Burn of the Everflame — Chapter 55

55

DIEM

flick of Ophiucae’s wrist sent Luther, Taran, and Doriel slamming toA their knees.

A second flick forced me to do the same.

“They only came because they believed I was in danger,” I said. “They see now that I’m perfectly safe. You can let them go. They won’t come back.”

Ophiucae lifted Sorrow’s Edge and pressed its blade to Luther’s cheek.

“He will never stop coming back.”

Panic soared at the sight of godstone against Luther’s skin. “Let me talk to them. They’ll see I’m here by choice.”

“You had that chance when they arrived. Instead . . . you chose to leave.” His shimmering skin pulsed brighter. Though his voice rumbled with anger, I heard the hurt buried beneath. “Now you’ll make a different choice. One may stay here. The others will return to your army.”

“Thank you,” I breathed.

“Well, most of them will return.” He unleashed his cold, cruel smile.

“Their heads will not.”

My heart stopped. “Ophiucae, please . . . Taran and Luther are family to me.”

“What does family matter to me? Family betrays you—or leaves you behind.” Again I heard that sharpened, polished pain, honed over centuries and brandished like a sword. Another person lost to their hatred, convinced that the world would always fulfill their worst expectations. How could I change him, when I’d just proven him right?

When I wasn’t even sure I believed it, either?

“Choose, daughter, or I will choose for you.”

Though Luther was trapped in Ophiucae’s hold, the pain echoing through our bond told me he heard what was happening, and his heart was breaking at the choice he knew I’d make. A life taken so his might be spared—a torture he’d been forced to witness twice before.

“If you do this,” I said, “you will lose me forever.”

Ophiucae’s eyes darkened. His face was inscrutable, his body still. “And if I spare them . . . will you join me?”

“If you spare them, then I . . . I’ll . . .”

How simple it seemed to say yes. Save my friends, end the war—and if Ophiucae didn’t have to die, then neither did I. It was the perfect solution. A solution I couldn’t afford to refuse.

So why was the Kindred’s vision of the graveyard replaying so vividly in my head?

“Spare them all,” I said. “Just like you promised. Every Descended, every mortal, every half-mortal—give them all a blank slate. A fresh start, so this world can move forward. And stop Vance and his men from killing them, too. If you do that, then . . .” I took a deep breath. “Yes. Then I will join you.”

The world shrank in the silence that followed. Something in my spirit was deeply unsettled at the offer I’d made, but it was drowned out by burgeoning hope. If I could convince Ophiucae to walk away from violence and choose love, I could change anyone. I could change the world.

He crouched in front of me. His skin blazed bright, surrounding us both in his glow. It felt as if the moon herself had cast us in a silvery spotlight as she watched from her distant sea of stars. Ophiucae stared at me, the lines on his face mapping the rivers of rage that surged within him, carving through canyons of suffering and seemingly endless plains of resentment.

The nature of his magic had made him a creature of conflict, and his life had been war after war. I wondered what kind of man he could be in peacetime, or if he would always seek a new enemy because it was all he’d ever known.

Frantic shouting arose from the city. “He’s helping them escape,” a

voice bellowed behind me.

“Diem, run!” Henri yelled.

Their warnings went unheard by us both. Hesitantly, I lifted a hand and set it on Ophiucae’s chest, my palm against his heart. He gazed down at it,

brows drawing low.

Choose me, I pleaded internally. Show me I’m more important to you than revenge.

Though the mob grew closer and louder, Ophiucae didn’t pull his eyes from where I touched him, and I didn’t pull my eyes from him.

Everything hung on this moment. This choice.

I held my breath.

He met my gaze.

His lips parted to speak.

And the point of an arrow came slicing through his neck.

We stilled in mirrored shock. Sorrow’s Edge slipped from his hand as night-black blood oozed from his wound. He reached up to touch it—and a second arrow speared into his shoulder.

The force of it knocked him forward, crashing against me. I yanked the arrow from his flesh, staring in horror at its crimson-smeared, glittering black tip.

“Leave it in him,” Teller yelled, running out from the shadows. He slid another arrow from his quiver and set it into the crossbow’s shaft.

I frantically shook my head. “Teller, no!”

