Burn of the Everflame — Chapter 20

20

DIEM

he walk to my old room was a sobering journey. Vance and his men hadT ransacked the palace, slashing their blades through tapestries and art, shattering mirrors and windows. Bodies of dead guards littered the halls, as did the corpses of palace staff. The higher-ranked royals had hidden away in their rooms behind fortified doors, leaving the less fortunate to take the mortals’ wrath.

The sight of it made me ill. The poor fighting the poor, the oppressed taking their vengeance on other oppressed, while the privileged few escaped unscathed.

By the time I reached the royal suite—spotless and untouched, of course, thanks to the bloodlocks—I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to retch or tear the place to the ground.

The room was dark, lit only by the fading glow from my skin, and it was empty, save for a figure seated by the dormant fireplace, shoulders hunched.

I closed the door behind me and took a seat across from him, slamming back against my chair. “Well,” I muttered, “we’re home.”

My brother’s eyes lifted to me, the festering misery in them equaling mine. “This isn’t home.”

I glanced around the room, my gaze lingering as old memories arose. I couldn’t deny I’d been happy here for a while. I’d fallen in love with Luther in this palace, found new friends and new strength in who I was. As Queen, these rooms had been my refuge.

But it had never been that way for Teller. He had been dragged here unwilling, an innocent bystander to my fate. This palace meant the death of

our father, the destruction of home. Without Lily, his memories here only brought pain.

And after all that I’d changed, I had to admit, it didn’t feel much like home for me, either.

I dragged my hands over my face, trying to quell my still-blistering temper. “We can find you a place of your own after the war, but I’d rather

you stay here until all this is over.”

He didn’t answer.

“Happy eighteenth birthday, by the way,” I said. “Sorry I missed it. I threw you a party on the island. Perthe and I gorged on cake and wine, then read a few textbooks in your honor until we passed out from boredom.”

He sat straight up. “Perthe survived?”

My heart dropped into my stomach. “No,” I rushed out. “I only meant —” I cringed at my stupid, careless joke. “I visited his grave every day.

Talked to him about . . . everything. He kept me company.”

Teller’s expression shuttered. He drooped back over his knees, hands balling into fists. The room went quiet until fluttering wings and the click of talons on stone marked Sorae’s return to her perch. She peered inside an open arch at me, then at my brother, and let out a sympathetic whirr.

“I saw the Ignios King stab you,” Teller murmured. “I thought he killed you.”

“He tried to.” The mating mark burned. “I wasn’t ready to go yet.”

He was silent for a long time, then he sighed, his eyes returning to me.

“Cake and wine, huh?”

I forced a small smile. “Mud cake and rain wine. Just like we made when we were little.”

His lip twitched up, and it felt like the sweetest victory. “What was it like out there?”

“Awful. Every last second. What was it like with Mother and the Guardians?”

“Awful. Every last second.” He looked away. “I had no idea how much she’d kept from me. How much you . . .”

He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to. I knew.

How much you both had kept from me.

Keeping secrets from my brother was among my greatest regrets. He was the one person in my life who had always been honest with me, and the shame I carried for not doing the same was immense.

“The Kindred spoke to me on the island,” I said. “Ophiucae is one of them. He’s Omnos—the tenth Kindred they never told anyone about. He tried to kill all the mortals, so they locked him up, and I accidentally set him free. Now I have to convince him not to kill all the Descended, too.”

Teller blinked. “How are you going to do that?”

I touched my chest with a mock look of outrage. “Are you saying you doubt my powers of persuasion?”

His blank look was not a vote of confidence.

“What if you can’t?” he asked.

“Then I have to kill him.”

Teller frowned. “How do you kill a Kindred?”

I set aside the blade I’d taken from Doriel and reached into the shadows of my cloak to pull out Sorrow’s Edge. “With this.”

He leaned forward to study it. “I thought Mother said she stabbed him with a godstone blade, and it didn’t kill him.” He looked up at me, brows knitting lower. “The Ignios King stabbed you with godstone. That didn’t work, either.”

