Chapter
Twenty-Three
ne, two, three—ow!”“O
“Sorry!”
“You’re doing great—four, five, six—”
“Shit.”
“Keep going! One, two, th—”
CRASH.
“Oh gods, I just broke the Princess.”
“I’m fine! It’ll heal—I think.”
Teller bit down hard on his lip to keep from laughing. “Are you two alright?”
“Is it too late to cancel the ball?” I grumbled. I helped Lily brush away the dirt on her dress after my clumsiness sent her tumbling across the dungeon floor.
“You’ve almost got it,” she chirped, her encouraging smile getting a little lost between grimaces of pain. “Let’s try it again.”
I frowned. “Maybe I should practice with Teller. I can injure him all I want without a diplomatic crisis.”
“Thanks,” he deadpanned. “But I don’t know how to dance, either.”
I sighed and placed my hand in Lily’s, setting the other on her shoulder as hers came to rest on my hip. She flashed me her usual bright smile, and for a blink I saw a glimmer of her brother in it—that sliver of joy he’d allowed me to see before our fight last night had cast him back into the shadows. My heart gave a painful lurch.
Lily counted off, and I followed her lead as we spun around the dungeon. We made an unusual sight, Lily playing the man’s role to perfection in her fine plum-hued gown while I tripped awkwardly through the woman’s steps wearing a tunic and breeches in preparation for my first training session.
“Keep reading your notes,” I told Teller as I stepped on Lily’s feet for the hundredth time. “I need the distraction.”
Teller rifled through his stacks of papers. Their classes had been canceled for the funeral and the ball, and despite my urging to stay away, Teller had talked Lily into sneaking him in this morning to pass along the information he’d gathered.
“As I was saying—among the Twenty Houses, five hold the most power. Houses Corbois, Benette, Hanoverre, Teniers, and Amraut. If those five are in agreement, the other Houses always fall in line.”
“Have any of them been friendly toward the mortals?”
“Yes, actually—House Corbois.”
I yelped, nearly colliding with a stone pillar. “Really?”
Lily nodded proudly and chimed in. “After the Blood War, several of the Houses wanted to ban mortals, but House Corbois wanted to declare amnesty and move forward. They compromised on the laws that are in place now.”
“Which House hates mortals the most?” I asked.
“Easy—House Hanoverre.” There was an acrid snap to his voice that suggested he had personal experience with their prejudice, further confirmed by the sympathetic look Lily threw his way.
“No wonder Iléana hated me at first sight,” I muttered.
A hint of devilishness corrupted Lily’s smile. “Luther said you put Iléana in her place at dinner.”
“Oh?” I tried to look indifferent, though my feeble attempts to stay upright stole my focus. “He told you about it already?”
“He came to my room last night to hide from her. She was chasing him all over the palace, as usual.”
So Luther hadn’t left the dinner with her after all.
I stared guiltily at my feet. “Did he say anything else?”
“He said he’s never seen anyone handle themselves so well with our family before. He said you were born to be Queen.”
My knees gave out on me, my feet tangling in Lily’s skirts as I crashed to the ground. My head cracked against the hard stone, and a bolt of pain splintered down my back.
Lily gasped and kneeled at my side. “Are you hurt?”
I stared up at the ceiling and groaned. “I’ve been wasting time worrying about the Challenging. It’s the ballroom dancing that’s going to kill me.”
Teller popped up and walked over, not bothering to hide his obscene amount of joy at watching me make a fool of myself.
And what respectable older sister would let her baby brother get away with that?
They helped me back to my feet, and I gingerly rubbed the tender spot behind my head. “I need a break. Teller, take my place and dance with Lily.”
His smugness vanished. “Me? I... No. I can’t—I don’t—”
“Lily can teach you. And I learn better from watching. Besides, if I’m coronated, you’ll have to attend all kinds of fancy balls, so you better learn your steps now.” I grinned and gently smacked a hand against his reddening cheeks.
I took his seat on the steps and held his papers in front of my face to hide my prying eyes.
The blossoming romance between them was a balm to my own struggling heart. I adored how their faces flushed when they touched, how their looks always lingered a moment too long, how Teller clung to Lily with an eager tenderness, even as he tried to keep a respectful distance.
My conscience nagged at me in warning. Even with my support, a relationship between them could only ever end in sorrow. There could never be any mating bond, no growing old together. Perhaps it was cruel of me to encourage it.
But watching them laugh and twirl around the room with a glow in their eyes—that joy was real. It was something pure and innocent, a flower on a barren mountainside. Neither of them cared about the other’s title or bloodline or upbringing. They saw kindness in each other, a love that might surpass the walls that divided them. And cruel as it might be, I would challenge the gods themselves to protect it at all costs.
