Burn of the Everflame — Chapter 61

61

LUTHER

hen Diem finally returned to the reception, something in her hadW changed, though I couldn’t tell what. That was hardly an unexpected feeling these days. She hadn’t been herself since before the island, and every time I thought I might finally understand what she was going through, some fresh new hell arrived to split us further apart.

It once felt like the universe was determined to put us together, no matter how hard we tried to fight it. These days, it felt more like her feet were rooted in the island’s soil, while I swam with all my might against a riptide pulling me further and further out to sea.

Though she briefly met my stare, she didn’t approach. She hovered on the edges of the revelry, hands clasped at her waist, her iron-grey eyes fixed on the south. I waited and watched, sensing that she needed a moment to herself. Each time someone stopped to greet her, her haunted features forced themselves into something beautiful yet false—the mask of someone hiding a part of themselves they feared letting anyone see. The same mask I’d worn for a lifetime, before she set me free.

Diem handled each interruption with grace, offering polite smiles to the sycophants who came to curry favor and granite resolve to the fools who brought complaints. The latter grew in frequency as word spread that the Centenaries had been invited to stay. It was especially disappointing to see the Ignios refugees join in the objections alongside the very same people who, not long ago, had insisted they be left in the deserts to die. How quickly warring prejudices could be overlooked by a shared one.

If Diem shared my disgust, I couldn’t sense it. I couldn’t read any emotion from her that wasn’t pretense. When Taran and Zalaric opened up

their party to her army and the celebration moved into the camps, even the relief I knew she felt was invisible on her meticulously indifferent face.

She seemed . . . empty. Not sad, not distracted, just empty. The kind of empty I’d seen in her the morning after her magic first unleashed in the palace dungeon, when she’d made me promise to look after her family because she believed she wouldn’t be around to do it herself.

That memory did nothing to ease my concerns.

“Trying to work up the courage to ask her to dance?” Taran teased, sauntering up with a foamy pint of honey-gold liquid. “Or is watching her what gets you off?”

Against my will, a far different, far happier memory surfaced—of me stroking my cock as I watched a naked, soapy Diem touch herself in a Sophos washroom. Instantly, I was hard, my body hungry from days of holding back. Diem and I hadn’t been intimate since she’d returned. I’d wanted to bury myself inside her the second we were alone, but that night and every night since, she’d curled up in my arms and asked me to hold her instead. Though I was sharing her bedroll, it felt like something still lay between us.

“I thought you weren’t drinking,” I said, nodding at Taran’s ale.

“I’m not. This is for you.” He shoved it in my hand. “It’s my mating

day. You can’t say n—”

“No.”

I tried to shove it back, but he jumped away and hid his hands, refusing to take it. “Come on, Lu. We’re in the middle of war. You just cut off the head of the enemy. The girl you love is standing right there looking like she needs a good fuck. What better reasons to pull the royal scepter out of your ass and have a little fun?”

Although those were the exact reasons I shouldn’t be drinking, I felt guilty that Taran’s mating ceremony had been marred by so much conflict, instead of the mating day he’d always dreamed of, where the two of us abandoned our worries for at least one night.

I grudgingly took a long swig, and Taran flashed a victorious smirk.

“Zal said if I can get you drunk enough to sing, he’ll do this thing I like where he puts my dick in—”

I cleared my throat. “That won’t be happening. The singing part, at least. The rest is up to your mate.”

Despite my refusal, Taran beamed. “My mate,” he echoed, trying the label on, testing it out. “My mate.”

I raised the pint in toast. “A completed bond. How does it feel?”

His eyes wandered to Zalaric, who had apparently partaken in all the alcohol Taran hadn’t. He was completely naked, wearing only his mating mark and a radiant smile, and twirling in circles with a group of half- mortals who’d worked in his Umbros inn.

Taran sighed happily. “Like I finally have a home where I feel safe.”

My heart twisted. “I’m sorry you never had that before.”

“Yeah, well . . . neither did you.” He pointed a thumb at my father, who was mingling with a group of Benettes. “Saw you two talking earlier. Did you kiss and make up?”

