Chapter 62 #2
I couldn’t tear my eyes from the hearth. It was encased in a column of smooth white stones, exactly like the one in my childhood home. My father had gathered the rocks himself from the shore of the Sacred Sea. Water and fire, he used to say. A fitting balance, don’t you think?
Luther had only been to my family’s cottage once, the same day it burned to the ground. Had he noticed it? Had he done this on purpose, or was it a cruel, beautiful coincidence? I wanted to ask him, but my throat felt gripped by a fist.
He shifted to see my face, his gaze dancing between me and the house.
He raised a hand, fingers twitching, and the air rippled like a pebble dropped in a pond.
When it stilled, the house had changed. A second floor appeared to sit atop the first, smoke billowing from a tall brick chimney on its shingled roof.
Arched shutters framed flower-filled windows lit with a comforting glow that beckoned you in.
A rope-hung bench swung to and fro in the evening breeze, two steaming mugs waiting on the floor below.
It looked exactly like his sketch, but real enough to make my insides knot.
He pointed to the top of the illusion. “There’ll be a reading room there, upstairs, with a view of the sea.
” His finger shifted lower. “An armory closet by the front door.” He gestured to the side.
“I considered a formal dining room in the rear with a table large enough for our friends, but I built a garden instead, for the medicinal plants you need for healing. I thought it might be nice to keep the house small. Just enough for two.” He hesitated, eyes lingering on me.
“With room to grow, should you ever desire it.”
Cracks opened in my soul—a broken mirror on flimsy backing, pressed too hard and splintering into shards.
His fingers curled, and tiny blue sparks emerged from the trees.
They swarmed like fireflies to an adjacent parcel of land, bathing a line of saplings in their light.
“Our orchard,” he explained. “For Sorae. I had a bit of heartbreak when the mortals told me apple trees don’t grow in this kind of soil. Enness and his magic saved the day.”
My brain screamed at me to answer, but I could not.
I could feel his hope begin to shrink at my silence. “We can change anything,” he said, quieter than before. “If you dislike it—”
A sound croaked out of me, something between a scream and a sob.
I stiffly turned away, thinking I might combust if I looked at the house for one second longer.
Thinking that I might burn so hot I’d turn to ash where I stood.
I lurched toward the bridge we’d crossed, newly built and painted white.
Floating beside it, a small rowboat had been tied off to a wooden post.
I stopped.
My father’s boat.
The day he died, it had been docked near the sea, far enough away to escape my destruction. The only family relic to survive.
I stumbled to the water and fell to my knees, tugging at the line until the boat came within reach.
My fingers brushed its side, rough from lack of oiling in my father’s absence.
Inside, I caught a flash of red—his favorite fishing knife.
The handle had cracked years ago, but he’d refused to replace it, insisting it was the perfect blade for cleaning a fresh catch.
My mother had bound the handle with waxed crimson twine to keep it intact.
I snatched the knife and clutched it to my chest, running my fingers over the cords. It had been so long since my hands had touched something Andrei once held. Not since the twin daggers I’d laid in his grave.
“Don’t be angry,” Luther pleaded, crouching behind me. “The boat—it’s not for me. It’s Teller’s, by right. I’m keeping it safe for him here. He told me his fishing trips with your father were his happiest memories. I hoped maybe I could join him. I’d like to learn.”
I was so close to breaking. So dangerously close.
“Stop,” I whispered.
Luther didn’t hear me. “Teller helped me choose the land. He’s considering a home for himself a mile upstream.
” He pointed south, closer to town. “I thought we might build something for your mother that way. Close enough to visit any time, but far enough away for us to have . . .” He cleared his throat. “Privacy.”
I shook my head. “I can’t do this.”
Luther tensed. Leaned back. “I thought . . . that day in Sophos, you said you wanted—” He stopped abruptly.
“Are you worried that I’m only doing this for you?
Diem, for years I wished I could walk these streets without a cloak concealing who I am.
Mortal City feels more like home to me than the palace ever did.
This is the life I should have had, if my mother had raised me.
It’s what I want. What I’ve always wanted, even before we met.
I just never believed I could have it . . . until you.”
My heart cracked with the worst, most devastating kind of joy. The kind that felt too much like despair.