My fingers traced the golden filigree that spanned the sword’s glittering black blade. As I did, a voice filled my head, whispering ancient words I could not understand.

“This sword is different. Their mother made it with magic from their home world. She was going to use it to kill him, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.”

“And you think you can?” He was trying hard to look like he wasn’t planning his own funeral already.

“Honestly?” I pushed out a heavy exhale. “I don’t know.” I buried my face in my hand. “Maybe not.”

There was something freeing about admitting the truth. Terrifying, too.

After a beat of silence, I heard the soft pat of footsteps, then wood creaking as Teller perched on the arm of my chair. He squeezed my shoulder in that firm yet gentle way our Father had always done. The memory of it had hot tears burning at my eyes when Teller let out an abrupt, unexpected snort.

“I can’t believe our mother fucked a Kindred.”

“Teller!” I gaped up at him, shocked. And a little impressed.

His mouth slid into a smile. There it was—buried underneath the anger and pain, a gleam of the brother I knew. The knowledge that he was still

him gave me hope that somewhere inside, I was still me, too.

“You think Father would be jealous?” he asked.

“Jealous? Tel, he’d never stop bragging that he stole a pretty woman from a Kindred.” He laughed, and I shook my head. “Remember when our lives used to be boring?”

“You were never boring. I was boring.” His attention lifted to my Crown. “You were always meant to do something big.”

His words rumbled in my thoughts, a distant thunder.

“Don’t tell anyone, alright?” I asked. “You know how Kindred-obsessed the Descended are. I don’t know what they’ll do if they find out there’s still

one alive.”

“I won’t,” he promised.

The click of a bloodlock heralded the opening of the door. The warm pulse of the mating mark on my chest told me who had arrived, and Teller’s respectful nod of greeting confirmed it.

“You know, I haven’t slept in a bed for weeks,” Teller said. “I’d really like to do it again.” He gave my shoulder a final squeeze as he rose, then shuffled across the parlor to his old room. He paused and looked back.

“Happy birthday to you, too.”

He forced a small smile that I couldn’t seem to return.

“Night, Tel.”

“Night, D.”

I stared at his door long after he closed it, even as Luther came and crouched before me. “The poultice is gone,” he said. “I burned the bowl to make sure no one from Ignios could get even a trace.”

“Was there enough for the other survivors?”

He nodded. “Alixe took the final batch.”

I grimaced. I hadn’t even thought to ask her if she was wounded. I’d questioned her loyalty, then put her to work. And she had done so, knowing the poison was killing her inside.

“Mireille and Ailani left for Arboros and Faunos,” he went on.

“Obaneryn won’t return to Meros until you decide Doriel’s fate, and the Ignios prick is too ill to travel. I put guards on the three of them for tonight.”

I stared up at the ceiling, surprised at how strange it felt to see wood and stone instead of the evening sky I’d grown used to on the island.

Luther’s hand shifted on top of mine. The balm of his touch was immediate, soothing my hissing godhood and coaxing the last of the shimmering, angry glow to leave my skin.

“Are you second-guessing your choice?” he asked.

“No. Does that make me a monster?”

“Ignios deserves his death. Some people are too dangerous to save.” His focus moved to the sword and dagger in my lap. He picked up Doriel’s blade first, casting a glowing orb to illuminate its design. “You’re right— this does look like the knife that killed your father.”

“Except for the handle,” I said.

“And the marquenom.”

I frowned. “What’s a marquenom?”

“Custom blades like these are engraved with a symbol for their owners.” He brushed his thumb across a small design etched just below the hilt: the sigil of Sophos—an open book below a glowing spark—topped with a single-peaked coronet. “This one is for the Crown of Sophos.”

My Sophos magic spun to life, plucking an image of the knife that killed my father from my memories in immaculate detail—right down to the warm, sticky blood coating its unmarked blade.