I took another drink in lieu of an answer. I’d thrown every wrong I could remember back at my father, and he’d had an explanation for every one. They were not always noble, nor persuasive, but as far as I could tell, none were lies. I still wasn’t sure what to make of it. I wasn’t like Taran, secretly pining for a reconciliation with the family who’d hurt me. I had vowed to hate my father the day I watched his magic rip my mother apart, and I’d never looked back. I already had all the family I needed in Lily, Alixe, Eleanor, Taran—and now Zalaric.

Maybe someday in Diem, Auralie, and Teller, too.

As for my father . . . he wasn’t in a grave or a dungeon. That was the best I could offer him for now.

“What about you and Aemonn?” I said. “Planning a playdate yet?”

Taran barked a laugh, though I saw him tense and his eyes dart to my glass. In the past, any discussion of his brother would send him straight to the bottom of a drink. I wished he knew just how proud it made me to watch him stare down the ale, then look away.

“You ever wonder who we’d be if our lives hadn’t been so fucked up?” he asked. “You think we still would have been friends?”

Unlikely, I thought. Even before my mother’s death, I’d been a quiet, serious child, far from the lively personalities Taran usually sought out.

We’d only come together because we both needed something we thought we’d lost: for Taran, a family; for me, someone I could protect.

“Of course we would,” I lied.

“Yeah. I don’t think so, either.” He crossed his arms and gazed out over the garden and the surrounding camps. “I wouldn’t have met Zalaric.”

“I might never have met Diem.” I knew as soon as the words were out, they weren’t true. I would have found her in any world, in any life.

“Yes, you would. But she might not have liked you. If our lives had been as good as they were supposed to be, maybe she’d be raising an army against us.”

I wanted to deny it, but I feared he might be right. All the Descended who’d joined Diem’s cause had their own reasons for feeling left behind. To those who the system kept privileged and happy, its injustice was, at worst, a tolerable side effect of a greater, more valuable cure. Even those whose hearts were pure—Lily, Eleanor—had accepted it, either to keep the peace or believing nothing could change it. Only those of us who wore its scars had been driven to action. If that’s what it took, then for once in my life, I was grateful for mine.

“Speaking of enemies,” Taran muttered, staring at the new tents being erected for the Centenaries.

I grunted my displeasure, and Taran grunted his back. Alixe had tried to move them into camp discreetly, but their arrival was already the talk of the reception.

“You think Diem was right to let them stay?” he asked.

I stared at my Queen. Though her stoic face revealed nothing, I knew her well enough to know she was debating the same question. I also knew her well enough to know that no other outcome stood a chance.

“Shunning people for their bloodline started this war,” I said. “I doubt doing the same will get us out. Though I do wish they’d come tomorrow.

Your mating day has had too many distractions.”

Taran shrugged. “I’m glad it happened today. This is exactly why we didn’t postpone the party. Everyone here has a hundred reasons to hate each other or be sad. We wanted to remind them we still have reasons to—”

“—sing?” I said.

He grinned. “Exactly.”

I threw an arm around his shoulder. “When the war ends, we’ll have another celebration. Just our closest friends. I’ll drink as much as you want, and I’ll make Diem teach me the raunchiest song she knows so I can serenade you. It’ll be everything you wanted your mating day to be.”

To my surprise, Taran didn’t laugh or flash me one of his looks that warned me he had plans for us I was going to hate. Instead, his features turned soft, and he gripped my arm with unexpected tenderness. “Let’s do it

to celebrate the war ending instead. My mating day is already everything I wanted it to be.”

I studied his face, illuminated by the flickering blues and oranges of the magic-fueled firelight, immensely grateful to see the contentment I’d always prayed for him to find. Over our lives, his pain had built up like dust gathering on a vase on a high, unreachable shelf, its colors growing harder to see with every passing year. Zalaric’s love had washed it away, revealing the masterpiece beneath. He seemed older now, stronger, more mature—no longer the wounded boy I’d mentored, but a resilient, courageously loving man who had taken on a hateful world and won.

But Taran was still Taran, and when he suddenly clapped me on the back, his mischievous smirk made a triumphant return. “It looks like my new little brother is taking after me.”