Ophiucae let out a thunderous roar. He shoved me away and turned to my brother just as a third arrow sank into his ribs. Waves of wrath trembled through his aura, making the air itself seem to ignite. Whips of sizzling light thrashed around him, and lightning crackled in a web across the sky.

“You will pay for that,” he snarled.

Teller set his jaw and reached for another arrow.

I lunged to grab Ophiucae’s arm, only to slam against his shield. Luther, Taran, and Doriel were still locked in his compulsion. Even the mortals had skidded to a stop, frozen in terror at the explosion of magic.

Teller raised his crossbow, aligning the arrow’s point with Ophiucae’s

chest.

“Stop!” I yelled.

“Stay the fuck away from my sister,” Teller said.

He let the arrow fly. It soared for its target, the godstone tip piercing Ophiucae’s shield and sinking deep into his shimmering skin.

Ophiucae smiled.

He strode toward Teller. I screamed, straining against the magical binds that kept me on my knees.

Henri ran past me in a blur. He flew up the steps and collided into Teller, yanking the crossbow from his hands. “Get Diem and run. I’ll cover

y —”

Teller’s fist cracked against his jaw.

Henri’s head jolted sideways, and he careened to the ground. Ophiucae let out a rumbling laugh and slowed to a lazy, indulgent gait, as if to savor the moment, even as Teller snatched his bow back and took aim again.

Ophiucae spread his arms wide. “Go ahead, boy. Use them all.”

Teller fired another arrow, then another, then another. With each one that hit its aim, a crease deepened between his brows. “Come on,” he murmured, heel bouncing against the ground. His hand reached for his quiver—and came back empty. He swore and dropped the crossbow, then pulled a dagger from his hip, shifting one leg back into the fighting stance our father had taught us.

Henri wobbled to his feet. “Gods-damned Bellators,” he mumbled, rubbing his cheek. He stepped into Ophiucae’s path. “If you want to hurt him, you’ll have to go through m—”

Ophiucae twitched a finger, and Henri took flight. His body soared past Teller and slammed into a column on the library’s facade, then crumpled to

the ground.

“Any more surprises?” Ophiucae asked.

Teller’s fingers tightened on his knife. “Just one.”

Somehow, I managed to push past Ophiucae’s magic to my feet, though every step felt like wading through tar.

Ophiucae stopped and raised a hand, his glowing skin darkening to a stormy grey. His fingers curled into a fist, and Teller’s body seized. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you get your arrows back.” He ripped an arrow from his shoulder, then spun its point toward Teller. “Each and every one.”

I reached the wall of Ophiucae’s shield, hurling all my weight against it.

The gleaming barrier wavered, but held. I beat my fists against it as I clawed for any shred of my godhood that might have slipped the flameroot’s cracks. Though the voice was silent, a flicker of something

answered back.

A whisper.

A spark.

Suddenly, Luther appeared beside me. He rammed against the shield, and a crack appeared across its surface. Taran launched from the ground

and did the same.

Ophiucae’s head snapped toward us. “How?” he snarled.

“Over here,” Henri shouted. He was moving slow and bleeding from several places, but he’d managed to crawl back to Teller’s fallen bow.

Luther laid another powerful blow against the shield. The fissure splintered farther. “One more,” he shouted at Taran. “Together!”

Ophiucae pinned Henri in place with his magic, then raised his other palm toward Luther, shadows swirling at his palm. “When you bury them, daughter, remember how they forced my hand.”

The darkness in his voice was the only answer I needed to know that any influence I might have had to change his mind was gone. All that was left for him now was another battle, another enemy, another war.

Luther and Taran hammered his shield with their bodies, and the glittering barrier gave way. The spark in my chest grew brighter and hotter.

Heat warmed my blood despite the swirling vortex of icy shadows pushing me backward.

My foot came down on Sorrow’s Edge, forgotten in the melee. The distraction shook my hold on whatever had been building inside me, and it cost me precious seconds.

By the time Ophiucae’s magic unleashed, it was already too late.

The city submerged in vicious darkness. No campfires, no lanterns, no streetlights. No evening stars, no glowing Kindred. No light at all—except for a faint shimmer of gold, calling to me in the dark unknown.

Sharp prickles stung my skin, but the pain I felt wasn’t mine. I shouted Luther’s name, and a quiet grunt answered. I stumbled toward it, fumbling blindly. My fingers brushed skin—ice cold and slick with something that felt unnervingly like blood—and his hand closed around my wrist. He pulled me against him, and I laid against his chest, listening for his heart, hearing only the panicked double-drumbeat of mine.

