Burn of the Everflame — Chapter 38

38

DIEM

he flight back to Lumnos was grim.T Zalaric and Taran had decided to stay with the half-mortals, and I’d ordered Tybold to escort them safely home. Teller had pleaded for a little more time in the library, especially when I told him we would never be coming back, but I couldn’t shake the crazed look in Symond’s eyes as he’d choked the life from my lungs. And the memory that had slipped free . . .

Symond had lost someone he cared for to godstone, and he blamed me for their loss. Though he’d stopped short of killing me, I wasn’t willing to gamble that he’d extend the same restraint if he had the chance to take someone I loved from me.

So Teller and I stole as many books as we could carry, and we fled across the sea.

Beneath us, Sorae trembled with a whimper. Though our bond had gone dark from the flameroot, I knew she had to be exhausted. The flight to Umbros was long, and we’d barely touched down before taking off again. I had no magic to heal her aching muscles or conjure a helpful wind as she fought through the pain to get us home.

“Almost there, girl,” I murmured, stroking her scales. “Look, I can already see the Lumnos coast. When I get my magic back, I’ll grow you all

the apples you can eat.”

She let out a weak but happy trill.

“I bet none of the other gryverns could have done this,” Teller said loudly behind me. “They would have had to stop to rest.”

Energized by his praise, Sorae gave a few powerful beats of her wings, sending us soaring back above the clouds.

I twisted around, silently mouthing thank you to my brother. His answering smile faded fast as his eyes dropped to the dark, hand-shaped

bruises on my neck.

“You alright?” he asked I shrugged, not bothering to mask my weary defeat. Sorae wasn’t the only one scrounging for her last bits of resolve. I was so very tired—tired of making mistakes, tired of letting people down, tired of guilt and shame and every success dwarfed by a larger failure. Tired of secrets I didn’t want to keep and burdens I didn’t want to carry.

Tired of running away.

“Did you find anything in the library?” I asked.

“Not really. I only had time to skim a few books.”

My heart sank. “Maybe the Centenaries will come around and we’ll get another chance.”

He glanced at the swollen lump on my temple. “Yeah. Maybe.”

I could force my way back. Once my magic returned, I could compel the Centenaries to stand down as long as I pleased. But what happened in that room had shaken me more than I wanted to admit.

Could I have changed the outcome of Ophiucae’s attack if I’d stayed in Umbros? Each time I’d faced him directly, he’d walked away. And the people who wasted away from godstone poison in the weeks after—that, I knew with certainty I could have stopped. Its effects worked so slowly, even a visit after the island might have helped. The Ignios King had held on that long. What if some Umbrosians had, too?

I’d been avoiding Umbros out of shame. Now my shame was so deep, I wasn’t sure I could ever come back.

My successor will be your most difficult adversary. They will stand in the way of what you need to do. They will drive a wedge between you and those you love, they will cost you a terrible price, and there’s a strong chance they’ll put you in a premature grave.

Yrselle’s warnings to me about her heir—about me—had been tumbling in my thoughts the whole way home. With her dying words, she’d urged me to heed them, even though she’d spoken of an unchangeable fate. Was it a final jab at my failures, or was there one last piece of advice hidden in her words?

“I did find something,” Teller said slowly. “I’m not sure it’s even meaningful. In Montios’s journal, she said the mortals had restricted access

to Coeurîle. She said it had been that way for hundreds of years before the Kindred arrived.”

“They probably didn’t want anyone to do what the Kindred did and cut the Everflame down,” I said.

Teller shook his head. “They didn’t restrict everyone. Only pregnant women. Apparently, the mortals were afraid of any children being born on the island’s soil.”

I frowned, something in his words tugging at my memory. “Did she say why?”

“Something about an old superstition, but she didn’t say what it was.”

We continued on in silence as I ruminated on his words and what they might mean—and wishing more than anything that I could turn around and fly right back. The sky grew darker and Lumnos approached, and we finally touched down on the palace grounds. We barely made it off Sorae’s back before she collapsed on her side, heaving with tired pants.

“You’re back already?” Alixe asked, emerging from the palace. “I thought you were going to stay in Umbros for a few days.”

“Change of plans,” I muttered, then quickly filled her in on the details of our disastrous visit.

