Chapter 49
DIEM
Iwas still reeling from the sight of my former betrothed when Ophiucae’s men hurled me into a giant cage.
“Why won’t he let us kill ’em?” a man grumbled.
“He’s weak when it comes to her,” another said, locking the door behind me. “That’s gonna be a problem.”
The other men muttered in agreement as they strode away. I ran to the cage door and kicked, hoping that even without my magic, my Descended strength might be enough to force it open, but it didn’t budge.
“It’s Fortosian steel,” someone said behind me. Their voice was hoarse and unraveled, like someone who’d just done a great deal of screaming. “Don’t waste your time.”
I turned to see a pair of dull pink eyes staring from the corner of the cage. Their smooth-shaven head and anguished expression told me which Sophos Descended had been spared.
“Doriel,” I breathed. “You’re alive?”
The walls of the building that once housed the cell had been blasted away, leaving it exposed to the open air.
From its place halfway up the hill, I could see every mile of smoking rubble that had once been the realm’s shining capital.
I realized with horror that Ophiucae had not spared Doriel at all.
He’d condemned them to a far more agonizing fate—watching helplessly while their city, and its people, fell.
I had often prayed to see Doriel as thoroughly broken as my time on Coeur?le had left me. The vengeful god who’d granted my wish wasn’t the ones I’d prayed to. It was the one who had given me life.
“Are any of my people still alive?” Doriel rasped.
Though I’d wished for Doriel’s destruction, I took no pleasure in delivering its final blow: “No.”
A heart-rending sound cracked out of them, a guttural sob that frayed with the pain of a soul being ripped to its threads. “You should have killed me in Lumnos. I wish you had.”
Arms still chained behind me, I awkwardly sat on the floor beside them.
Though Doriel stiffened at first, I gently leaned my head against theirs, and the dam broke, a flood of grief surging out.
Their delicate body shuddered while we sank together in an ocean of their tears—one for each soul that neither of us had been a strong enough Crown to save.
I noticed Doriel gripping their side and looking pained. “Are you hurt?”
They shook their head, then pulled up their shirt to reveal a silvery mark on their ribs.
“You’re mated.” My heart squeezed, imagining what it would do to me to watch my mate die—the way it would snuff out all light in my life forever. “Oh, Doriel . . . I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“No,” they murmured. “My mate lives.”
Oddly, there was no relief in their tone. If anything, it seemed to deepen their grief.
“We kept it secret for so long,” they said. “I feared our people would think we’d betrayed them by taking a foreign mate. Obie agreed that our duties to our realms came first.”
“Wait . . . Obaneryn is your mate?”
They nodded bleakly. “When we lost our Crowns, a part of me was glad. At least we wouldn’t have to wait for the afterlife to be together anymore.
I even convinced myself that Blessed Father Sophos was offering me a gift for my service.
” Their eyes drifted to the smoking corpse of their city.
“I wasn’t being rewarded. I was being condemned. ”
Though the kinder part of me wanted to ease their pain, I could not absolve them of the role they’d played in the ruin of their realm. Doriel wouldn’t have believed me if I’d tried.
There was one burden I could ease. “Sophos didn’t take your Crown to punish you, Doriel. I needed all nine Crowns to break the spell and leave the island. It was nothing more than that.”
“Blessed Lumnos gave you her Crown long before then. Blessed Fortos and Blessed Montios, too. The Kindred chose you to lead.”
They chose me to die.
The words waited on my lips, tasting of curses and ash.
My mind shifted to my own mating mark, cold against my skin. The flameroot had dulled its magic, too. If I didn’t make it out of this alive, had I felt Luther’s heart beating alongside mine for the final time?
“We’ll find a way to escape,” I said firmly. “We—you will see your mate again.”
“If Obie comes to rescue me . . .” The color drained from their face. “Death isn’t enough for those men. The things they’ll do to him . . .”
“That won’t happen. I won’t let it.”
“How? You’re locked in the same cell I am.”
I frowned, thinking on my sire and the affection for me he’d confessed. “I think Ophiucae brought me here to win me over. He wants me to join him.”
“Are you going to?”
My “no” came, but not quickly enough—and Doriel noticed.
“I’ll make him think I am,” I hurried to add. “If I can get him to trust me, maybe I can convince him to let you go.”
Creases twitched along their brow. “Why would you help me?”
In the burning rubble, my eyes lingered on the twisted metal that had briefly been my brother’s home.