“The other one didn’t have a marquenom,” I said.

“Perhaps its owner chose to leave it off so they couldn’t be found.” He hesitated. “Or perhaps it never made it to its owner.” Before I could push him on what he meant, his attention moved to Sorrow’s Edge. “That’s the sword from our vision—the one you fought with in Sophos. Doriel brought it to the island?”

“No. The Kindred did. They appeared to me on Coeurîle.”

He waited for me to say more, and when I didn’t, he glanced up at my Crown. “The Kindred gave all of those to you, too?”

All I could do was nod. There were so many things I needed to tell him and show him and ask him, I wasn’t sure where to begin. I wanted to curl up in his arms and open my mind to let him see every dark, defeated moment through my eyes, make him understand how damaged I’d become.

His thumb grazed the line of my jaw, then he rose to stand. “You must be tired. Let me run you a bath.”

He strode toward my washroom like a man determined. I wearily rose and followed him, dragging Sorrow’s Edge at my side. I paused by my bed

and cast a plume of Ignios magic to light the fireplace. As the warmth of the flames heated my skin, a calm settled over me.

For weeks, I’d dreamed of this moment. Luther and I were alone. No distractions, no immediate dangers to fight, only truths to be revealed.

The cloak of curling shadows I’d been wearing like a shield turned to mist, leaving me exposed. The scabbard I’d leashed to my waist with a length of Arboros vine thumped to the floor. On the pier, I had burned my clothes and washed my body in an attempt to leave behind the me I’d become on the island, but it ran deeper than what was visible on my skin.

I couldn’t run from it. I had to lay myself bare and trust that Luther’s love wouldn’t falter.

I gathered my hair over my shoulder to hide the mating mark. There were things I needed to say before revealing that cherished, most beautiful truth.

Luther’s footsteps returned to the bedroom and stopped. I felt the burn of his gaze as he took in my weakened body and pallid skin. The urge to turn and run to him warred with the sinister creep of old, irrational fears.

What if this changes how he sees me? What if I’m too broken to be loved?

His footsteps struck up again, growing louder. The possessive caress of his aura enfolded me, and all my doubts disappeared. This was my Luther.

My heart, my champion, my advisor, my lover, my friend, my Prince. He had seen me broken before, and it had only made us stronger.

I saw the futures that did not come to pass, Lumnos had told me. There was not a single one in which he did not love you.

He stopped behind me. His fingers trailed tender paths up my arms, and his lips pressed to my shoulder. My head turned toward him as he softly kissed my neck, then my cheek, then my temple. His left hand splayed against my waist, pulling me against the steady, solid strength of his body.

His other hand gently pried Sorrow’s Edge from my grip.

He started to set it aside, then hesitated, holding it up to the firelight.

“It’s talking.”

“You can hear the voice?”

He nodded. “But I can’t understand what it’s saying.”

The smoky grey stone embedded in the center of its blade filled with a pale glow. I reached up to touch it, but the second my thumb brushed across its glassy surface, a jolt of searing pain shot through my hand. Luther jerked the sword out of my reach.

“That’s heartstone,” I gasped. Hours ago, I’d felt the same sting from its counterpart on Coeurîle.

My mind began to work. Whenever the Crowns used the heartstone, they shed their blood on it first. Embedding the heartstone into a sword made it the perfect tool to draw the blood needed to invoke its magic—but it was this sword’s wielder, not its intended target, who had planned to cast the spell.

“Did the sword belong to Ophiucae?” Luther asked.

“His mother,” I said absently, distracted by my thoughts. “She was going to use it to kill him.”

“And her daughter used it to kill her instead.” He hummed. “A tragic story.”

“No, Ophiucae was the one who killed their mother.”

Luther raised a brow. “That’s not what he said.”

My Sophos magic prickled as memories rose from earlier that day.

Be careful, Ophiucae had said. Its last owner ended up with its blade through her heart. Put there by her very own daughter.

Her daughter.