“Luther will be glad to see you home,” she said when I’d finished. She glanced around. “I’m surprised he’s not here. Usually he senses you coming long before you arrive.”

I hated that I was a little bit grateful my flameroot-dulled aura had masked my return. I hated even more than I’d still been gutted to not see him waiting for me on the palace steps.

“He’s in the forest, gathering firewood for the Guardians. I told him we didn’t need it. The Ignosians offered to keep the campfires burning with their magic.” She smiled proudly. “Even for the Guardians.”

That was no small victory. When the Ignios refugees first arrived, the rancor between the two groups had been palpable. I’d asked Nidara and my mother to work together to mend it, but it wasn’t until Runa and Enness’s group had arrived, allowing both camps to see mortals and Descended living together as friends, that their efforts began to make progress.

“I can send someone to get him,” Alixe offered.

“No,” I said quickly—too quickly. “I, uh . . . I’m sure he’ll find me later. Could you arrange some food for Sorae instead?”

She nodded and left, and I stroked Sorae’s fur as I helped Teller unlatch our bags from her back. “You should go see him,” he said.

“Tel,” I warned, “leave it alone.”

“I’m your brother. It’s my job to tell you when you’re being an idiot.”

“You’re in the Royal Guard now. It’s your job to obey your Queen.”

“I’m off duty,” he fired back. “Go see him.”

“You know what, carry your own books upstairs.” I whipped around, storming across the lawn and up the palace steps.

“You remember what you told me at the Challenging?” he called out.

Against my better judgment, I stopped.

“You said that if I found someone I loved, I should hold on to them with everything I’ve got.” He hauled his bags over his shoulder and walked up the steps, pausing at my side. “I made the wrong choice when I walked away from Lily. I had all the right reasons to do it, but it was still the wrong choice. I will always regret it.”

I squeezed my eyes closed to fight the emotion burning behind them.

“Go see him, D.”

He walked inside, leaving me alone on the steps.

My hand trembled as it slipped beneath the fabric of my gown to touch the silvery mark on my chest—two hearts and a dagger. The hearts, I understood. I felt the echo of Luther’s heart in my chest every day. But the dagger . . . how could a tool of violence symbolize something that brought me such a feeling of peace?

Because it’s not about the violence, my conscience scolded, as if it was something I already knew. Something I’d always known. It’s a reminder of

what you do for the ones you love.

“Fight,” I whispered.

I turned, and I ran.

Across the grounds, past the Guardians’ camp, and into the forest. Into

my home.

Toward my home.

I shouldn’t have been able to find him. The flameroot had suffocated most effects of the mating bond, and yet my feet moved with purpose, reeled in by the unexplainable thread that had always bound our souls together, even before I’d ever pledged mine to him.

He was standing near a stream, his back to me, a cart filled with splintered logs at his side. An axe dangled from one hand, and the other was

raised, casting a perfect likeness of the moon nestled among the branches.

He’d removed his shirt, and the light of his illusion gilded his sweat-soaked skin in a silvery halo.

I watched, transfixed, as stars glimmered around him as if plucked from the evening sky and brought to earth. It was so much like the illusion he’d crafted for me before that I knew this was for me. Practice, maybe, so he could do it again if I asked.

Even when I pushed him away, he still found ways to be my light in the dark.

A star blinked to life in front of me, suspended in mid-air. Its soft glow pulsed like its own steady heartbeat as it slowly floated toward me. I reached out and cupped it in my hands, and the feeling of him bloomed

across my body.

“Diem.”

I heard the whisper leave his lips before he turned around. The illusion vanished into mist, leaving us in the dim purple-blue of dusk.

“I didn’t feel you arrive,” he said. “Why are you—” His brows slammed into a glare. “Are those bruises?”

I frowned down at my empty palms. “Put it back.”

He dropped the axe and stalked toward me. “Who hurt you? I will fucking destroy them.”

“Put the moon back.” I tipped my hands down. “And the stars.”

He stopped in front of me, eyes ablaze as he scoured my injuries—but when they locked with mine, his anger seemed to pause and cock its head.

“Please,” I said.

He held my gaze as the moon reemerged behind him, casting him in silhouette until a sprinkling of stars glittered around us and tossed pinpricks of light across his olive skin. In the heart of my palms, a glowing form took shape—not as a star, but as a flower.

