Chapter
Forty-One
he ride to the arena was long.T Torturously, excruciatingly long.
Envision-every-worst-case-scenario long.
Consider-grabbing-my-brother-and-making-a-break-for-it long.
Plummet-into-a-can’t-think-can’t-breathe-hands-trembling-state-of-overwhelming-panic long.
All my best efforts to clear my thoughts failed disastrously as my mind put me through a self-constructed gauntlet and forced me to revisit every move I’d made since becoming Queen. I thought of all the ways I could have avoided making enemies. All the ways I could have fluttered my lashes and sweet-talked my way out of a Challenge.
All the ways I could have saved my father.
And though I tried, with every shred of my being, to remember there was no point in regrets, and to focus on the only thing that mattered today—surviving, by the time the forest opened up to the towering stone walls, my storm of emotions had become downright cataclysmic.
The arena was nearly unrecognizable from what I remembered at the funeral. The thin bed of sand on the central floor had been covered with scattered obstacles—large boulders, fallen logs, pits of mud, and the like.
When I’d asked why obstacles were needed for a duel of pure magic, one of the cousins had explained that it was “for the amusement of the spectators—no one wants to come all this way just to watch a quick, simple death.”
At least my demise would be entertaining.
A covered tent had been set up to offer me a small reprieve from the eyes of the crowd—“for weepy goodbyes,” the same cousin had so helpfully clarified.
I entered first from the royal box, surrounded by House Corbois. They leapt into action around me, mingling and jostling for the seats with the best view of the carnage with a nauseatingly casual ease.
I walked to the balcony at the front and closed my eyes as a soft breeze kissed my face. Murmurs rippled through the crowd at the sight of me, their gossip pelting me like arrows—commentary on everything from my appearance to my magic to my dead father to which Corbois cousin was allegedly sharing my bed.
It was all a game to them—my life, my suffering. Just something to pass the decades during their long, boring lives of privilege.
The mortals, at least, saw this for the bloodthirsty spectacle it was, perhaps because a mortal life felt so delicate and fleeting in comparison to a Descended’s near-immortal existence. Somewhere along the way, the Descended had lost sight of that truth—that every life was precious, and every day a gift.
“I’m going to tell you a secret, but you have to swear to me you won’t react.”
I opened my eyes to see Luther standing at my side, shoulder-to-shoulder, his eyes gazing onto the arena floor.
“Tell me.”
“Swear it first.”
“Fine, I swear. Tell me.”
He let out an unhappy growl. “Apparently, your little brother kissed my little sister.”
A loud gasp shot from my lips. I whipped around to find them, and Luther grabbed me around my waist and forced me back into place.
“Liar,” he hissed, though amusement hid in his tone.
I clutched his arm. “When did this happen? Where? How do you know?”
“Last night. Lily told him she declined the proposal from House Byrnum, and then—”
“She did?” I squealed. Again I tried to spin back to the gallery, and again Luther’s arms clamped around me to hold me still.
“You swore,” he protested, now fully laughing as he pressed me close. “If you make a scene, she’ll never tell me anything again.”
“She told you?” I breathed, relaxing against him. Though his grip on me eased, his arms stayed wrapped at my waist. “She must really trust you.”
“I have your advice to thank for that. I was right to stay out of it.” His smile faded a little. “I’d rather know, so I can help them if they face any... obstacles.”
“And you’re truly alright with this? Even with the difference in their lifespans?”
He let out a resigned sigh. “It’s not what I would choose for her. Even in the best of outcomes, Lily’s heart will be broken.
But perhaps...” He paused, his gaze heavy on mine. “Perhaps, for the right person, we endure the pain, because the torture of never having them at all is the more unbearable fate.”
My breathing went shallow.
“Luther,” I whispered.
Lily’s laughter cut through the din of the crowd, and my gaze drifted in search of her.
“Eyes up here, Bellator,” he teased, squeezing my hip.
“I’m a Corbois now, remember?”
“About that...” He reached into his jacket pocket, pulling out a small black box, and handed it to me.
My brow wrinkled as I cracked it open. On a bed of grey satin lay a golden medallion engraved with the Corbois crest—a near-identical twin to the one Aemonn had gifted me at the ball before I’d melted it away in my explosion of power after my father’s death.
“Consider it an early coronation gift.” There was an eager, boyish excitement to his tone. “I took the liberty of making a few adjustments.”
I squinted closer at the necklace. Whereas the phoenix on Aemonn’s pendant had been inlaid with sapphires to represent the blue eyes of the Lumnos Descended, this version had two dark grey diamonds in their place.
A smile danced at the corners of his mouth. “Like yours,” he murmured proudly.