A female Kindred: Arboros, Ignios, Meros, Montios, Lumnos.

Lumnos was the only one of us he had any fondness for, so she was tasked with luring him to the island while our mother completed the spell.

Mother asked the rest of us to stay away.

According to Sophos, Lumnos was the only other person there when their mother died.

Lumnos, who couldn’t bear to meet my eyes when the other Kindred spoke of their mother’s death.

“She lied,” I whispered. “She told them their brother killed their mother.

It was her.”

“Who lied?” Luther asked, but I was miles away.

Why would Lumnos kill her mother? Perhaps to save her brother—but she’d been as adamant as the others that he was a danger. Their mother hadn’t wanted to kill him, either. To save her family, she’d been willing to

do anything . . .

My heart stopped.

Heartstone magic requires more than skill.

I grabbed the sword from Luther and, over his protests, slid its sharp black edge on my palm. As my blood trickled over the heartstone disc, the

sword’s murky whispers became a screaming, sobbing wail.

A heartbroken plea—for forgiveness, for mercy. For the love of her children, including her son, and the mate she dearly missed. For an end to

her torment. And above all . . .

For freedom.

A horrified gasp shuddered out as I let the sword clang to the ground.

“The blade . . . she—she’s inside. Luther, she—oh gods.” I crumpled to my

knees. “She’s in the blade.”

There must always be a balance.

Lumnos had put the sword through her mother’s heart, but it wasn’t to kill her—it was to help her cast the spell that cursed Ophiucae. In exchange for locking him away in the island cell, their mother had paid an equal price. The heartstone magic had imprisoned her inside the very weapon she’d used: Sorrow’s Edge.

“Diem, you’re shaking.” Luther grabbed a blanket from the foot of my

bed and draped it over my shoulders.

A future taken, and a future given.

Another piece of the puzzle slotted into heartbreaking place. The Kindred said the heartstone’s magic had made their people immortal.

Perhaps that meant only the heartstone’s magic could kill them. That’s why the Kindred had gifted Sorrow’s Edge to me. If I could not change Ophiucae’s heart and convince him to end his bloody quest, I would have to use the sword, call on the heartstone’s magic, and kill him—and heartstone magic required an equal sacrifice in return.

To take Ophiucae’s freedom, his mother had lost hers.

And if I took his life—I would pay for it with mine.

Life for life.

Luther’s hands cupped my face. “Your skin is like ice. Come, the bathwater’s warm. You can explain everything to me there.”

At the brush of his skin, my mating mark flared beneath the blanket, reminding me of the question I’d come here to ask him, and shock became despair as my world fell apart. After weeks of clinging to the promise of our bond as the joy that would make all my past torment worthwhile . . . I could not let Luther seal the bond.

Luther was young for a Descended. He had centuries ahead of him to live. If I died, I would leave him behind just as his uncle, King Ulther, had

been left after the murder of his mate—ruined, half his soul missing, unable to ever love again.

It was a fate I knew Luther would accept. He’d been willing to stand by my side while I married Henri just for a chance that I might turn to him after Henri’s death. If a lifetime of agony was the cost of being my mate, Luther would embrace it without hesitation. He’d suffer anything, no matter how painful. That’s how much he loved me.

And I loved him far too much to let him do it.

I was a stranded mate.

To save Luther, I had to stay a stranded mate.

Forever.

Outside on the terrace, Sorae’s ear-splitting howl was the voice of my sorrow. Devastation devoured me, chewing up the last pieces of my crumbling soul. My happiness, my hope, my heart, all annihilated in an instant. My godhood did not break the bars of its cage—it melted them down and boiled them to steam, spreading and growing and burning until my spirit was a blackened patch of barren earth.

“Tell me what’s upsetting you,” Luther said, sounding so devastatingly

concerned.

“Go,” I whispered.

“Diem, talk to me.”

“I want to be alone.”

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

“No,” he insisted. “Something’s wrong, I can tell.”