The last time I was there, Luther had let me see his memory of the moment he’d spared Vance’s life.
He’d done it for me, knowing I would choose mercy over murder. To him, it was my greatest strength.
I wondered now if it would be my downfall.
“You helped me solve my father’s murder,” I said. “Let’s call it repayment for that.”
We both settled against the bars and curled our bodies in against the midnight chill. With the air still thick with smoke, our minds on our mates, and the mortals loudly reveling in their triumph, there would be little sleep for either of us tonight.
“The people who killed your father,” Doriel murmured, “did you make them pay?”
“No.” I turned my face to the burning city. “But I will.”
Many hours later, Ophiucae’s men grew tired of celebrating and wandered into the few remaining intact buildings to sleep.
The city fell quiet, save for the occasional swoop of Ophiucae’s gryvern on patrol and the soft sounds of Doriel weeping.
By dawn, they succumbed to exhaustion, leaving me with my thoughts.
Though the mating bond had dulled since drinking the flameroot, some part of its presence had survived—a flutter of feeling, the faintest tightening of an invisible chain. Each time I reached to grab it, the sensation slipped away, but it was unmistakably there.
Did Luther know I’d been taken? I’d stormed off without explanation. I hadn’t even left the compass—
I gasped, jerking upright. My bound wrists shifted to the pocket where I’d stowed the compass, but it was empty. My scabbard was missing, too. My hand flew to my neck, and when I felt no sign of the golden pendant Luther had given me, my heart shattered.
That necklace was so much more to me than jewelry.
It had been a talisman on the island, a lifeline to the future I so desperately wanted to have.
It had continued to give me comfort in the weeks I’d pushed Luther away, my small but mighty sentinel against the sadness that had made me feel so alone.
And now, it was gone.
As the morning wore on, I sank deeper into misery. A group of rebels approached and tossed two black, rocklike objects through the bars of the cell. It took me far too long to realize they were loaves of bread that had been burnt beyond recognition.
“Are we supposed to eat that?” I asked.
“I don’t care what you do with it. It’s all you’re gonna get.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and she’ll die of hunger,” another chimed in, and the others laughed.
The man leading the group looked around. “Who’s got the flameroot?”
Two men with flasks headed for our side of the cage. I nudged Doriel awake, and they drowsily climbed to their feet and faced the bars, looking as if this was a familiar routine. Grudgingly, I stood and joined them—then glowered when I saw the man standing across from me.
Henri wouldn’t look at me. He held the flask up, eyes cast low.
“You haven’t betrayed me enough already?” I spat.
“You banished me from Lumnos,” he mumbled. “I had nowhere else to go.”
The leader eyed us both. “Is there a problem?”
“No,” Henri said quickly. He shoved the flask in my face. “Drink, Descended scum, or we’ll make the other one bleed until you do.”
Doriel blanched. They tried to back away, and the other man grabbed them by the collar and yanked them against the bars. He pulled out a knife and pressed its point to Doriel’s neck.
I threw every flame of my rage into the scowl I gave Henri as I leaned forward and drank. It took everything in me to swallow the flameroot instead of spitting it in his face.
“So much for being a better man for your child,” I said coldly. “I hope they never know you.”
Even though I hated Henri for what he’d done—really, truly, to the depths of my soul, despised him—at the sight of his heartbroken reaction, I hated myself a little bit, too.
“Ophiucae wants to speak with you,” the leader said to me, unlatching the cell door.
Doriel shot me a nervous look. I wasn’t sure whether they were grateful or terrified when I obediently walked out.
I followed the men up the hill as they bragged about all the Descended they’d murdered and boasted about what they’d do to the next ones they found, smirking at me all the while. They were trying to bait me into a reaction, and it was getting dangerously close to working.
Henri edged closer. “Don’t, D.”
It stung, how well he knew me.
“He ordered them not to hurt you,” he whispered. “Keep your head down, and you’ll survive this.”
I threw him a bitter look. “You know I have no plan to survive this.”
He solemnly returned my stare. “Maybe that should change.”
The men marched me through the library doors and down the massive central hall. Seeing the place where Luther and I had shared so many special moments made the distance from him feel all the more acute.
The feeling worsened as they led me toward the rooms marked for the Crowns’ use only, the sign for which had been torn down and defaced.
We neared the Everflame-carved rotunda that housed the room where Luther and I had first made love, and I tried to stagger back, unable to bear seeing it ruined, but the men dragged me toward a different hall.