“Good,” I managed to rasp out. “Good . . . you deserve that.” I looked around, searching for an escape that didn’t exist. I could run for miles, fly on Sorae’s back to the ends of Emarion, and still, the truth would catch up.
Luther slowly rose. “If this is too much, we can find something else. A place for you to be alone.”
Alone.
I shuddered at the word. How could I possibly explain?
Yes, it was too much, far too much—because it was also exactly right.
I couldn’t have pictured a more idyllic home if I’d put the pen to paper myself.
It made me believe that I didn’t have to choose between healer or wife or mother or Queen or mortal or Descended.
Luther’s vision of our future allowed me to be all of those things and more, or none of them at all.
My choice, not my fate. And I wanted it so very, very badly.
“This house . . .” Every word I forced out hurt like broken glass, set aflame and poisoned. “It’s . . . perfect. Everything about it is perfect.”
“But you don’t want it?” His head angled lower, trying to catch my eyes.
I squeezed mine shut.
“I do.”
His bliss at my answer bloomed through me, and I’d never felt anything better—or worse.
He took my hand and pulled me toward the house.
“Come, see the inside. We can choose the details together.” He paused at the door and unfastened Sorrow’s Edge from my hip.
“That can wait outside,” he muttered, tossing the sword to the ground.
“Luther, wait—”
He swept me into his arms, beaming down at me with that incandescent smile. “The workers told me to carry you over the threshold. They said it’s a mortal tradition.”
My hand shot out to grab the doorframe. “Wait.”
“You don’t want me to carry you? Or . . .” His smile faltered. “You don’t want to go in?”
Neither.
Both.
He set me back on my feet. I hurriedly backed out of his reach, staring out into the trees to avoid seeing the home, or him, or the pain I knew this would cause him.
“Let’s go back to the palace,” I begged.
I felt the burn of his gaze deepen. The silence grew awkward, then pointed, though my head was unbearably loud with a fractured conscience, one voice demanding I tell him everything while the other warned of every dire consequence that might come to pass if I did.
When he spoke again, his tone was firmer. “Diem, this secret you’re trying so hard to keep . . . I already know what it is.”
The mating mark blazed hot on my chest beneath his coat. “What?”
“And I know why you didn’t tell me,” he continued. “You were worried about what I’d do. You were worried I’d try to finish it myself.”
Gods, he knew.
A voice of hope sang a bright note, louder than fate’s dirge. Hard as I’d fought to conceal that Luther was my mate, I’d desperately wanted him to know. If I was free of that burden, the others wouldn’t be so hard to bear.
He took my face in his hands and kissed me with all the ferocity of his conviction, a man who’d found his forever and wasn’t letting go.
Slowly, I dropped my defenses and leaned my body into his, letting him feel the heat of my mark press against him.
It built in intensity, spreading across both sides of my chest, growing hotter and brighter the longer we touched.
It felt so right, I struggled to remember why I’d ever fought it at all.
“Tell me you love me,” he demanded.
“You know how I feel.” How could he not, with the proof of it scorching between us?
“Tell me.”
“I love you,” I breathed. “I’m yours.”
“This house, this life with me . . . you want it?”
“It scares me, what I’d give to keep it,” I admitted. More truths slipping free.
“Then you will. I don’t give a damn what that sword wants.”
I went still.
“What did you say?”
“That’s why you pushed me away, and why you gave up your power to the council. You think whatever magic is in that sword will take your life when you kill Ophiucae. You don’t have to hide it anymore.”
I blinked a few times as everything I thought I knew scattered into a new, unfamiliar order.
“In Sophos, when your blood touched the sword, it opened some kind of pathway,” he said.
“Blessed Lumnos was there, and I could sense she wanted something from me, but I couldn’t understand what it was.
Then I remembered what she said before—‘Give our gift to my faithful heir.’ I thought she wanted me to take the sword and use it on Ophiucae to spare you the consequences of the spell.
” He frowned. “If it didn’t work, there must be something I missed. ”
This new reality was even more horrifying than before. Luther didn’t know about the mating mark, he knew about the spell, and his reaction was exactly what I’d feared—he was trying to fulfill it himself.
“Luther, promise me you won’t ever touch that sword again,” I pleaded. “You have no place in this.”
“Is that why you won’t go inside the house? You think you’re going to die, and it hurts less to lose something if you never let yourself have it?”