Chapter
Twenty-Eight
t turned out dancing wasn’t half bad.I Eleanor appointed herself master of my evening dance card, determined to keep me trapped and out of any more trouble.
The end of each song brought her back to my side to swap out my partner and whisper instructions.
“Ask about his grandchildren and you won’t have to talk for the whole song.”
“Don’t mention carrots, it’s a sensitive subject.”
“Breathe through your mouth, she’s very nice but she smells like feet.”
The majority of Eleanor’s picks were much older Descended. Several I recognized as leaders of their Houses—no coincidence, I suspected. A long string of handsome young men pestered her while throwing hungry looks my way, but she waved them all off, to my grateful relief.
Hours flew by, and as the end of the evening neared, I felt as if I’d danced with nearly every person of importance in the
room.
All but one.
After my run-in with Jean Hanoverre, Luther reunited me with Perthe and gave him a scathing lecture about my penchant for wandering off alone, then stalked away before either of us could speak. By the time I spied him tucked into a shadow near the stage, I was stuck on the dance floor, stealing glances between spins and dips, greetings and goodbyes.
Even at a distance, we were somehow connected. Every time I looked his way, his pale eyes were locked on me as if I were the only object of interest in the room.
Taran and Alixe eventually joined his vigil, the three of them whispering as they stood guard. Occasionally, I spied a woman approach Luther for a dance, and more than a few times, that woman was Iléana. He only relented once—a turn with Lily to a fun, jaunty tune that had our shoulders brushing in passing and the brief escape of a smile on his lips.
When the crowd grew thin, Eleanor filled in the rest of my dance card with her own name. We grabbed Lily and careened across the room, laughing until our sides ached. Although Henri and the Guardians were never far from my mind, I gave myself permission to have fun for this one fleeting moment, all too aware that my life might not have many more chances at happiness left.
One of the musicians stepped forward to kiss my hand and accept my gushing praise, and he announced to the room the next song would be their last.
My eyes snapped to where Luther had been standing. Taran was throwing his arm around a reluctant-looking Alixe and hauling her toward the dance floor with a downright evil grin, but Luther had vanished.
“Diem, dear,” Aemonn crowed loudly. He flipped the edges of his cape, molting feathers flying in a cloud behind him.
“How blessed I have been to spend this evening at your side.”
I shoved down the sting of disappointment and tried to muster a smile.
Aemonn extended his hand out to me. “Let us honor your reign by finishing this night as it began—together.” He paused at the center of the dance floor and twitched his fingers in a beckoning motion. “Come.”
My teeth ground together at being summoned like a dog to heel. I tried to remind myself that everything about this night had been a calculated performance, and this was no different. I swallowed down my pride and started toward him.
“Honey,” he crooned, “may this be the first of many evenings we spend as—”
A brooding shadow slid into my path.
“My Queen. A dance?”
Luther held out his palm, and my heart thundered. My hand was in his before I could think through the wisdom of so publicly snubbing Aemonn for the man he hated most.
Luther wove his fingers through mine and nestled our joined hands close to his chest. His other hand pressed high on my back, gently coiling me in until my soft curves melted into his hard lines, then slid beneath my hair so his fingers brushed against my skin.
His touch was the changing of the seasons, the dead, cold grey of winter thawing and giving way to the colorful hope of
spring. The promise of something new, something exquisitely alive.
It’s just lust, I told myself. Physical attraction. You’re lonely, and he’s... very pretty to look at. Nothing more. It can’t be more.
The rest of the world seemed to fall away as we plunged into a spotlight of our own creation. The musicians, the crowd, the angry sputtering from Aemonn—even the room itself tucked behind a shadowy veil, leaving the Queen and her Prince, forged together as one.
Looking in his eyes was a gamble I was certain to lose, so I tucked my chin, my temple resting against his cheek. I hooked my other arm over his shoulder, and a shiver rippled through him as my fingers grazed the nape of his neck. The power of knowing how my touch affected him made me acutely aware of every place our skin connected.
Lust. Physical attraction. Nothing more.
“Is everything taken care of?” I asked, my voice coming out more husky than I’d planned.
“Yes. The woman from Umbros made them believe they no longer wished to attack and sent them home.”
“She can do that? Plant ideas in their head and make them believe those thoughts are their own?”
He nodded. “I knew the Umbros magic was powerful, but seeing it in action was unsettling.”
“If that power is unleashed in a war...” I shuddered, and he pulled me closer. “They’re going to be furious when they realize what happened. What if they come back?”
“I let them keep their blades, but I had their other weapons and explosives dumped into the Sacred Sea. They won’t be able to try another attack like that any time soon.”