“This can’t be,” a voice roared nearby. “How?”

The shadows abruptly thinned. The moon shimmered back into sight, along with two blue-grey eyes. Though Ophiucae’s magic had left me unharmed, thousands of tiny wounds covered Luther’s body and painted his skin in a scarlet sheen.

A string of the foulest obscenities I’d ever heard rang out beside us.

Taran walked up, drenched in blood and scowling. “What in Sophos’s Blessed Dick was that?”

I scoured the receding darkness in a panic. “Teller, where are you?” I gripped Luther’s arm at the answering silence, fearing the worst. “Teller?

Teller!”

“Told you I had one more surprise.”

The last of the shadows wisped away, revealing Ophiucae sprawled on his back—and my brother kneeling over him, his blade buried in Ophiucae’s eye.

Taran whistled. “Damn, little brother. Nice.”

Ophiucae’s hand twitched, and Teller pulled the knife free and stabbed his chest. He did it again, then again—in his throat, his ribs, his skull. He didn’t stop until Ophiucae’s arm fell limp, and his one remaining eye stared unblinking at the clouds.

I ran to Teller’s side. “He’s immortal, Tel. Those wounds won’t kill him.”

“I know.” He stared at Ophiucae’s hand with a thoughtful frown. He lifted up the arm and began sawing at the wrist.

Taran shuddered. “My new family might be scarier than my old one.”

I grabbed Teller, trying to drag him away. “What are you doing?”

“Research.” He shoved me off, then pulled a small jar from his pocket and ripped out the cork. He dug a finger inside, pulling out a clump of a vibrant red paste.

Doriel crept closer and squinted at the jar, their injuries abruptly forgotten in the face of something new to study. “What is that?”

Teller jammed his finger into Ophiucae’s mangled wrist, smearing the substance over the freshly cut gash. “Flameroot-based poison. If it mixes with Descended blood, it temporarily stops their magic. I put it on the arrows I used, but I wasn’t sure whether it would work on a Kindred.”

Doriel frowned. “What do you mean a Kindred?”

My heart lurched as I watched my brother abuse my sire’s wounded body with emotionless, almost clinical focus. Seeing Ophiucae lay there, utterly helpless, entirely alone . . .

Even his own men refused to come to his aid. They watched from a distance, whispering as their eyes jumped between Ophiucae and me—two enemies that magic had stopped them from attacking. With that magic now gone, they seemed to be debating which of us to kill first.

“We have a problem,” Henri said. He pointed across the city, where the mind-wiped Meros Descended had risen from their forced slumber. They

staggered toward us, hands lifted as the air picked up with a powerful gust.

“He must have given one last order before the flameroot took effect.”

Luther stood and grabbed my hand. “If we hurry, we can beat them to the coast.”

“Wait,” Teller said. “Diem has to kill him first.”

I looked down at Sorrow’s Edge. The heartstone at its center pulsed with a pale grey light. I could almost hear the desperate cries of the woman who’d forged it, still haunted by its terrible purpose and its inescapable cost.

Taran picked up the sword and offered it to me. My fingers trembled toward the gilded handle. For weeks, I’d known this moment, this choice,

would come.

Save your friends.

Fulfill your fate.

Say goodbye.

Luther’s hand beat me to the sword. “I’ll do it.”

“You can’t,” Henri said quietly. “It has to be her.”

I couldn’t look at either of them. Unlike Luther, Henri knew what this would mean. The night I’d told him the truth, he’d offered to take my place, too. If I’d known then about his role in my father’s death, I might not have felt so ashamed when I considered letting him do it.

But as we’d argued that night over which of us most deserved to live, the memory of Lumnos’s story nagged at me until I noticed a detail hidden in her carefully chosen words.

A future taken, and a future given. It was love that bound them all.

It wasn’t just anyone who could take his life, just as it couldn’t have been a stranger who put him in chains nor could an enemy have freed him.

The spell their mother had used to forge the blade had one critical limitation: Ophiucae could only be killed by someone who loved him.

And there was only one person foolish enough to do something like that.

