Chapter 60
DIEM
By the time Alixe and I arrived at the Lumnos pier, my insides had turned to stone, dipped in molten tar, and coated in broken glass. Last time I saw the Centenaries, Symond nearly killed me. I had no magic to shield myself if he had decided to come finish me off.
At least that would be preferable to the reason they’d given.
“I’ve kept them on their ship,” she explained as we rode up on horseback. I squinted through the darkness, thinking they must have left until I heard the flap of sails in the evening wind. A face appeared in the distance, onyx eyes on cream-pale skin.
“A while ago, you told me you released the Forging magic’s hold so Descended can use their magic in every realm,” Alixe said. “Is that still the case?”
I nodded. “They have to be able to protect themselves until we stop Vance and his men.”
“Of course, Your Majesty. However . . .” She looked toward the water, frowning, then back to me. “Perhaps you might consider making an exception tonight, given what you told me earlier.”
Alixe was the only person I’d entrusted with the news of Ophiucae’s survival. I knew it wasn’t a truth I could afford to conceal much longer, but this was not the time and place to start its spread. If the Centenaries came any closer, our minds—and our secrets—would be theirs to take.
I reached inward, toward the Forging magic, and flinched at a flash of searing heat. Whatever was blocking me from it had grown in intensity, now too bright and hot for me to even grasp, let alone control.
“I can’t,” I said. “There’s something wrong with the Forging magic.”
Alixe thumbed the blades at her hips. “Maybe we should turn them away. We have enough to handle here with our own people.”
Her words, and their implication—that the Umbrosians weren’t our people, too, an opinion I had done little to counteract—prodded at my conscience.
“Wait here,” I said.
As I walked to the pier, the water rippled from the downdraft of Sorae circling overhead.
Her ability to sense a person’s intentions would have been terribly useful at the moment, but it had been another casualty of my choice to set the gryverns free.
In its absence, she’d turned skeptical of every new arrival, and none more so than these.
A puff of sapphire flame unfurled from her jaws, briefly illuminating the anchored ship.
It was painted black from bow to stern, as were its sails, and its size was far smaller than I’d expected.
The sailboat couldn’t be holding more than ten at most, and all but one—a man cradling a bundle to his chest—wore the signature Centenary scarlet.
“Where’s the rest of the realm?” I shouted. “Or did you decide everyone else in Umbros wasn’t worth saving?”
“They’ll arrive soon enough,” Symond answered from the darkness. “Kindred help us when they do.”
“We’ve been at sea for days,” a female voice called out. “We need food and rest. We’ll cause no trouble, you have our word. Isn’t that right, Symond?”
Silence followed, then the muffled sound of arguing. Finally, Symond grunted a reluctant “agreed.”
I hesitated, and the woman spoke again. “There’s a child aboard, and her father—from Meros. If you won’t take us, I beg you, take them.”
Sorae snarled another plume of fire to light the night, and I spotted Drusila, the Centenary who had spoken up in my defense in Umbros. It was her child, I realized, and the Meros mate she’d told me about when we first met.
I motioned for them to dock, acutely aware of the murmured complaints from the Lumnos guards behind me.
The Umbros Descended had a long and storied history as the least trusted people in Emarion.
Even the Guardians were a more preferable bedmate—at least when they hurled a bomb your way, you could run.
The Centenaries could make you smile while you sliced your sword through your own belly.
“Thank you,” Drusila breathed when I caught their line and tied them off. “You have no idea what we’ve been through, Your Majesty. After the first attack, we thought we understood what we were facing, but this . . .” She lowered the gangway and began to cross it. “It’s so much worse than we—”
I held up a hand to stop her. “Your child can stay here. So can your mate.”
The blood drained from her face, sunburnt and smudged with dirt. Her hair was tangled with wind-blown knots, her scarlet armor soiled and reeking of filth. She gestured urgently for the man holding the baby to come forward.
He shook his head. “We’re not leaving you.”
“It’s the only place she’ll be safe,” she said softly.
The man looked at me without moving. “Diem—that’s your name?”
“Call her Your Majesty,” Drusila insisted.
He held my gaze. “I’m not speaking to you as a subject to a Queen. I’m speaking to you as one mate to another.” His voice lowered. “You’re a stranded mate, isn’t that right? That’s what they saw in your head?”
“That’s none of your business,” I snapped.
“I know,” he said quickly. “I’ve had all my own secrets taken by them, too.