He jerked his head toward Teller, who was bleary-eyed and shit-faced drunk, dancing with an equally inebriated Lily deep in the gardens. They wore lazy, indulgent grins as they swayed unsteadily to the lilting music.

Lily whispered something in his ear, and Teller pulled her close. Too close, I noted with a scowl.

Taran squeezed my ribs. “I think Teller’s about to have a new body to research—sorry, body of research.” My eyes narrowed; Taran’s gleamed.

“You know how studious he is. Stays up all night long learning every little detail about his subject. Really thrusts himself into his work.”

He cackled maniacally at my snarl. I liked Teller a great deal, just not when his hands were cupped around my sister’s ass. I wondered if Diem would forgive me if I cut them off.

Lily broke the embrace and flashed Teller a suggestive smile as she tugged him toward—to my abject horror—a boxwood labyrinth that was infamous among the Corbois cousins and their lovers.

I started toward them, and Taran gripped me hard to hold me back.

“Don’t worry, Lu,” he said between chuckles, “I’m sure he won’t do anything to your sister that you haven’t done to his.”

My fist found Taran’s groin, and his laughter choked to a shriek. He doubled over, whimpering as he let me go, but his words had my eyes darting to Diem. She was looking at me, and she sharply shook her head.

An order: Stand down.

The fight flooded from my body. Not at her command, but at the whisper of a smile on her face—a glimmer of happiness for our siblings,

finding their way back to each other in a world that wanted them apart.

Suddenly, brotherly instincts aside, Lily and Teller’s determination to ignore a doomed future no longer concerned me.

It inspired me.

“Cousin,” I said, “I’m afraid Her Majesty and I are going to call it an early night.”

“Me too. Time to try out this mind-blowing mate sex everyone’s told me about.” He coughed, holding his injured crotch with a wince. “If this still works.”

He took a swing at me, aiming for revenge, and I ducked to avoid it. I smirked and turned my back to walk toward Diem. Even though my godhood prickled as it sensed Taran follow, I kept my shield down and let him plow into my back, tackling me to the ground. I let him dig a fist into my side, wheezing as he knocked the air from my lungs, and I let him grin down at me in valiant retribution. I even let him grab my face and plant an obnoxiously wet kiss on my forehead.

“You’re lucky the Blessed Mother forbids killing a man on his mating day,” I said.

He lightly slapped my cheeks. “I love you, too. You know, now that I’m a Bellator, when you mate Diem, we’ll be brothers instead of cousins.” He leaned in closer, eyes narrowing. “Wouldn’t that be nice? If you and Diem

were mates?”

My heart thumped.

“You’re not Taran Bellator anymore,” I reminded him. “Zalaric’s the stronger mate. That makes you Taran Hanoverre.”

Taran’s face dropped. “Oh no,” he whispered.

I laughed. Loudly. “Oh yes.”

Taran shook his head. “Nononononono.”

“Better watch out for Aunt Iléana. Though, if I were you, I’d be more worried about Granny Marthe.”

He twisted around, shouting. “Zal? Hey, Zal! We have a problem. I can’t be a Hanoverre. I’m too fun!”

My shoulders shook with laughter. “It’s too late. You already are.”

He let out a loud whine.

“You’re still a Bellator, though,” I added. “Still a Corbois, too. You can’t get rid of me that easily. We’re family to the end.”

Taran glanced at Diem. “Family,” he repeated. He looked back at me, still pinned beneath him. “You two didn’t get me a mating gift.”

“What would you like?”

“An honest answer.”

“What’s the question?”

He thought for a moment. “Back in Sophos . . . I almost lost you, didn’t I? Both of you.”

I hesitated. “We were heavily outnumbered. It was a gift from the

Blessed Mother that we got out alive.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

My mouth closed. I was still wrestling with what happened that day— and, perhaps, what almost happened. Even if I knew for sure, it wasn’t my answer to give.

“You know, when you told me to leave that night, I wasn’t gonna do it,”

Taran said. “Then you had to be the asshole who said ‘go get your mate.’”

He sighed. “Fuck, Lu. I had to go. I couldn’t take knowing I found the person I want to spend forever with and I lost the chance to do it because I died waiting for a stupid perfect moment.”