Gingerly, I slipped my hand beneath Luther’s and closed my fingers on the handle. His grip tightened—on the sword, and on me.

“He’s right,” I said gently. “I have to be the one.”

His piercing gaze scoured my face.

“I’ll hold them off as long as I can,” Henri offered.

Taran snorted. “Great. That half a second should be really useful.”

“Just get the kid out of here, Corbois. He shouldn’t see this.”

“It’s Bellator now,” Taran snapped.

“Shouldn’t see what?” Teller asked. He looked between Henri and me.

“I shouldn’t see what?”

“Diem,” Luther said darkly.

I pulled the sword away from him without meeting his eyes. I cringed, unable to believe the words I was about to say. “Go with them, Henri. Lana needs you.”

Henri took one look at the nearing mob and decided not to argue.

“Thank you,” he murmured, the words heavy with two decades of complicated weight.

He threw Luther a look so stark with pity, so blatantly a sign of what was to come that I almost took my offer back, but he jogged off westward, grabbing my brother’s arm and dodging more swung punches as he dragged Teller with him.

Taran lingered, his worried stare searing my heart. “See you at the boat . . . right, Queenie?”

I fought back the building tears and flashed him a weak smile. “I’ll be right behind you.”

A look of pain carved his golden-tan features. He looked at Luther.

“You too?”

Luther gave a single, silent nod.

“You promise?” Taran asked.

This time, Luther didn’t respond.

On the ground, Ophiucae’s chest began to rise again in stilted, heaving gasps.

“Go get your mate, cousin,” Luther called out. “Leave me to mine.” He placed a fist on his chest, and Taran—his typically joyous, irreverent demeanor darkened with grief—returned the gesture. Slowly, soul- shatteringly slow, he turned and left.

Luther’s gaze returned to me and hardened. “Do what you have to do, Diem, but you’re not doing it without me.”

Ophiucae twitched as his skin stitched back together. The army inched closer, their air magic whipping through the sky. At the base of the steps, the mortal men had noticed our change in numbers. Only Luther stood between them and the final two Crowns of Emarion.

The time for arguing was up. For better or worse, Luther would play a part in whatever came next.

He took my hand and set it on his chest. “This is yours.” He moved his

hand to my heart. “And this is mine.”

I nodded. “All of it,” I whispered.

He captured me in a kiss that was rough and messy and excruciatingly brief, then tore away, lifting the Sword of Corbois just in time for the first of the mortals to mount the stairs. With a furious roar, he launched into battle.

I looked at Ophiucae, pulse pounding in my ears. One side of his face was smeared with inklike blood from his wounded eye, while the other stared at the midnight sky. My blood went cold as I watched it slowly blink.

I gripped Sorrow’s Edge in both hands and clutched it against me. The ancient whispers grew louder, more frantic, though I was not sure if they were begging me to use it or pleading for me to stop.

Ophiucae blinked again, this time with both eyes. He was healing impossibly fast—a chilling reminder that he was no mere Descended. The wound on his wrist had already closed, and the fingers on his hand squeezed into a quivering fist.

Hair rose along my neck as his flinty gaze dragged to me, then down to the sword in my hands.

“I see,” he rasped. “Just like my family, after all.”

My cheeks went hot with shame.

His hand shot forward to raise a shield that didn’t come, his magic still victim to Teller’s flameroot paste. He kicked weakly at the grassy soil, writhing to put distance between us. “I’m not going back.”

He sounded panicked and desperate, two things I never imagined he could be.

I took a few steps, and he pushed further backward.

“I will not go back to that island!” he roared.

I froze. At his side, his hands were trembling. This intimidating man, regarded by the Descended as a god to be worshipped and feared, bearer of the strongest magic Emarion had ever seen, who had brought entire realms to destruction and vowed to force the world to its knees at his feet . . . was

scared.

Not of me, or of death.

Of the island.

Rain began to fall from the sky, but it was no gentle shower. The drops of water formed tiny, powerful hammers that pelted us at magic-fueled

speed. The wind sped into a cyclone, forcing me to dig my feet into the soil to keep from being dragged away.

“Diem!” Luther called out. One of the mortals had slipped past him to lunge at me with a dagger. Instinct took over, honed by years of my father’s instruction, as Sorrow’s Edge swung and skewered the man through his gut.