They can’t help themselves. They think they’re doing you a favor by setting them free.
Drusila told me I’d get used to it.” He gave a hesitant smile.
“Never did. Keeping secrets used to make me feel like I had some control over the world, you know? A secret was something no one could take from me until I was ready to let it go. Had to learn the hard way the world can take everything from you, so you might as well give up the secrets and hold on to the people instead.”
He walked to Drusila’s side and swept his fingers over the mating mark on her wrist before threading his fingers with hers. “I hear you know how it feels to be kept apart from your mate. You know what it does to a person.”
I crossed my arms, saying nothing.
“If what I’ve heard is true,” he went on, “I think you also know what it does to a daughter to be separated from her mother.” He passed the swaddled infant to Drusila and came to the edge of the gangway.
“I know the Centenaries’ reputation. I also know they’ve earned it.
But they don’t deserve to die. If you turn them away, they don’t stand a chance. ”
“Take your child and come to land,” I ordered.
“Not without my mate.”
“I’m your Queen,” I reminded him.
“Please, Diem—Your Majesty—”
“If you want my help, then take your child and come to land.”
Drusila rushed forward and pushed the baby against his chest. “Take her. Keep her safe. Nothing matters more than that.” Tears brimmed in her eyes. “Remember, my love. No tide so deep . . .”
“’Sila,” he whispered.
“Finish it,” she said.
His lip trembled. “No wind so swift.”
“No sea so deadly.” She paused, awaiting his answer, but he hung his head in silence.
She kissed the babe atop its head, then placed a hand against his forearm.
Beneath his tattered sleeve, a golden glow burned bright.
“No sea so deadly,” she repeated, “that it will keep my heart from yours. I’ll find my way to you both. In this life, or the next.”
She gently urged him forward, and he stepped onto the dock. “You’re Queen of Umbros, too, aren’t you?” he said to me. “Isn’t it your duty to protect them?”
“It’s my duty to protect all of my people.” I glanced at Symond. “From every threat.”
Despite the darkness, Symond’s oil-black eyes seemed to shine with hateful light. Whatever reasons he had to despise me, they’d only deepened with time.
“Follow her,” I told the Meros man, pointing at Alixe. “She’ll see that you and your daughter get what you need.”
“What my daughter needs is her mother.”
“Go,” I said again.
His pained expression hardened into a glare that rivaled Symond’s.
He shifted the blanket aside to give Drusila one last look at her daughter’s face.
Drusila’s shoulders shook, her hand covering her mouth to stifle her sob.
She pressed her mating mark to her heart, and he did the same, flashing me one final, bitter look before slowly, excruciatingly, leaving them behind to walk to shore.
Drusila swiped away her tears. “Thank you, Your Majesty. I know you’ll keep them safe.” She motioned to the rope. “If you’ll untie our line, we’ll be on our way. We won’t bother you again.”
My eyebrows rose. “I didn’t tell you to leave.”
Hope flared like a fresh-lit match across her face. She looked to her mate, then back to me. “We can stay?”
“You were willing to give up everything you love to save your child from those who wish to harm her,” I said. “I trust that means you understand what I’m willing to do if I believe, even for a second, that you will harm the people here.”
Despite my stiff-lipped threat, the hypocrisy of my words ate away at me. I’d stood in front of Ophiucae, a man who very much intended to do harm to the people here, and I’d been unable to do the one thing I knew would protect them.
Drusila nodded vigorously. “Yes, of course, Your Majesty. We understand. We—”
“You,” I said. “Not them.”
She looked back at the other Centenaries, who had gathered along the ship’s edge to watch. Their expressions said little, but the way they traded stares in matching rhythm told me there was a great deal being said in voices I could no longer hear.
“We could make her take us,” Symond said aloud. He leaned forward, fingers curling around the wooden railing, and gave a sinister smirk. “We could do anything we want. She has no magic to stop us.”
“Breaching my mind is an unwise choice when you need my help,” I warned.
“I didn’t have to. That secret was obvious—you don’t have an aura.” His cruel smile grew. “And if you had heard what I just said about you to the rest of them, you would have come aboard and stuck that pretty sword through my neck.”
“Symond,” Drusila hissed.
He chuckled, looking me over like a savory meal he wanted to devour, but not like a gourmet dish—like a lion appraising a wounded gazelle. “We could take this whole realm for ourselves. Make the Queen of Emarion ours to control. Just like he did to them.”
“Silence,” Drusila said. “Haven’t you cost us enough?”