“I’m glad that didn’t happen,” I said.

“Me too. What an idiot that would have made me, huh?” He thwacked me hard on the chest and winked. “Go get your mate, brother.” He jumped off me, striding toward Zalaric and yelling, “Zal, sober up. We need to talk about family holidays. I am not doing Solstice dinner at House Hanoverre.”

I badly wanted to enjoy the irony of Taran wrangling a drunken Zalaric away from the party, but his last words to me stuck in my head, setting my blood aflame. A question hung on my lips, the closest to escaping I’d ever allowed it.

I climbed to my feet and walked toward Diem. “My Queen,” I said as I approached.

She hummed absently, still staring south. “If Vance’s army kept marching past Umbros, how long would it take them to get here?”

“Is that where the Centenaries think he’s gone?” She nodded, and I frowned. “Arboros might let them pass through uncontested, but Faunos won’t. Neither will Fortos. Without Ophiucae to help them, it could take them weeks, if they make it here at all.”

“And with Ophiucae’s help?”

I paused as the full weight of her meaning sank in. I waited for her gaze to meet mine, and when it didn’t, my voice turned quiet. “Your army is strong. We’re trained and well-armed. We beat him twice in Lumnos already—”

“The first time, he fled when he realized I was immune to his magic.

The second, I killed the Sophos Descended he sent. Yes, my army is strong, but Ophiucae can’t be defeated by strength alone. If I hadn’t been here, Lumnos would have fallen.”

“Then it is a good thing you are still here.”

“Am I?” she whispered.

She massaged her wrist, rubbing her thumb in repetitive strokes as if there was something she was trying to wipe away. The movements turned more forceful, fingers curling to scratch angry red lines across her arms.

My eyes narrowed in on the movement. She’d been doing that often lately. I’d seen a similar tic in my father after he lost his magic to the broken bargain at the Challenging.

Shadows sprang from my palms. They spiraled around her waist, her arms, her neck, grazing every inch of bare skin her gown revealed. Her eyelids fluttered at their touch, but there was no familiar flash of silvery light, nor any pulse of her godhood soaking my magic in.

I’d been around Diem before when she was recovering from flameroot.

Though her magic took days to return in full, I’d always been able to sense

her aura, weak but growing.

Today, I felt nothing.

As if she was truly the mortal she’d once believed herself to be.

“You didn’t answer me,” she said. “How long until they’re here?”

I glanced up at the sky, fighting a rising anger at the gods. “Three more

days. Maybe four.”

Her eyes squeezed closed.

“I’ll send messenger hawks to the other realms to warn them,” I said.

“He’s interfering with the hawks. Alixe is sending riders instead. She’s calling back our soldiers on the sea, as well.”

“We should get the children somewhere safe.”

“Ophiucae won’t hurt the children.”

“Maybe you don’t know him as well as you think.” My tone was more curt than I’d intended, my rage at fate and its cruelty spilling over, and she

flinched at its bite. “I only meant . . . are you sure, Diem? Sure enough to risk their lives?”

She paused, then breathed a hoarse “no,” looking as if that answer cost her a great deal to give. She gazed at the merriment spreading through camp. “Maybe I should warn everyone now.”

“We’ve got guards on the borders and coasts, lookouts everywhere, and weapons at the ready. There’s no more that can be done for tonight.”

“So what am I supposed to do, Luther? Let them dance and be happy

when death could be days away?”

“You could always join them.”

Her incredulous, almost offended look broke my heart to see. The timing could not be worse for what I had planned, but I was more certain than ever that it needed to happen.

I raised my other palm and fired three quick bursts of light into the clouds. Diem frowned. “Why are you calling Sorae?”

“Because you and I have somewhere else to be. It’s not far, and I told Alixe where we’re going. If there’s a problem, Sorae can have us back in minutes.” I squeezed her hand again. “Trust me. You’ll enjoy it.”

Cursed Kindred, I prayed that was true.

She tried to back away. “If the others want to have fun tonight, then fine, but I can’t. I’m the reason they’re here.”

“I will give you credit for many things, my Queen, but this war is not one of them. It started before anyone here was even born.” I tugged her back and slid a hand beneath her jaw, gripping her chin gently but firmly.