Again, my skin began to shimmer. My magic was rapidly spiraling out of control. I was going to explode, just as I had the day of my father’s death, and this time, it felt like I might take the whole world with me.

I pulled the blanket tighter around me, dipping my head to hide my face.

“I want to be alone,” I said again.

“I refuse to leave you when you need me.”

“I don’t need you.” The lie grated, sandpaper on my throat. “I went weeks without you. I’ll survive.”

I thought I couldn’t possibly feel any worse, but when a sickening feeling of rejection filled my gut like rancid oil, I finally hit rock bottom.

Because it wasn’t just my pain I was feeling—it was Luther’s.

Eleanor and Taran had told me once that the mating bond allowed you to feel your mate’s emotions, but with the island smothering its magic, I

hadn’t experienced it until today. All those strange, foreign emotions I’d been sensing since arriving back in Lumnos had been his.

Luther was hurting. Gods, was he hurting. He was worried and confused and punishing himself with so much guilt, and the woman he loved, a woman he needed as badly as I needed him, was sending him away.

His expression shuttered to the cold, empty mask of the Prince. It was almost impressive, how callous he could pretend to be while his heart was breaking.

His hands dropped to his sides. “Let me stay nearby, just in case—”

“Leave, Luther. As your Queen, I command it.”

He went still.

“As you wish, my Queen.”

I waited until I heard his boots cross the foyer, followed by a door clicking shut, before dropping the blanket. I ripped the golden pendant from my neck and threw it onto my bed, then staggered to the terrace, where

Sorae was already waiting.

“As high as you can,” I begged.

With a leap and a few beats of her powerful wings, we were in the clouds. The final, tenuous hold I’d had on the reins of my godhood snapped,

and my magic consumed me.

I was fire and sorrow and fate.

And I burned, and I burned, and I burned.

HOURS LATER, when my magic had run low, I buried my despair at the bottom of a dark, emotionless chasm and returned to my suite. I bathed in the now-cold bathwater and climbed into bed. For another hour, I tossed and turned, the soft pillows and luxurious sheets unbearable for too many reasons.

I rose and dressed in the warmest, simplest clothes in my wardrobe. I left Sorrow’s Edge behind, but I grabbed my necklace, using a flash of Ignios flame to weld the broken chain back around my neck. I tucked it beneath my sweater and began to walk.

Out of my room, out of my suite. Through the darkened halls, down the staircase, and out the front doors. Past the evening guards, who I told to leave their posts and go home. Down the rows of sheet-covered corpses lining the yard. Across the grassy training fields, into the heart of the Guardians’ camp.

At this late hour, few were awake. A rebel stationed at the entrance eyed my approach, but either fear or my mother’s orders kept them from stopping me.

I looked around and spotted Cordellia, the Arboros cell leader who’d held me hostage, then set me free, only for me to betray her when I returned to rescue Luther.

She had threatened to kill me if she ever saw me again.

“Mother Dell,” I said.

She looked my way, and her dark features dropped into a frown.

“I’m not here to cause problems.” I held up my empty hands. “I have no weapons.”

“You are a weapon.” She pointed to a large tent across the campfire.

“Your mother’s there.”

“I didn’t come for her.” I glanced around. “Are there any empty tents?”

“Don’t you have a palace full of rooms?”

“I’d rather have a tent.”

She looked me over, chestnut eyes thinning to slits. She jerked her chin to a tent nearby. “Take mine. I never sleep there anyway.” She cast a look at a tall, muscular woman with cropped hair and a pretty smile watching nearby. Their lips curled up in tandem. “If I want it back, I’ll drag you out

and make you sleep with the horses.”

A different Diem might have laughed.

I started for the tent, and she called out behind me. “Is this going to be a regular occurrence—the Queen living among the rebel commoners?”

“Is that a problem?”

She thought about it for a moment. “Not with me.”

I nodded. “Good night, Mother Dell.”

“Good night, Diem Bellator.”

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