Luther spoke of the rebels more as a nuisance than a threat. While I was grateful he didn’t seem to share his kinsmen’s desire to see them all slaughtered, a part of me worried he did not see how dangerous the Guardians were—and the lengths they would go to see their plans fulfilled.
I blew out a long breath, my heart conflicted. “What do we do now?”
And when did this become a ‘we’? I wondered.
“We stay focused on the Challenging. If the Umbros Queen believes she can control you with what her Descended learned, she’ll want you on the throne. Any move she makes will come after the coronation.”
I tried to clamp down on my burgeoning dread. I had once thought surviving the Challenging was my greatest obstacle, but between Iléana’s threats, the Guardians’ war, and the Umbros Queen’s plans, surviving long enough to be coronated might only be the beginning.
“Eleanor told me about Marthe Hanoverre’s accusations,” he said tightly. “I’m sorry I was not there to step in.”
I bristled a bit. “I handled it.”
“I know. Very impressively, I hear. Still... I should have been there.”
“You can’t fight all my battles for me, Luther.”
“I seem to remember you claiming me as your High General.” He pulled back to look at me, his features warming.
“Fighting all your battles is quite literally my job.”
I dipped my face to hide my smile, and a low chuckle rolled out of him, the sound of it raising goosebumps on my skin. My fingers curled, my nails gently scratching against the back of his neck. His grip on me tightened.
“You’re still not my advisor.”
“Patience, my Queen.” His thumb stroked a slow trail up my spine. “The most precious rewards come from the battles most fiercely fought.”
My body was a sparkling chandelier, every nerve ending alight in a symphony of flames that flickered with each unsteady breath. The feeling of being in his arms—the rightness of it, the overwhelming sense of being safe and protected. Accepted.
Loved.
I inhaled sharply. My pulse broke into a sprint.
Lust. Physical attraction. Nothing more.
It can’t be more.
“Henri.”
I wasn’t sure if I thought it or said it aloud, but the shift in Luther’s posture told me Henri’s name had spilled from my lips.
His back went rigid, and cool air rushed between us as he shifted to give me space.
“I sent him home. I didn’t think his spending the night in the dungeon would serve either of you well.”
Indeed. It would have driven the knife of my betrayal so deep, it might never be dislodged. Perhaps that would have served Luther’s interests—and yet he’d put me first. Put me and Henri first.
“He’ll forgive you,” Luther said quietly. “If he loves you, he’ll understand why you did it.”
I shook my head. “I’m not so sure. Maybe there are some things love can’t survive.”
“It can. If the love is true, there’s nothing it won’t endure.”
“How do you know?”
When he didn’t answer, I lifted my eyes to his—a critical mistake. The depth of the emotion I saw there crested over me
and pulled me out with the tide.
I was drowning in this man. From the moment I met him, I had been kicking against the current and holding my breath, struggling to get back to the safe, familiar surface—but every look, every touch, dragged me deeper still. I felt the burning of it in my lungs, as real and visceral as if I were plunging into the Sacred Sea itself.
And maybe it made me weak, or a traitor, or a fool, but gods did I want to close my eyes and sink forever.
My throat squeezed tight with emotion—for all the things I should want, but didn’t, and all the things I did want, but couldn’t have.
“I don’t know what to do,” I whispered, my walls cracking open and exposing the raw nerve of my deepest, most vulnerable fears. “About the mortals and the Guardians. About my magic, the Twenty Houses, the Challenging. About Henri,
and...”
About you.
“Diem,” he murmured.
My shoulders drooped. “I pretend like I know what I’m doing, but it’s all a fraud. I’m letting everyone down—”
“You’re not.”
“I am. So many lives are at risk, and I can’t stop making mistakes. How am I supposed to take down the Crowns and stop
the Descended when I can’t—”
I froze.
Shit. Oh, shit.
I shrank back, terrified at how much I’d just revealed. It had felt so easy, so natural to show him the parts of myself I never let anyone else see. But he was still a Descended Prince—and I’d just flashed the knife I’d been hiding behind his back.
“I misspoke. I’m not... I wouldn’t—”
“Diem,” he said again, firmer this time, his dark brows furrowing.
“I... I didn’t mean—”
“I know what you meant.”
Fuck.
I started to pull away, but something in his eyes—something bright and tenderly guarded—held me still.
“You’ve asked me why I serve you,” he said. “This, my Queen. This is why.”
I shook my head, too scared to even breathe. “I don’t understand.”
“More than any of the other Kindred, Blessed Mother Lumnos loved the mortals. She never wanted them forced into submission—she commanded her Descended to guard them from harm, not be the cause of it.” He took my face in his hands, cradling it in his palms. “Even before you had the Crown, I felt her urging me toward you. The more I see of you, the more I understand why. She wants change, and she believes you can achieve it.” His thumb brushed across my cheek. “And so do I.”