I looked away to give them what little privacy I could. In his notes, Teller had charted the key members of each House, their positions on mortals, the industries they invested in, and old historical rivalries. My focus bounced back and forth over the page in an effort to commit it all to memory, fueling a discouraging gloominess at how much I didn’t know. There were centuries of culture at play, entire libraries’ worth of unwritten rules that the Descended wielded like an old favorite blade.
I pushed back against the feelings of defeat and kept my father’s lessons in my head. Just keep moving. Onward, until the very last breath.
I was so engrossed in my studying that I didn’t even notice when a shadow fell across my shoulders. Even the way the air shifted, turning thick with the thrum of power, didn’t rouse me from my thoughts.
It was his smell, earthy and provocatively familiar, that drew my focus up to find two shimmering pools glowing down at me in the quiet darkness.
I stole a glance at Lily and Teller—still beaming and giggling over their missed steps, blissfully unaware of who now watched their unguarded moment.
“They’re helping me learn how to dance for the ball,” I blurted out guiltily. “I’m only taking a short break.”
Luther sat beside me, carefully leaving space between us, and silently watched our siblings prance across the room. The same conflict that plagued me was reflected in his eyes—the joy at seeing his sister so happy, the pain at knowing its inescapable end.
“Please don’t make them stop,” I begged.
“I won’t. I’ve decided to take your advice and let it be.”
My brows shot to the sky. “You have?”
“You told me to trust her to make her own choices.” His gaze swept back to mine. His expression looked tired, his hair rumpled and unbound, the look of a man who had tossed and turned but hadn’t slept. “It’s not easy for me to let go when I care about someone. To watch them choose something I know will hurt them.”
“Teller would never hurt her.”
“I wasn’t talking about Lily.”
My heart was a fluttering songbird, beating its wings against the bars of its gilded cage.
“You’re early for training,” I said.
“I came to your chambers with breakfast, but you weren’t there. I was hoping to speak with you.”
“Well... here I am.” Though I tried to put some iciness in my voice, it was a poor attempt at a lie.
He let out a weary sigh. “I owe you an apology. For leaving the dinner, and for the things I said last night. For eavesdropping. For all of it.”
Relief whooshed from my lungs as I felt the wall between us shatter. “I’m sorry, too. What I said—”
“You have nothing to apologize for.” His jaw tightened. “You told me how you feel. I should have accepted it and let it go.”
My instincts screamed at me to correct him, to explain that when I’d said he was nothing to me, I’d only meant we had no formal ties—no shared blood or years of friendship, no advisor roles or obligations. To confess that I couldn’t understand why he trusted me, cared for me, so much more than people he had known his whole life.
And worse, that I felt exactly the same.
And how much it scared me.
But maybe this was for the best. Perhaps it was better if he thought there really was nothing between us.
I was not so in denial that I hadn’t felt the sting of truth in some of his accusations. My betrothal to Henri was built on shaky ground, and it wasn’t just because of the Crown or even my being a Descended. Some difficult conversations loomed in our near future.
But I had begged Henri not to give up on me and walk away, and now I owed it to him to do the same. Whatever existed between Luther and me, it was to Henri I had promised my loyalty. And Luther was not the only one who kept their promises.
Even if my heart was begging me not to let go.
I nodded. “All is forgiven. Friends?”
“Friends,” he agreed. “Advisor?”
“Don’t push your luck, Corbois.”
We shared a friendly smirk, and despite myself, I got lost in his smile all over again. I wasn’t even sure how long we’d been staring at each other when the sudden silence yanked us back to the present.
I looked over to see Lily and Teller watching us, the latter frowning and the former looking as pleased as a cat with a saucer of cream.
I bolted to my feet and down the stairs. “You two should go, Taran and Alixe will be here soon.”
They nodded. Teller and I exchanged a heavy look, an entire conversation passing between us through a series of furrowed eyebrows, pressed lips, and subtle tilts of our heads. At the end of it, he squeezed my shoulder. “Tonight’s going to go great.
And you won’t even need the Challenging, because you’ll kill them all with your dancing instead.”
I swiped at him. He grinned and darted out of reach, only for his expression to pale as he approached a stone-faced Luther.
Luther pulled Lily in for a hug and pressed a kiss to the top of her head, all the while holding Teller’s gaze in a fearsome glare. He moved into the center of the stairs, requiring Teller to awkwardly contort his body to squeeze past Luther’s imposing frame. When Teller finally brushed past him, Luther released a menacing snarl, and Teller bolted for the exit.