I ran my thumb over the gilded disc and straightened in surprise when the tiny ruby set into the phoenix’s heart glowed bright scarlet at my touch. “How?”
“I infused it with a spark of my light magic.”
“You can do that?”
“Any Descended can. But what we put in, we can never get back. It reduces our power forever.” He peered up from beneath his dark brows. “So do me a favor and try not to destroy this one.”
I laughed, the sound coming out choked as emotion squeezed at my throat. “You’re really taking this vow of yours to never leave my side seriously.”
He didn’t smile, didn’t laugh—he only held my stare in his quiet, earnest way, his answer carved across his face as fiercely as the scar that marked his skin.
I lifted the necklace to put it on. As the disc spun on the delicate chain, something else grabbed my eye. I caught the medallion between my fingers. On the other side, instead of a smooth circle, this version contained a beautifully scripted B pierced by a pair of crossed twin daggers.
“Because you may claim House Corbois,” Luther said gruffly, “but you’ll always be Diem Bellator to me.”
My hand closed into a fist around the pendant, tears pricking at my eyes. I tried in vain to scrape some words together to explain what this gesture meant to me—what it meant that he had always honored my mortal family. That he had never expected me to abandon who I had been for who I had to become.
Without a word, Luther took my hand and tenderly pried my fingers open to pluck the necklace out of my grasp. He stepped closer and snaked the ends of the chain around my neck to secure the clasp.
As his hands pulled away, they paused, hovering just above my collarbone. “I promised to do whatever it takes to keep you alive today.”
“You have. You’ve done everything you could.”
“No,” he rumbled. “Not yet.”
His eyes followed his touch as his fingers pressed to my skin and dragged up the column of my throat. With the whole of Lumnos watching, the gesture felt as possessive as it was intimate.
My head warned me to pull away—instead, my neck arched toward him, heat pulsing through my blood.
He traced the edge of my jaw. “Forgive me. They all need to see it.”
“See what?” I rasped, barely able to speak.
“Who will come for them if they dare to come for you.”
Then his lips were on mine.
And nothing else existed.
There was no Crown, no Challenging.
No arena of spectators exploding in a gossipy uproar.
No Taran pumping his fist and yelling “finally!” at the top of his lungs.
No imminent death. No doubts or secrets or fears.
No Henri.
There was only the two of us—the loyal Prince and his cherished Queen. Luther’s lips, soft and adoringly gentle as they moved against my own. His hands, cradling my face like I was the most precious thing he’d ever touched. His body, flush against mine, a living shield against everything, and everyone, that threatened to tear us apart.
His mighty aura cascaded around me and within me, tasting me as deeply as his tongue. It spilled into my soul and branded me with his power, claiming me inside and out. The kiss was a warning to the crowd, but this was a threat to the gods themselves: If you take her from me, I will come for you, too.
It was nothing like the kiss we’d shared before. That had been all anger and lust, a battle of tempers bathed in blood.
That was an inferno.
This was a hearth.
Carefully tended over weeks of friendship, the traumas we’d endured, and the secrets we shared. A smaller flame, perhaps, but steadier. Strong. A fire that didn’t burn to consume, but to endure—to keep us warm through the perils of the dark, cold night.
Wrapped in his arms, for a fleeting instant, I started to believe everything might turn out alright. That somewhere at the end of this, true happiness might be waiting, after all.
But as quickly and unexpectedly as the moment had come, it was snatched away.
Remis clamped a hand on our shoulders and shoved us apart. “If the two of you are done putting on a show, it’s time to begin.”
Luther snarled and ripped out of his father’s grasp. Without another look, he turned his back and disappeared into the gallery of gawking Corbois, leaving me stunned and panting.
Remis pushed me toward the steps. “You can take one person to help you prepare.” He arched a brow over his shoulder. “It seems my son has removed himself from consideration.”
I stared blankly at him while the world shifted, spinning an entirely different direction than it had before. “Teller,” I finally managed to get out. I held a hand out to my brother, and he rushed to my side as we began to descend the steep staircase to the arena floor.
“You kissed Luther,” he hissed in my ear.
“You kissed Lily,” I shot back.
“Wait—who told you?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You’ve been a little busy today, if you haven’t noticed.”
“That’s no excuse. You kissed Lily!”
“You kissed Luther!”
“Luther kissed me.”
“You sure didn’t push him away.”
“Stop changing the subject. You kissed Lily!”
“Does this mean you’re finally going to wake up and end things with Henri?”
My mouth popped open. “I thought you supported me and Henri.”
“Before everything changed, maybe, but now...” He wrinkled his nose.