“If you had not shaped its course the way you have”—I turned her face toward camp, where Descended, mortals, and half-mortals danced together among flowers and bonfires, sharing wine as freely as friendship— “they would be lining up on opposite sides of a battlefield, instead of preparing to fight together on one.”

Her eyes shadowed as she watched them, and I wondered if the more treacherous battle we faced was the one waging inside her.

The rhythmic thumping of gryvern wings filled the air as Sorae burst through the clouds. I fired another burst of light to catch her attention, then she banked and soared our way.

“What would you choose to be, if you weren’t Queen?” I asked Diem.

“A healer.” She said it quickly, no hedging, no hesitation.

“Then why did you quit?”

“I thought I wasn’t worthy of it anymore. And I thought the healer part of me belonged to my mother. I think I had to walk away to realize it

belongs to me, too.”

“Do you still feel unworthy?”

Diem’s heavy, sunken expression gave me the answer she wouldn’t.

“Lily said something similar,” I said. “She told me her guilt was getting in the way of her training to help wounded soldiers in battle.”

“Guilt for what? Lily’s a good person. She’s done nothing.”

“That’s the problem. She always knew things were bad for the mortals and half-mortals, but she didn’t do anything for them before. Do you think that makes her unworthy to heal them now?” I cocked my head. “Which is worse—trying to help, even if you make some mistakes along the way, or doing nothing at all?”

The old Diem I knew would have scowled. Her adorable nose would have scrunched and her eyes would have rolled with an overdramatic sigh, even as the corners of her lips fought their way upward. You’ve made your point, Prince, she would have huffed, refusing at all costs to admit I was

right.

Gods, I loved that Diem.

But this Diem, the one I’d been learning, the one I was finally beginning to understand—the one I loved not a single heartbeat less—simply stared at me. Empty.

“Do you know what your mother told Lily?” I raised my chin into a stubborn jut and pulled my shoulders back, infusing my voice with my best Mortal City accent. “Healing is not about what the healer deserves, Lilian.

The question is: What does the patient deserve?” I arched a brow. “How’s my Auralie impression?”

I could have slayed Ophiucae and his gryvern with my bare hands, and I wouldn’t have felt as proud as I did of the tiny smile Diem cracked.

“Frighteningly accurate,” she said. “I think my mother’s growing on you.”

“She is,” I admitted. Sorae thumped onto the soil, and I tugged Diem toward her. “I think she feels guilty for accusing me of wanting to do vile, unspeakable things. She’s a surprisingly good listener when she’s not threatening me and bossing me around. I might have known that if I hadn’t spent so many years doing the same to her.” I took Diem by the waist, lifting her onto Sorae’s back. “Let’s hope she never finds out the truth.”

“What truth?” Diem asked.

My hands burrowed beneath her skirts, skating up her bare legs and gripping the warm flesh of her upper thigh. “When it comes to you, I absolutely want to do vile, unspeakable things.”

Red flushed her cheeks. I smiled smugly as I walked to Sorae’s ear and whispered my request, which she accepted with a blue-flamed snort, then I mounted behind Diem. I looped an arm around her waist and pulled her hips hard against mine. Her soft noise of surprise went straight to my cock, leaving me picturing the other things I could do to elicit that sound again.

One hand slid up her ribs and over her breast, palming its swell.

“Luther,” she protested, though she arched against me.

My shadows skated up the long lines of her throat and gathered like a blindfold over her eyes. “Remember what happened the last time I surprised you like this?” I murmured in her ear. “Can you trust me that way again?”

Her answer didn’t matter. I was following through on my plan, even if I had to throw her over my shoulder and drag her there to do it.

But I did so love it when she chose to obey.

“Tell Sorae to fly,” I ordered.

“Fly where?”

“She already knows. Give the order, Diem.” My fingers tightened on

her hip. “Then I’m the one in charge.”

“Fly,” she breathed.

Sorae’s wings slammed down, and we took flight into the midnight sky.

“That’s my girl,” I said proudly as I held her against me.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

I smiled to myself.

“Home.”

OceanofPDF.com