I smiled at the bloom. “Beautiful,” I whispered.

He gingerly brushed my windswept hair from my wounded temple.

“Who did this to you?”

“I can’t tell you. If I do, you’ll go storming off to Umbros to put a sword in someone’s side.”

A gruff noise from his throat confirmed it.

“Why are you home early?” he demanded. “What happened? Is everyone alright?”

“Everyone’s fine.” I ran a finger over the flower’s shimmering petals.

“You’re getting good at these illusions.”

His hand dropped to my shoulder, his thumb grazing the crescent scar on my collarbone. “Tell me what happened in Umbros.”

“Tomorrow.” I looked up at him. “I’ll tell you everything tomorrow.”

His gaze danced between my eyes. He drew in a deep inhale, and when he breathed it out, tension slowly uncoiled from his muscles. He moved his hand beneath my cupped palms, and the flower’s form began to shift. Two wings took shape, then a long-plumed tail, and its birdlike head stretched toward the sky. I startled as a burst of pale blue fire engulfed the tiny creature. When the flames died down, it stretched its wings and took flight.

“A phoenix,” I gasped as it fluttered through the air, then perched on my thumb and preened its flaming feathers.

“You could do it, with a little practice.” He dipped his chin to the bird.

“Try it. Give it a mate.”

My heart squeezed, hearing that word from his lips.

“The Centenaries tricked me into taking flameroot,” I said. “I won’t have magic for a while.”

He looked me over. “You seem remarkably calm about that.”

I wasn’t calm at all. Inside, my pounding heart and screaming mind were locked in a heated debate over what I’d come here to say. I still wasn’t sure I’d have the courage to do it.

The phoenix took flight again and circled around me, leaving a trail of glimmering embers in its wake. It flitted its tail across my face, and I scrunched my nose, laughing.

The illusion wobbled and briefly lost its shape, drawing my focus back to Luther, whose face had gone slack. “You’re smiling,” he breathed.

My soul wept a little, that the man I loved could be so stunned to see me smile. At him.

Suddenly, what I’d come to do seemed like the easiest choice in the world.

“I love you,” I said. “I never stopped. I love you more today than I ever have—more than I did yesterday, and more than I did the day before.”

His chest rose with a sharp, sudden breath, the kind you take after breaching the water’s surface within seconds of sinking forever.

“I thought of you every day on Coeurîle,” I said. “There were so many times I came close to giving up. I told myself that you were waiting for me,

so I had to be strong. I had to make it home—to you.” A tear rolled free, but my smile grew. “You think you failed me on that island? Luther, you’re the only reason I survived. You didn’t let me down, you saved me.”

“Diem,” he said, his voice gruff with emotion.

“I’m scared,” I admitted. “I’m confused. I’m completely overwhelmed.

I’m tired, and I’m so fucking angry. What you said about a part of me being stuck on the island . . . I think you might be right. Sometimes I feel like I’m still trapped there. Everywhere I go, I’m surrounded by people who love me, but I’ve never felt so . . .” My voice broke. “ . . . so alone.”

He reached for me, and I placed a hand on his chest to hold him back. I stared at the bare skin beside it, where his scar had routed around his heart, thanks to Lumnos’s intervention. To save it for me, she’d claimed.

There, I thought. His mating mark belongs there.

But that was a line I still couldn’t cross. This was the bargain my heart and mind had struck: I would not steal Luther’s future—but I could give him my today.

“I don’t know if I can kill Ophiucae,” I admitted. “I don’t think I want to, but I’m not sure I can live with myself if I don’t. I’ve always trusted my heart to guide me, but I’m worried that following my heart now means letting everyone down. I feel . . . broken. So completely broken.”

I stared again at his scar, the mark so many had called a flaw and urged him to repair. The scar that I loved.

I slid my hand up his neck and into his hair, and I pulled his face to mine. “I’m broken,” I repeated, a whisper against his lips, “but every shattered piece of me is yours.”

At long last, I set down my armor, and his response was a crumbling dam giving way, desperate and hopeful and trembling with relief. He hauled me into his arms so my legs dangled beneath me, and I wondered if some part of him still feared that I might run.

“I’m yours,” I vowed. “I will always be yours.”

“Diem,” he rumbled from deep within his chest. “My Queen. My heart.