“By the Flames, are you really giving me a hard time about a mortal-Descended relationship? May I remind you that you kissed Lil—”
“It’s not about that.” Teller yanked me to a stop and pointed to a large section of spectators in the upper level. “Look.”
As I studied the group, familiar faces began to appear. Maura first, along with the other healers. Then friends of my parents.
Neighbors, old classmates, patients—so many of my patients.
Strangers, too. Faces I’d never seen, names I didn’t know—scores of them, filling row after row, a mass of brown eyes huddled together for warmth against the chilly winter air.
There must have been hundreds of them. Thousands, perhaps.
“Where is he?” Teller prodded.
“He... he had to make a delivery. He—”
“Where has he been since you took the Crown? Since Father died?”
“I told him to stay away from the palace for his own safety.”
“If it was the other way around, you would be there.”
I silently clenched my jaw.
“If anyone you loved was going through this, you would be there for every step of it, no matter how dangerous it was. You deserve someone who’s willing to do the same for you.”
I sighed and tugged his arm. “Come on. I’d rather lose the Challenging and die than hear the rest of this lecture.”
We reached the final step and emerged onto the sandy arena floor. Suddenly the walls loomed higher, the crowd so much larger. I felt minuscule. Insignificant.
“You’re going to be fine,” Teller said, sounding more like a question than a statement. “The last five Corbois Crowns
weren’t Challenged.”
I nodded silently.
“Maybe no one will step forward, and we can all just go back to the palace.”
“Maybe,” I murmured.
“Even if they do, you can use your shield to wear them down, and then when they’re tired...”
He trailed off. It was the one wrinkle in our plans that no one could solve.
I had never used my magic to harm another person. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
Though I had walked away from my career, some part of me would always be a healer. Behind all my swagger and threats, it was the drive to repair harm, not create it, that filled my heart with purpose.
But this was a fight to the death. If I could not find it in myself to cross that line...
“Diem Corbois.”
Remis’s voice reverberated across the arena, magnified by the Sophos invention he’d used at the funeral.
Teller’s hand tightened on mine. I squeezed his back, then dropped it and strode several paces forward until I stood alone.
I turned to face the royal box, my posture going rigid. I steeled my face into the mask of a warrior, letting all trace of emotion boil away under the unforgiving sun. The time had come to show all of Lumnos that I was not afraid to fight.
Remis spoke again.
“The traditions of our great realm demand you be judged by your peers before you take the throne. The rules are simple: Each of the Houses will have an opportunity to raise a Challenge. If one or more Challengers steps forward, you must fight the strongest among them using only your magic until one of you is dead. If you are truly worthy to wear the Crown, may Blessed Mother Lumnos make her will known to us all.”
Taran’s snort carried to my ears. I bit my cheek to hold back my smile.
“And if you are tested and found wanting... may she have mercy on your soul.”
A thunderous rumble rolled through the stands as thousands of Descended beat their fists against their chests in a slowly
building cadence.
But this gesture was no salute.
This was a Descended battle cry.
This was a call for blood.
The beat grew louder and faster, carrying my pulse along with it. When the roar reached its crescendo and faded, my heart stayed pounding in my ears.
“Houses of Lumnos,” Remis boomed, “the time has come. I call on each of you to make your decision. Will you Challenge your Queen—or will you kneel to her?”
The murmur ceased. Lips pressed closed, bodies went still—even the wind seemed to hold its breath. Absolute silence seized the arena as my life teetered on the cliff.
I did not dare look at the Houses and risk provoking them to act, nor did I look at Remis, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of seeing my fear. And I could not bear to see the fragile hope in my brother’s eyes.
Instead, I looked up.
I had never prayed to the Kindred before—at least not by name. In my lowest moments, I had thrown desperate pleas out to any divine being that might be listening, but not once had I sought out the patron goddess who had plucked me from mortal obscurity and tossed me straight into the boiling cauldron.
I squinted at the radiance of the sun’s rays, then closed my eyes and faced the darkness of my mind.
Light and dark. The two sides of Lumnos’s magic.
Both misunderstood, for although we often ran from the shadowy unknown toward the clarity of day, the light could blister and burn just as the dark could shield and soothe. It was in the meeting of the two, the dusk and the dawn, where peace was truly at its height.
Lumnos, I said without speaking, let’s be honest, we’ve never been great friends, you and I. I’m pretty sure you and your siblings are sitting up there laughing your heads off at my expense.
But I do believe in Luther, and he believes in you. He thinks you want me to bring peace between the mortals and the Descended. I don’t know if you’ve got the right girl, but I’m willing to give it my best shot. If that’s truly your will, then give me a sign. Let me leave here without a Ch—
“I will Challenge her.”
