone. Only pregnant women. Apparently, the mortals were afraid of any children being born on the island’s soil.”
I frowned, something in his words tugging at my memory. “Did she say why?”
“Something about an old superstition, but she didn’t say what it was.”
We continued on in silence as I ruminated on his words and what they might mean—and wishing more than anything that I could turn around and fly right back.
The sky grew darker and Lumnos approached, and we finally touched down on the palace grounds.
We barely made it off Sorae’s back before she collapsed on her side, heaving with tired pants.
“You’re back already?” Alixe asked, emerging from the palace. “I thought you were going to stay in Umbros for a few days.”
“Change of plans,” I muttered, then quickly filled her in on the details of our disastrous visit.
“Luther will be glad to see you home,” she said when I’d finished. She glanced around. “I’m surprised he’s not here. Usually he senses you coming long before you arrive.”
I hated that I was a little bit grateful my flameroot-dulled aura had masked my return. I hated even more than I’d still been gutted to not see him waiting for me on the palace steps.
“He’s in the forest, gathering firewood for the Guardians. I told him we didn’t need it. The Ignosians offered to keep the campfires burning with their magic.” She smiled proudly. “Even for the Guardians.”
That was no small victory. When the Ignios refugees first arrived, the rancor between the two groups had been palpable.
I’d asked Nidara and my mother to work together to mend it, but it wasn’t until Runa and Enness’s group had arrived, allowing both camps to see mortals and Descended living together as friends, that their efforts began to make progress.
“I can send someone to get him,” Alixe offered.
“No,” I said quickly—too quickly. “I, uh . . . I’m sure he’ll find me later. Could you arrange some food for Sorae instead?”
She nodded and left, and I stroked Sorae’s fur as I helped Teller unlatch our bags from her back. “You should go see him,” he said.
“Tel,” I warned, “leave it alone.”
“I’m your brother. It’s my job to tell you when you’re being an idiot.”
“You’re in the Royal Guard now. It’s your job to obey your Queen.”
“I’m off duty,” he fired back. “Go see him.”
“You know what, carry your own books upstairs.” I whipped around, storming across the lawn and up the palace steps.
“You remember what you told me at the Challenging?” he called out.
Against my better judgment, I stopped.
“You said that if I found someone I loved, I should hold on to them with everything I’ve got.
” He hauled his bags over his shoulder and walked up the steps, pausing at my side.
“I made the wrong choice when I walked away from Lily. I had all the right reasons to do it, but it was still the wrong choice. I will always regret it.”
I squeezed my eyes closed to fight the emotion burning behind them.
“Go see him, D.”
He walked inside, leaving me alone on the steps.
My hand trembled as it slipped beneath the fabric of my gown to touch the silvery mark on my chest—two hearts and a dagger.
The hearts, I understood. I felt the echo of Luther’s heart in my chest every day.
But the dagger . . . how could a tool of violence symbolize something that brought me such a feeling of peace?
Because it’s not about the violence, my conscience scolded, as if it was something I already knew. Something I’d always known. It’s a reminder of what you do for the ones you love.
“Fight,” I whispered.
I turned, and I ran.
Across the grounds, past the Guardians’ camp, and into the forest. Into my home.
Toward my home.
I shouldn’t have been able to find him. The flameroot had suffocated most effects of the mating bond, and yet my feet moved with purpose, reeled in by the unexplainable thread that had always bound our souls together, even before I’d ever pledged mine to him.
He was standing near a stream, his back to me, a cart filled with splintered logs at his side.
An axe dangled from one hand, and the other was raised, casting a perfect likeness of the moon nestled among the branches.
He’d removed his shirt, and the light of his illusion gilded his sweat-soaked skin in a silvery halo.
I watched, transfixed, as stars glimmered around him as if plucked from the evening sky and brought to earth. It was so much like the illusion he’d crafted for me before that I knew this was for me. Practice, maybe, so he could do it again if I asked.
Even when I pushed him away, he still found ways to be my light in the dark.
A star blinked to life in front of me, suspended in mid-air. Its soft glow pulsed like its own steady heartbeat as it slowly floated toward me. I reached out and cupped it in my hands, and the feeling of him bloomed across my body.
“Diem.”
I heard the whisper leave his lips before he turned around. The illusion vanished into mist, leaving us in the dim purple-blue of dusk.
“I didn’t feel you arrive,” he said. “Why are you—” His brows slammed into a glare. “Are those bruises?”
I frowned down at my empty palms. “Put it back.”
He dropped the axe and stalked toward me. “Who hurt you? I will fucking destroy them.”
“Put the moon back.” I tipped my hands down. “And the stars.”
He stopped in front of me, eyes ablaze as he scoured my injuries—but when they locked with mine, his anger seemed to pause and cock its head.
“Please,” I said.
He held my gaze as the moon reemerged behind him, casting him in silhouette until a sprinkling of stars glittered around us and tossed pinpricks of light across his olive skin. In the heart of my palms, a glowing form took shape—not as a star, but as a flower.
I smiled at the bloom. “Beautiful,” I whispered.
He gingerly brushed my windswept hair from my wounded temple. “Who did this to you?”
“I can’t tell you. If I do, you’ll go storming off to Umbros to put a sword in someone’s side.”