Chapter 56 #2
I pulled my hair over my chest to conceal my mating mark and took the gown from Eleanor’s hands. “Lily, will you help Teller get dressed,” I yelled over the screen. “I’m sure he could use some assistance with those, uh . . . buttons.”
“Of course, Your Majesty.” I peeked out just in time to watch Lily pop to her feet and gather the suit. Teller’s somber expression vanished as she grabbed his hand and led him toward his room.
“If this is what Zalaric made for his mating ceremony, I can’t wait to see what he does for yours,” Eleanor said. “We’ll have to melt down every candelabra in Emarion just to have enough gold.”
I tensed. “Oh . . . well, I—you see, um, I don’t—”
“I’m surprised Luther didn’t ask you the second he found you in Sophos.
Actually, I’m surprised he didn’t ask you way back when you came home from the island.
Anyone can see he wants to. Maybe he’s waiting for the war to end.
” She knelt to fluff my skirts. “You know, I did see him talking to your mother this morning. It looked very serious.” She looked up at me and winked.
“We might have another reason to celebrate soon.”
My heart skipped. For a moment, I let myself believe. If everyone was right, if Ophiucae was gone for good, then I didn’t have to die. And if I didn’t have to die, I had no more reason to keep the one-sided mating bond a secret.
Perhaps I could get my happy ending after all.
“The top of this dress is so lovely,” Eleanor said, standing. She came around to stand in front of me. “Zalaric gave me strict orders to pin up your curls to show it off.” She grabbed my hair and piled it on my head. “Here, let me—” She gasped and jerked back.
I looked down, and my stomach dropped. The beaded phoenixes had been arranged to cover as little of my breasts as possible—leaving my glowing mating mark starkly visible under the near-transparent mesh.
“You’re already mated,” Eleanor breathed.
“No,” I said quickly. “I mean—yes, sort of, but not—”
“You’re mated!” Her look of shock blinked to one of ecstatic joy. “Blessed Kindred, Taran’s going to sob. I think he wanted this for you two even more than he wanted it for himself. Can I be there when you tell him? Wait, does he already know? If you told him and not me, I’ll never forgive you.”
“Eleanor—”
“Oh, I’m just teasing. But I do want to know every detail.” She grinned. “When did it happen? How did he ask?”
“Eleanor, no one knows. Not Taran, not anyone. And you can’t tell them.”
“Right. Of course.” She mimed stitching her smile closed and knotting the thread. “Our little secret. You, me, and Luther.”
I shook my head. “Not Luther, either. It’s our secret, Eleanor. Yours and mine. Luther doesn’t . . .” I swallowed as the truth dug in its claws, refusing to be dragged out. “I’m . . .”
Her smile froze, then started to fade. “A stranded mate?” she guessed, and I nodded. “How?”
“You shed a little blood, commit to them forever, and the magic does the rest,” I said bleakly, repeating the explanation she’d once given me. “I didn’t mean for it to happen.”
She frowned. “The mating bond has to be willingly entered. It can’t be an accident.”
“Well, it was for me.” I fluffed my hair until my mark was fully curtained by my curls, avoiding Eleanor’s gaze so she couldn’t spot the lie on my face.
As I’d stood at the Kindred’s Temple that day on the island and watched Sorae carry Luther away, wondering if I’d ever see him again, there was nothing I wanted more than to be bonded to him for all eternity.
It was pure luck, or perhaps more meddling from the gods, that the Ignios King’s blade did the sharp part for me at just the right time.
But pledging my heart to Luther . . .
No. That had not been an accident at all.
The washroom door flew open. “I’m ready!” A pause. “Arboros’s asscheeks . . . everyone’s gone. I knew it would happen again.”
“Taran, no!” Eleanor and I shouted in unison. By the time we rushed out from the changing screen, he’d disappeared again and locked the door behind him.
I ran to the door and beat my fists against it. “Taran, come back. We’re here. Everything’s fine.”
Eleanor rushed to my side. “Diem,” she said quietly, “if you’re worried Luther won’t complete the bond . . .”
“Taran, get out here,” I yelled, ignoring her.
“No,” he shouted back.
“Luther loves you,” Eleanor hissed. “Of course he’d do it.”
“Out, Taran. That’s an order from your Queen.”
A snort rang out through the door. “I break your orders all the time.”
“You can’t hide forever. If you love Zalaric, you have to trust him.”
“Exactly,” Eleanor said, though her stare was pointed at me.
I dropped my voice to a hush. “I know Luther would complete the bond, Eleanor. That’s why I can’t tell him.” Her brow scrunched in confusion, and I let out a long, heavy sigh. “Just promise me you won’t say anything.”