My lips pursed as I struggled not to laugh. Luther caught my eye and winked. “That was for making fun of my Queen.”
“Uh huh. I’m sure it had nothing to do with his interest in your little sister.”
A guilty smile tugged at his lips as he descended the stairs and stopped a few inches away. “I can help you with the dancing, if you’d like.” He offered out his hands. “I’ve certainly had to do enough of it over the years.”
My eyes moved down to his awaiting arms, and I had to yank hard on the reins to hold still. I pictured the two of us moving together, his hands on my waist, our faces a breath away...
“No,” I choked out, retreating a step. “Thank you, but, uh, I’ll—I’m fine.”
He nodded and dropped his hands, and for several painful moments that stretched on like hours, the two of us stood side by side, shuffling our weight and saying nothing.
Luther stared at the dungeon entrance, awaiting Taran and Alixe’s arrival at any moment. With his attention elsewhere—a rarity in my presence—my eyes found themselves scouring his body and taking him in.
Fine. I could admit it. I was attracted to him. His muscled physique, his stone-carved features, his brooding stare, that endearing smile he only shared with me. Every last feature, even his scar—gods, especially the scar—seemed hand-selected for maximum effect.
But he was a Descended. They were all attractive. Even the ones I despised were so beautiful I sometimes found it hard to look away.
That’s all that this was: Lust. Physical attraction. Primal, biological urges. Just my body’s natural reaction to being thrust into close proximity to so many gorgeous people.
Then why does flirting with Aemonn or Taran feel harmless, but one glance from Luther and I’m swimming in shark- infested waters with a bucket of bloody chum?
My skin flushed despite the damp cold of the dungeon. I pulled at the low neckline of my tunic, fluttering the fabric to force a breeze over the beads of sweat forming along my neck.
The movement caught Luther’s attention, and his focus drifted to my collarbone. “Did you mean what you said last night about scars?”
My mind replayed the dinner conversation.
And if Luther were my King...
I cleared my throat. “Which part, specifically?”
“You don’t believe we should have our scars healed away?”
“Of course I don’t.” My expression soured at the reminder of Iléana’s nasty words. The thought of Luther without his scar tore at something in my heart. “They would have to hold me down kicking and screaming to remove mine.”
The corner of his lip quirked, and I got the sense he was picturing that very image.
My fingers ran over the mark near my throat, the one Luther’s eyes kept darting to when he thought I wasn’t looking. “My scars make me happy. They’re all memories.”
“Aren’t they unhappy memories of being hurt?”
I shrugged. “Not anymore. Time has a way of erasing the pain and leaving behind the laughter.”
He frowned, flexing his jaw. Something was clearly gnawing at him. “You have other scars?”
I snorted. “I’m covered in them. I grew up playing in the forest and getting into fights. There’s hardly an inch of me I haven’t scraped up in some way.”
“Why am I not surprised,” he said wryly.
I lifted my tunic to show a puckered line along my hip. “Teller and I decided we were too grown up to use wooden sparring swords, and we tried to fight with Father’s blades.” His eyes flared wide, and I grinned. “We only made that mistake once.”
I pulled the shirt off over my head, my breasts still covered by a thick bandeau, and turned my back to him as I pointed to my shoulder blade. “I challenged the boys in my class to a race. I was about to win, and one of them tried to trip me, so I tackled him and landed on a broken bottle.” I looked over my shoulder and beamed proudly. “Worth it.”
Luther’s posture had stiffened, his focus fixed on the shirt in my hands.
I rolled my eyes at his sudden modesty. “It’s just skin. You’ve seen me in much less, remember?”
His glittering eyes shot to mine. “Impossible to forget.”
I fought hard against a rising blush and turned to face him, pointing to a patch of pink high on my ribcage—“bucked off a horse”—then scrunching my pant leg to reveal a crooked line across my shin—“rusted chain that caught me while swimming.”
Luther took a few steps closer. His hands twitched, as if he was dying to reach out and touch them all for himself. I wondered if he’d ever even known another adult with a scar, or if he’d always been the lone drop of ink in a sea of milk. If so, it made his choice to keep his scars all the more impressive.
And all the more curious.
I held my forearm out to him, offering up the shiny trail of reddened skin that curved to my elbow.
I held my breath as he took my arm. His thumb grazed the line, tracing its path. A mix of wonder and dismay churned behind his eyes. “You got all these injuries before your healing abilities manifested?”
I nodded. “This must have been the last one. I tricked a boy who was bullying Teller into falling in some mud and embarrassed him in front of our school. He and his friends came back for revenge.” I winced as I remembered how they had ambushed me on my walk home and beaten me bloody. “Never underestimate a violent male with a hurt ego.”