His bright ruby blood sizzled against the heartstone. Its glow flared, then dimmed, as if it knew this was not the life it was destined to take.

Luther grabbed the man and yanked him off my blade. The other mortals lay slain around him. In less than a minute, the Meros Descended would reach us both.

Ophiucae rolled to his hands and knees, trying to crawl away, and Luther caught him by the collar and forced him to his knees. “My Queen,” he growled, holding him in offering.

With trembling hands, I lifted Sorrow’s Edge, letting its tip rest on Ophiucae’s chest. My eyes squeezed shut. I couldn’t bear to look at either man, unsure which of them I was about to hurt more.

Even if I was ready to do this—and gods, I was not ready—what if there was a part of the spell I’d missed? I had to kill Ophiucae, and I had to give my life as payment. That was as much as I’d managed to figure out. If I missed something crucial, I might never get to try again.

Luther pushed Ophiucae closer to the blade. Its point punctured Ophiucae’s skin, sending his blood trickling down the blade. It hit the heartstone, and a surge of energy exploded through my body. The world painted over with fiery gold, shimmering silver, and depthless black. The vague, indecipherable whispers sharpened to wails from two women in the distance haloed in gilded light. One was on her knees, shoulders jerking with sobs. The other’s head hung low, though I knew she was watching every sad, horrific moment.

Swirls of energy streamed like starlight ink in blackened water from the place where Sorrow’s Edge had pierced his skin. Luther’s silhouette hovered behind him, appearing as a cloud of twinkling mist, steadfast despite the turbulent winds.

Drawn by instinct, I sliced my thumb on the blade and smeared my blood across the heartstone. His mother’s sobs grew louder and strangled into pleas as glowing energy twined around the blade, stretching toward me.

I could feel Ophiucae through it. His face was obscured, but his heart was clear, along with everything in it: his panic, his anger, his dread.

His hurt.

I wondered if he felt mine in return—the rending of my soul, the way every last part of me warred against the decision fate was demanding that I make.

“Diem,” Luther’s voice rang out. “Quickly!”

The second female figure lifted her arm. Warmth spread across one side of my body, and the air filled with clanking metal and groans.

The heartstone’s magic writhed over my arm and Ophiucae’s chest, binding us together. It did not urge me to fight and destroy, the way my godhood did, but its long-dormant power was wide awake, eager to see what I might do.

I opened my eyes. The Meros Descended had strangely staggered backward, rubbing their eyes as if dazed. Luther grabbed Ophiucae’s head and yanked it back, forcing Ophiucae to hold my stare. Every year of his immortal age was evident on his face. He looked so tired, and so very afraid.

Through the roaring wind and violent rain came a whisper: “My daughter.”

I would like to say that I saw him for everything he was: A murderer. A tyrant. Entirely untrustworthy, and the greatest threat to Emarion’s future.

How differently things might have gone if I had.

But in the moment, I only saw the man who gave me life, and the same lonely, fractured person that the island made me become.

My arm went limp, and Sorrow’s Edge slapped against my thigh.

Droplets trickled down my cheeks. Rain, tears, or maybe both.

“I can’t,” I said, voice breaking.

Luther looked between us, then at the Meros Descended. He sheathed his sword, then snatched Sorrow’s Edge from my hand.

“Forgive me, my heart.”

With one powerful swing, he carved its blade through Ophiucae’s neck.

Black blood splattered over my face. A shocked sound choked out of me as Ophiucae’s head hit the soil. His body held its macabre stance for a moment, arms half-raised in a final, futile defense, then crumpled at my feet.

Luther threw an arm around my waist and ran. He shouted something, but I didn’t hear it. I didn’t notice the storm around us worsen or feel my lungs breathe in as much water as air. I didn’t see the others when we

reached them, nor hear their cries of relief at seeing us alive. I didn’t flinch at the tall grass whipping my cheeks as we sprinted miles for our escape.

When Luther carried me into the waiting boat, even his touch couldn’t win my focus. The rocking of the tides, the hushed arguing of the men around me, the piercing shriek of my gryvern when she finally arrived—all went ignored. For the entire trip home, I didn’t see, hear, or feel much of anything, except for the coppery taste of my birth father’s blood on my lips and a throbbing pain around my wrist, squeezing like a shackle.

The sign of a bonded bargain.

Broken.

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