“I won’t,” she vowed. “But Diem . . .” She gently brushed my hair aside, gazing at my mark with a hopeful joy I couldn’t manage to share. “You’re tied to him now. Whatever your reasons . . . Luther deserves to know.”
“I deserve to know what?”
I shot a panicked look at the doorway, where Luther stood beside my mother. I hurriedly moved my hair back into place. “Uh . . . we were just discussing . . .”
“Your cousin,” Eleanor jumped in. She turned to him and crossed her arms. “You deserve to know that Taran is being the biggest baby in all of Emarion and refusing the orders of his Queen.”
Luther eyed me closely, surely sensing there was more unsaid. His curiosity was forgotten as he drank in my gilded splendor. Warmth pooled in my belly at the long, possessive linger of his stare on the revealing bodice and the way his fingers curled at his side.
“No one denies my Queen,” he said, voice rough. “Especially when she looks like that.”
Eleanor smirked. “Isn’t the dress marvelous?” She not-so-subtly shoved me toward him, but it was my mother who stepped forward first.
“Diem, you look lovely,” she gushed, pulling me in.
I awkwardly returned the embrace. I had vowed to put the distance between us to rest, but I wasn’t sure how.
I still couldn’t reconcile the mother I knew—the warm, loving healer who had been content in a small but meaningful life—with the fierce Guardian leader who had galvanized a continent into rebellion.
It didn’t help that I wasn’t letting her be my mother. I’d made her my advisor, though my reasons had been strategic, not sentimental. Not once had I sought her out for comfort or support. I’d badly needed it, and I knew she badly wanted to provide it, but something had held me back.
When she pulled away, her smile was strained. “That dress is stunning. You were meant to wear it.”
“Luther, don’t you agree?” Eleanor called out. “Isn’t it perfect?”
He made a quiet noise. “Almost.” He curled an arm around my waist and splayed his palm low on my back to draw me against him. The tip of his nose dragged along my jaw as he leaned close and rumbled, too low for anyone else to hear. “It will be perfect when it’s on the floor beside our bed.”
My face—among other body parts—flushed with heat. Luther set a deceptively chaste kiss on my lips and leaned away, the corner of his mouth twitching up at the sight of my reddening cheeks.
There was a playful twinkle in his eyes I hadn’t seen in him since before the island, and never in the presence of others. He was making his usual effort to conceal his emotions, but for once, he was utterly failing.
He was happy.
And I couldn’t understand why the sight of it made me so sad.
“You look . . .” I paused and took him in.
I hardly had the words to describe him. His suit was my gown’s mirror image, an explosion of color and texture from head to toe.
Golden textured silk had been stitched with an inferno of metallic thread and gemstones, with a tall, sculptural collar that towered over his head like a gilded crown.
Nearly every inch of him glinted with light as he moved—a blazing sun embodied.
At the center of the dazzling finery, a dark silhouette stretched wide across his chest: a soaring phoenix, made of simple, matte black thread, with a pool of glittering garnets at its heart.
I wondered what it was meant to represent—his dark strength in a fiery world, or the emptiness inside that he had waited a lifetime to fill.
“ . . . handsome,” I finally finished.
Kinglike, I wanted to say.
“It appears there’s a theme,” my mother said, showing off the army of tiny beaded phoenixes rising up her sleeves.
I glanced at Eleanor, squinting at the strange symbols on her skirts in search of the flaming birds.
She grinned and raised her arms, then began to spin.
As she turned, the symbols blurred to form an illusion—a small bird, hunched low and curled inward, slowly spreading its wings as it lifted its head and took flight.
I bit my lip. Though it was beautiful, it was also very Corbois. “I know he loves to tease Taran, but I think Zalaric might have gone too far.”
“Zalaric’s gone?” a muffled voice whimpered through the washroom door.
Eleanor and I let out a matching groan.
“He’s outside,” Luther called out. “He told me to tell you if you’re not there in ten minutes, he’s pouring out every drop of alcohol in the palace and you’ll have nothing to drink all night.”
“Fine with me,” Taran yelled.
Eleanor laughed. “Taran Corbois, passing up a drink?”
“Taran Bellator.” The door cracked open, one sapphire eye peeking through. “I drink to forget, Ellie. I want to remember today.”
My heart swelled. Luther’s hand found its way to mine and squeezed. “Cousin,” he said sternly.
“Lu,” Taran answered. Though I could only see a sliver of his face, it was absent his usual grin. His skin looked greenish and clammy, his brows pinched. “You saw Zal? He’s out there?”
“He is. And I think he would prefer if he did not spend his mating day alone.” Taran’s gaze lowered guiltily, and Luther dipped his chin. “If you stay here much longer, Zalaric might start to think you’ve changed your mind.”