Luther’s fingers tightened around my forearm, the movement faintly tugging me closer. His voice went low and gravelly.
“Let me find him. I’ll return the favor.”
I huffed a laugh, trying to concentrate through the crackling current running straight from his touch to my pounding heart.
“He’s long gone. He joined the Emarion Army. He’s in Fortos now.”
“I don’t care if he’s in the afterlife. If he hurt you, I’ll find a way to make him pay.”
My stomach fluttered. My focus caught on his scar where it disappeared beneath his jacket. “Is that your only one?”
He nodded. “You have me beat on number, but I think I’ve got you on size.”
I broke into a mischievous grin. “It’s not the size that matters Luther, it’s what you can do with it.”
He groaned and lifted his eyes to the ceiling, though my pulse spiked as his grip on me tightened. “No wonder Taran likes you so much.”
“Well?” I prodded, inclining my head toward his scar. “I showed you mine.”
He hesitated a long moment, then released my arm. I didn’t miss the way his fingers stumbled over the buttons of his jacket as he disrobed, or the way the muscles around his neck seemed so tight they might snap, or the way his gaze jumped around the room, taking in everything but me.
It was clear enough he wasn’t thrilled about revealing his scar, and I considered waving it off and ending his misery. But something inside me insisted this moment was vital—that this was a side of him I needed to see, and more importantly, a side of himself Luther needed to feel seen.
Though I promised myself I wouldn’t react or give him any reason to believe he’d been right to hide it away, when his clothes fell, all the breath punched from my lungs.
The scar on his face was nothing compared to the gruesome evidence covering his chest. The cruel slash that cut from his throat to his hipbone was at least an inch wide along the center line, with countless jagged tributaries that webbed across his torso.
Even as a healer, I had never seen anything like it. It was as if a bolt of lightning had exploded from within him and shredded his skin to tatters. The glossy lines were mottled in shades of pink and white, rippled along the edges where the scar interrupted his smooth olive skin.
My hand flew to his chest with a mind of its own, resting over the center where the flesh had been the most damaged.
Rage simmered in my blood. An injury this brutal was no accident. This wound was meant to kill. The thought of someone doing this to him at all had my heart hammering in my ears, but to know that it happened when he was so young, so defenseless...
“Who did this to you?” I breathed, feeling as if flames might spew from my fangs like a gryvern.
“It doesn’t matter. They can’t hurt me anymore, and I won’t let them hurt anyone else.”
“Tell me,” I snarled. “Why are you protecting them?”
“It’s not them I’m protecting.”
I glared up at him, but his face was resolute, his jaw a block of steel. I’d come to know this look by now. “I told you, I’m done with people keeping secrets for my benefit.”
“And I told you, I’ll do what I must to protect you, even if you hate me for it.”
An angry sound built low in my throat. I moved to pull away, and his hand braced over mine, holding it firm against his chest.
“I will tell you someday,” he vowed. “When I can. When it’s safe.”
“When will that be?”
He thought for a moment, then his expression turned roguish. “Get through the Period of Challenging. Make it to the Rite of Coronation. Then I’ll tell you.”
“If you’re so certain I’ll survive the Challenging, why not tell me now?”
“As I said, I have many tools to ensure your coronation.” He smiled. “Motivating you to stay alive is one of them.”
His smugness was annoyingly charming. “I don’t need to be bribed to stay alive, Luther. My survival instincts are pretty strong.”
“You threatened to cut my hand off within minutes of meeting me. You attacked the Royal Guards several times. You snuck around the palace alone. You ran into a burning, collapsing building. All while you apparently believed yourself to be a mortal.
With respect, my Queen—” He returned my narrowed eyes and leaned his face to mine. “—your survival instincts are shit.”
I couldn’t suppress my laugh. He had a point—even now I felt no shame, only pride, at each of those decisions.
Reluctantly, I let him keep his secret, shifting my attention back to the scar that so viciously slashed his body in two. “How did you even survive this?”
“Blessed Mother Lumnos,” he said reverently. “I should have died that day, but she protected me.”
I thought of the shrine in his room, the candles and flowers so lovingly laid at the marble bust.
“Is this why you serve the Crown? Why you serve me? Because you think it’s repayment to her for saving your life?”
Our eyes met, a tempest brewing in the shimmering sea of his gaze.
“That is a complex question.”
“It’s a simple yes or no.”
His fingers wove within mine, clutching my hand where it lay on his chest. “Nothing about this is simple.”
My focus dropped to his chest, just above his heart. The night of the armory attack, I’d had a vision of the two of us, standing together on a killing field, bathed in silvery fire amid a ring of death and destruction. In it, I had raised my hand to the left side of my chest, and he had done the same. When the vision ended, Luther—the real Luther—had been standing in front of me making the same gesture.