My—”

I captured his mouth again, unable to bear another second without his lips on mine. He kissed me like he was breathing me into his lungs, pulled me against him like he might fuse our bodies into one. I raked my fingers through his hair, and he carried me to a nearby tree, pinning me hard between his body and the trunk.

Another trap to keep me at his side.

I tore at his clothes, a woman determined. I needed to replace the memories the Centenaries had tainted with their mockery, desperate for a moment that belonged only to us. I let my mouth roam over his neck, his chest, his scar, leaving my mark on his skin not in the way I wished for, but in the only way I could. My hands skated over his granite muscles and glistening skin, and the mating bond gave a euphoric purr.

He held himself back, answering my kisses but not my touch, treating me like a wild animal that one wrong move might spook. I goaded him on with grinding hips and clawing nails, and tugged his lower lip between my teeth. It was only when my hand slid over his pants, palming his growing hardness, that he began to move—slowly, languidly, hands skimming my skin, drinking his fill of my touch as I’d done with him.

I’d warned him before that I was not the same Diem, and he’d warned the same of him. We took those words in earnest, learning each other’s bodies all over again. I thrilled at the new roughness to his palms, calloused from labor in the camps and training with recruits. His lips blazed a trail down my chest, and I shivered at the scratch of his beard on my sensitive skin, then shivered again wondering what it might feel like between my thighs.

My heart stuttered as his fingers neared the mark on my chest. I yearned for his hand to lay over it and feel how it burned for him. A little piece of me sighed inside as I took his wrist and guided it elsewhere instead— beneath the slit in my skirts that rose all the way to my hip, and then to my

wet, aching warmth.

“For you,” I rasped. “Only for you.”

His chest rumbled as he stroked the soaked lace of my undergarments.

“Touch me,” he demanded, his voice dark with dominant command.

I tugged clumsily at the fastenings of his pants, and we both let out a shallow breath as my hand slipped inside and curved around his hard

arousal.

“For you,” he growled. “Only for you.”

Instantly, I knew mouths and hands would not be enough. “Do you think,” I said between gasps as his fingers dipped beneath the lace, “we could find—ah—someone at camp with the—gods, Luther—the

contraceptive tonic?”

“I’ve already been taking it.”

I let out a surprised laugh, and his cock twitched in my hand. “You were that certain I would give in?”

“I was that certain I wouldn’t give up.” His ravenous gaze dropped to my mouth. “Laugh for me again. I want to taste it.” I smiled and obeyed, and he seized my mouth in a deep, probing kiss that matched the movement of his fingers. I answered with a slow caress of his length.

He tugged one strap of my gown off my shoulder, and my right breast spilled into the evening air. I arched into him with a whimper as he pulled its stiff bud into his mouth, circling with his tongue before dragging it gently through his teeth.

The thought shimmered through my lust-fueled haze that he was again perilously close to my mark. I didn’t want to take control. In a world where countless lives hinged on my every decision, giving my body to Luther had become an act of liberation. Only when I trusted him completely did I finally start to feel free.

But freedom, even with him, was a luxury I couldn’t afford.

“I think you’ve tasted enough,” I teased, hoping he missed the streak of sadness in my tone. I eagerly tugged down on his pants.

“Diem.” He grabbed my hand. “Wait.”

“Don’t tell me you’re still too much of a Descended snob to take me against a tree,” I joked. His expression hardened, and the fire coursing through my veins turned cold. “Oh.” I blinked. My cheeks flushed. “I see.

You don’t want—”

“I’ve never wanted anything more.” His chin dipped. “Do you?”

“Luther, I have wanted you since . . .” I thought of the day he patted me down for weapons, and my face grew a little redder. “Since long before I should have.”

The hint of a smile slipped out from beneath his dark beard, though it didn’t reach his wistful eyes. “But do you want this? Us?”

“I do,” I insisted.

“Will you still want it tomorrow?”

The question landed like a bomb.

“If you need comfort, Diem, I will be that for you. If you want a distraction, I’ll be that, too. I’ll get on my knees right now and make you forget everything that haunts you. I’ll be whatever you need me to be.”

Muscles strained on his throat. “But I will not be your regret. Not again.”

His expression bled with the wounds from my torturous push and pull.