Shit.
I opened my eyes and turned toward the voice.
“On behalf of House Ghislaine, I, Rhon Ghislaine, wish to Challenge Diem Corbois as unworthy to wear the Crown.”
For a long beat, I couldn’t process anything but the group clustered around him, the comparatively tiny family that sat
behind their golden emblem.
House Ghislaine?
The weakest of the Twenty Houses—the House for whom a Challenge meant gaining nothing and risking everything, the one House everyone had been certain I didn’t need to fear?
My eyes focused on the man who had spoken, and my racing heart skidded to a halt.
Tall and lanky, his slender frame was topped with shimmering blonde hair, his attractive face ruined by the vitriol carved into his fair-skinned features.
But there was more than hatred behind his eyes—there was doubt.
Fear.
Because he recognized me just as surely as I recognized him.
And the last time we’d met—in a dark alley in Paradise Row, where I’d watched him murder his own son and his mortal lover in cold blood despite my pleas for mercy—he had walked away bleeding, and I had walked away alive, an ending neither of us could have predicted.
“You,” I growled, narrowing my eyes. “I will happily fight you, you murderous piece of sh—”
“I will Challenge her.”
I whipped around to the new voice, this time from a face I didn’t recognize, though one look at the simpering green-haired twins beside him told me everything I needed to know.
“On behalf of House Byrnum, I, Roderyck Byrnum, wish to Challenge Diem Corbois as unworthy to wear the Crown.”
My stomach lurched. This was not good, at least if I believed his parents’ claims that he was one of the most powerful Descended in the realm.
But also not entirely unexpected. I had known that by encouraging Lily to reject the betrothal, a Challenge might come from House Byrnum. Even knowing this result, I wouldn’t have changed a thing.
I took a deep breath.
You can do this, I told myself. You can— “I will Challenge her.”
This time, I recognized neither the voice nor the House, one of the nameless few I’d met with at the height of my grief, when I’d been little more than a sentient ball of dark, vengeful despair.
“I will Challenge her,” another called out.
“I will Challenge her.”
One at a time, they stood.
One at a time, they declared me unworthy.
Five Houses became ten, then fifteen, then eighteen. When only one House remained, their members all clad in matching glittering red, I turned to face what I knew was coming with my head held high.
“On behalf of House Hanoverre, I, Jean Hanoverre, wish to Challenge Diem Corbois as unworthy to wear the Crown.”
Every last one of the Twenty Houses, save my own, had raised a Challenge. The Lumnos nobility stood unified against me.
And then the bad somehow got worse.
The Challenges kept coming, this time from the smaller Houses that did not make up the elite Twenty. Then, just to add insult to injury, there came Challenges from Unhoused Descended, who spoke for no clan at all.
This wasn’t just a Challenging—this was a Humiliating. Though I would only have to fight one of them, the message would linger. This was an outright rejection of me and everything I stood for. A vote of no confidence.
A declaration of war.
It was that realization that finally pierced my armor and sliced straight through to my heart.
After meeting the Corbois and finding people I cared about enough to now call family, I had allowed a tenuous hope to grow inside me that I could find some way to end this war not in bloodshed, but in reconciliation and common ground.
But these people did not want unity, they wanted power—and every last one of them was willing to kill me to keep it. Even if I survived today, what peace could I possibly achieve with a people so unified in their hatred?
My hope withered away, a flower wilting beside a flame. Whether I died today, or at the hands of one of the assassins they would surely send my way, the Descended of Lumnos had marked me for death.
My blood went cold. What if they couldn’t get to me, and they came after Teller instead? What if they came for Luther and every Corbois who had ever shown me kindness? I couldn’t protect all of them forever.
Maybe the only good I could really accomplish was to accept death today and spare the people I loved from meeting the same fate I’d brought down upon my father.
I turned my eyes to the royal box. Luther’s face was pale, his expression conflicted. “I’m sorry,” I mouthed, wishing I had more to offer him for all he had done. He shook his head and stepped forward as if he might come to me. I closed my eyes and turned away.
I could not bear to see any more. My heart would not survive seeing my brother’s reaction, and if I had to look at the smug satisfaction that surely illuminated Remis’s face, I might commit a murder before the match even began.
My shoulders slumped, my chin dipping low. I took a deep breath and awaited the decision on which Challenger would
seal my fate.
“I will Challenge her.”
The crowd gasped.
A young girl screamed in protest.
I would have joined them in their shock, had I not been recoiling in pain at the sharp flare of magic against my wrist.
The sign of a bonded bargain breaking.
“On behalf of House Corbois, I, Luther Corbois, wish to Challenge the Queen.”