Looking at him now, a bare patch of bronzed skin sat in the same place, curiously unmarred. It lay directly in the wound’s path, but the lines of the scar routed around it as if deflected by some other force.
“That night,” I began, “just before the roof collapsed... the vision—”
“Us, on a battlefield.” He nodded. “I remember.”
I frowned. “What does it mean?”
“A message from Blessed Mother Lumnos, I suspect. Though it’s not always clear what her visions are meant to convey.
What seems obvious at first can be—” He eyed me slowly. “—deceiving.”
My head cocked. “Lumnos sent visions to you before this?”
His back went rigid, his expression looking as if he’d revealed more than he had intended.
“Wait a minute, are we doing training shirtless?” Taran’s voice echoed across the dungeon. He bounded down the dungeon steps and ripped his tunic over his head to reveal a tanned chest rippling with more muscles than I knew a person could have.
“Bless the Kindred for that.”
Alixe paused on the stairwell as she took in me and Luther standing half-naked and chest-to-chest, my hand clasped in his.
She quietly assessed us. “I can take the big dumb oaf and come back later.”
I recoiled from Luther, too quickly and too clumsily to be anything other than an admission of guilt. “Not at all,” I blurted.
“We were just—I mean, we, uh—come on in.”
I moved to dress, but Taran threw an arm over my shoulders and trapped me at his side. “You heard the Queen, Alixe,” he joked. “Shirts off. Show us what you’ve got.”
I ducked out of his grasp and pulled my tunic back into place. “Gross, Taran. She’s your cousin.”
“Distant cousin. Four generations removed. And House Corbois has never let something as silly as being related get in the way of a good pairing.”
“Extremely gross. You know that can lead to facial deformities and low intellect.” I propped my hands on my hips and squinted at him thoughtfully. “Come to think of it, that explains a lot about you.”
He shot me a savage grin. “Big words for a girl who can’t shield.”
He threw out a fist and a ball of hissing shadow hurtled toward my face. I raised an arm in reflex, but the orb slowed as it approached me and grew in size until it encased my head. The darkness blocked out the world, turning my vision into an endless, gloomy void.
I staggered backward, and the orb stayed with me, keeping me blinded and lost. A pair of hands tickled my sides, and I yelped in surprise. I punched wildly, but my fists caught only fabric as Taran ducked out of range.
“I’m your Queen, you know,” I shouted. “I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to attack me.”
“Lesson number one,” Taran’s mocking voice rang out. “No rank during training. Anyone’s fair game—even you, Queenie.”
The dungeon came back into view as the shadowy sphere faded away. “Fine. But the second I’ve mastered my magic, I’ll remember this. And retribution’s going to hurt.”
“Good,” Luther answered. He was fully dressed, arms crossed over his chest, the imposing facade of the brutal Prince glazing his features. The sight of it in the presence of his friends took me by surprise. “Use that emotion. When you’ve used your power in the past, it was always when you were pushed to an emotional limit.”
“That’s normal for our kind,” Alixe added. “The godhood feeds off our emotions. It usually manifests for the first time when we’re extremely angry or threatened.”
I frowned as I thought of the curious voice that seemed to thrive off my temper. “So this godhood—it’s a piece of the goddess Lumnos?”
“Not exactly,” she answered. “Although the Kindred are considered gods to us, they had their own deities back on their home world. They brought a piece of that divine power with them when they came to Emarion. The godhood lived inside Blessed Lumnos just as it lives in you.”
I squirmed at the thought of some faraway god living like an angry stowaway in my soul. I had never been particularly religious, but if I had any loyalty to a divine force, it was to the Everflame and the Old Gods of the mortals—not to the Kindred, and certainly not to whatever nameless force Lumnos herself had been bound by.
“Learning to summon it while calm will come with time,” Luther said. “For now, use your emotions to help you access it, just like you did that first night.”
He shot me a meaningful look, and a shiver rattled through me at the memory.
Beneath that harsh exterior he so carefully maintained, I could still see it—his beaming pride at what I’d done that night, his eager anticipation of what I could become.
How could I tell him that had been the worst night of my life? How could I explain that every time my magic stirred, it was a reminder of everything and everyone I would eventually lose?
He couldn’t understand. None of them could. This was all they’d ever known.
And even if they did, it didn’t change the reality of my situation: if I didn’t master my magic, I would be dead in weeks.
Then I’d lose all those things anyway—and far sooner than I planned.
So I nodded and whipped up an obedient smile.
“Let’s get started.”