The mask he’d been wearing to keep his pain out of sight—from everyone, but especially from me—fell away, and the Luther beneath it looked battle- scarred and weary. While I’d been at war with Ophiucae, Luther had been at

war with me.

And every war had its casualties.

“You called Sophos a mistake,” he said, his voice so terribly quiet. “I can’t accept that. You could never be a mistake to me.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, my heart teetering on a dangerous cliff. “This war could have some terrible, tragic end. You and I might not get a happily ever after.”

“If I get to be with you in whatever days we have left, I already have mine.”

My forehead sank against his. “There are so many mistakes I regret. But loving you isn’t one of them. I’m done running. From you, and from the future . . . whatever it may hold.”

A troubled look flickered over him at those final words, so I took his face in my hands, and I kissed it away. I kissed away all the hurt I’d caused him, all the rejection and doubt. I kissed him with the promise of my mark —that my heart was his, eternal and unconditional.

He scooped me into his arms and laid me down in a grassy bed of wild- growing bluebells and ivory yarrow. With tender hands, he slid my skirts up over my hips, his touch as soft as a kiss, and he nestled between my thighs.

His cock nudged at my entrance, not as a tease but a promise, though I whimpered for it all the same.

“I love you,” I breathed. “I love you. I love you.” I repeated it over and over, knowing he needed to hear it to believe it again.

His arm slid under my back and drew me against him, his other hand cradling my head, fingers twining in my hair. His lips hovered over mine, letting my whispered reassurance fill his lungs and feed his spirit.

“I love you,” I said again. “I never want to let you go.” For once, I was grateful for the incomplete bond, so he could not feel the sorrow cowering beneath my vow.

He held me close, and in one slow shift of his hips, my grief disappeared, replaced by the most exquisite bliss I’d ever felt. It was more than just his rigid fullness or the delicious friction on my attention-starved core. As he seated inside me, something soul-written filled every dark

corner with glittering joy. All my worries seemed conquerable, all my burdens took flight. I felt strong and beautiful and brave, convinced there was no challenge I couldn’t overcome with Luther at my side. And though I knew the mating magic was at work, masking my troubles in its euphoric glow, I didn’t care. I didn’t feel broken anymore—I felt perfectly complete.

With our bodies joined, the needs of the bond finally went silent. There was no more burning mark or itching skin, no ceaseless tug to his side.

Everything felt right, as if this person, this moment, was the only place I was meant to be. The place I’d always been meant to be.

Luther began to move, thrusting in deep, indulgent strokes. Sex between us had always been closer to a fight, intense and just the right kind of rough —but this night felt different. There was something achingly sweet about the way he kept me caged against his chest, breathing enraptured vows of love in my ear. Every time he withdrew, we both held the other a little tighter, and every time he filled me again, our bodies melted into one. This was not a man marking his territory, but savoring it for the paradise that it was.

The sensation was so overwhelming, I barreled toward release long before I was ready. I gripped hard to his back, tense with irrational panic at the thought of this moment ending and the cruel world reclaiming me for its own. Luther stilled inside me and showered my bruised neck in the lightest of kisses until my passion ebbed and my body relaxed. Then he began again, grinding against my clit until I was breathless and writhing.

We continued like that, moving together among the starlit trees, until at last he worked me into a high I couldn’t come back from. I clung to him and cried out his name, then he worked my quivering body until he thickened inside me, and he cried out mine.

Sweaty, spent, and blissfully at peace, we lay among the wildflowers, and we talked. He held me in his arms while I told him about my time on the island. The shame I’d been harboring slowly transformed to something more like strength as I recounted the hardships I overcame, every dark moment I fought through and survived.

He refused my apology for my cruelty in Fortos, insisting he was grateful for the push to explore his own dreams more deeply. My heart leapt as he talked excitedly of his vision for the council, his attempts to embrace his mortal side, and his hope to help other half-mortals do the same.

We made love again under the silvery embrace of two watchful moons, my sentinel in the sky and Luther’s creation on earth. After, I laid my head on his chest, his heartbeat pulsing through my blood alongside its companion rhythm in my chest. A breeze scented with seawater and spring ruffled my hair, and I felt him smile against my temple.

And for a moment, I saw it.

The future we might have. The nights we might spend together, the forest we might call home. The peace we might finally win.

Unchangeable fate be damned . . . I was going to fight for it with everything I had.

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