I could do little more than gape in silence. Though I knew Luther harbored sympathies for the mortals... was it possible our goals were truly aligned?
“I do want that,” I finally stammered, “I want that more than anything, but what can I do? I can barely get through a day without getting myself killed.”
“You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for. You are the bravest person I’ve ever met, and you are resilient, even when you fail. You are unswerving in defense of those you love and the things you believe in. You never stop fighting—”
“Those things don’t make me wise, Luther, they make me reckless.”
“They make you the Queen that we need. I know you have no fondness for the Descended, and yet you see beyond the blood that runs in a person’s veins. I have seen that in the kindness you’ve shown Perthe, my family... even Aemonn, for Kindred’s sake. And I saw it tonight, in the mercy you asked me to show the Guardians. Any other Descended Crown would have slaughtered them, and any mortal Crown would have let them slaughter us. But you...” He looked at me like a flower raising its head to the life-giving sun. “You chose the harder path. If we ever wish to see peace in this land, we need a leader like that—a leader like you.”
I closed my eyes, overwhelmed by the weight of his words and the calling he was laying at my feet.
I arrived here with an ill-thought-out plan to destroy the Descended. Though I still believed their unjust rule needed to be brought to ashes, I had found good people here, people that I cared about and wanted to protect. And I knew firsthand that the
rebels were no innocents, either.
There had to be a better way.
A war was coming. Two sides were preparing. But maybe instead of joining an army... I could lead one.
Maybe I could become one.
Luther tipped his forehead until it lay flush with mine, our eyes closing as we bathed in the charged air humming around us.
“You are my Queen, and I am your sword. Point me at your enemies, and watch them fall. Lead this world, Diem, and I will follow you—into war, into death, into the tundra of hell itself.” He took my palm and set it against his chest, just above the patch of unscarred skin that lay beneath his jacket. “You are the fate my heart was spared for. As long as it beats, you will
never fight alone.”
My own heart exploded, filling my body and straining against my skin, my emotions too vast to be contained. He shifted his face just enough, our noses grazing as his lips came dangerously close. My hand slid up his neck and wove into his hair, fingers trembling with restraint as I fought the urge to close the distance.
Lust. Physical attraction. Nothing more...
“What would happen,” I breathed, “if we gave into this thing between us?”
“I don’t know,” he said roughly. “But that question consumes my every thought.”
His chin lifted almost indiscernibly.
Waiting for me. Letting me choose.
I swallowed hard. “At the dinner, you said you had no interest in marrying me, only in serving me. Was that... did you...”
The unasked question hung in the silence, every second thick with anticipation. It felt as if my future was holding its breath, waiting for his answer as eagerly as my heart.
“Every person in this room wants something from you,” he said after a heavy pause. “They look at you, and they see the things they want to take. I know, because I lived it. From the moment I became heir, everyone wanted to be either my friend or my lover. When you took the Crown, I swore to be different—to serve your goals, not mine. I told myself that even if you had no one else, you would at least have me. I never wanted to become just another person who wanted to steal a piece of you for themselves.”
He let out a shuddering sigh. “And I have failed. Completely, irreversibly failed. I don’t just want a piece of you—I want them all.” His thumb raked across my lower lip. “I want every breath, every laugh, every tear. Every taste of your mouth, every inch of your skin. I want to kneel at your feet, soaked in the blood of your enemies, then worship your body until you scream my name.” His hands slid to my hips and tugged me closer. “Yes, Diem, I want to serve you—in every way a man can.”
I couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.
“I want to burn alive in that fire in your eyes. I want it to melt me down and forge me into the weapon you need me to be. I want to stand by your side for the rest of my life, and I don’t need you to marry me and make me a fucking king to do it.”
“Luther,” I rasped, begging—for what, I wasn’t sure.
“I pledged you my loyalty, and you have it, no matter your choice. But I cannot keep lying to you or to myself. I want all of you, Diem.” His lips brushed against mine, his words breathing straight into my lungs. “You already have all of me.”
The music crescendoed to its final note, and the applause of the crowd shattered our cocoon. I staggered back, flushed and blinking. Suddenly, Eleanor was murmuring something in my ear, and then Aemonn was there, looping my arm around his and tugging me toward the remaining guests to say our goodbyes. All of it was a confusing haze—the lights too dim, the voices
muffled and far away.
Except him.
Luther’s smoldering gaze held mine as the crowd consumed me and exploited me for every last ounce of influence they could siphon. When the throng of faces had nearly blocked him from my sight, he raised his palm to his chest, just above his heart, dipped his chin, and walked away.
