Chapter
Eight
hen I returned to the palace, Luther wasn’t on the terrace, nor was he in any of the common rooms Eleanor had pointed outW to me earlier.
This turned out to be a good thing, because over the course of the hour that I searched for him, my temper chilled—slightly —and I remembered with no small amount of frustration that I couldn’t kill him.
Yet.
At the very least, I still needed answers about my mother. And killing the Regent’s son would probably not bode well for getting through the Period of Challenging with my head intact.
The realization had done little to soothe the voice. After I’d surrendered to its call the night I received the Crown, I thought it might be gone, but the events of that night had only emboldened it. Whatever strange force it represented had taken to punctuating every breath with the same word: Fight. Fight. Fight. The chant was a steady metronome, keeping the tempo of my racing thoughts, and I felt my patience grinding to an edge with every stroke. I was anger embodied, and I was in no state to be around anyone, let alone a palace full of people I didn’t care for to begin with.
I was still stalking up and down the halls, having blown off a number of Corbois kinsmen who tried to corner me “just to chat,” when Lily popped her head around a corner.
“Your Maj—I mean, um, Diem,” she whispered. She beckoned me closer as her eyes darted around. “Your brot—uh, the thing you asked me to get. It’s here. Well, not here, but—”
“Where is he?” I asked bluntly.
“I was going to bring him to your room, but there are so many people in the royal wing, I think because they’re clearing the Crown suite for you, and then I was going to bring him to the library, but Elric is in there studying, and if there’s anyone in this family who can’t keep a secret, it’s Elric. Honestly, he tells everyone everything. So then I was going to take him to my room, but that seemed like a really, really bad idea—”
“Lily, tell me where he is. Please,” I added through gritted teeth.
“Oh, yes, right.” She grinned. “Follow me.”
I trailed her to a set of hefty iron doors with a complex web of latches and thick bars securing the outside, as if the locks were meant to keep someone in, rather than keeping intruders out. The doors gave way to a twisting staircase that got progressively darker as we descended. Lily waved a hand, and a set of glowing orbs appeared at our feet to illuminate the ground.
Wherever we were going, it was a miserable place. The walls were carved of jagged rock and brutally bare, empty of the tapestries or artwork that were so ubiquitous in the rest of the palace, and the humid air smelled vaguely of decay.
“What is this place?” I whispered, the silence almost too ominous to disturb.
“The dungeon. It hasn’t been used in years. We used to play games down here when I was little.”
“Lily, is that you?” My brother’s voice ricocheted off the expanse of damp stone.
“Teller!” I called out.
“D, I’m down here! Hurry up, this place is terrifying.”
I launched myself at him the moment I found him in the darkness, flinging my arms around his neck. It had only been a day since we last spoke, but it felt as if my entire world had inverted since then. So many plans had been born and died since that unexpected revelation outside our little home on the marsh.
Teller crushed me in his arms, then pulled back and gawked. “Are you wearing a dress?”
I smirked and flipped my hair theatrically over my shoulder. “Madness, isn’t it? This was all they had.”
“I think she looks beautiful,” Lily offered, watching us with soft eyes and a sweet smile. “She looks like a Queen.”
“You do,” he agreed. He looked me over with wonder. “You look like... like...”
“Say something nice, or I’ll sic my gryvern on you.”
His eyes flew open. “Gods, that’s right—you control the Lumnos gryvern now.”
“Sorae’s incredible, you’re going to love her.” I gasped. “And wait until you see the library, it’s enormous. You’re never
going to want to leave.”
He blinked at me and raked a hand across his mouth, then took a step back and looked me over again. “You’re smiling.”
The last time I’d seen him, I was sobbing in his arms, begging for his help to find a way out. I reached inward and fumbled around for the shattered part of my soul that had wanted to give this all up and run back to my quiet, forgettable life, but the pieces were no longer where I’d left them.
“Did you find anything useful in your books?” I asked cautiously.
“Not yet. They all say the same thing—the Crown only passes through death. I’ll keep looking, though.”
“Yes—keep looking.” I wasn’t sure what to do with my expression, feeling a little ashamed that his answer hadn’t bothered me in the slightest.
“How did you end up in the palace?” he asked. “I thought you were going to some lodge to hide.”
Lily flinched. Her brows crowded together as she studied the floor. I could almost hear her guilty heart thumping away in her ribcage as she waited for me to reveal her betrayal.
“I decided to come to the palace and tell them,” I said instead. “The gryvern would have found me anyway, so there was no use in hiding.”
Lily’s look of surprise, then gratitude, was bright enough to light the realm.
I quickly recounted my introduction to House Corbois, setting out the proposal Luther and Remis had made. I could see the cogs of Teller’s clever mind churning as he evaluated my possible moves.
“It’s a smart offer,” he said, “for you and for them. Especially now, before the Challenging.”
“How does the Challenging work? Do I have to fight every person in Lumnos who thinks I’m not good enough?”
“No, thank the gods. If more than one House raises a Challenge, the Regent selects the strongest Challenger to fight. If you win, then you can be coronated.”
I shrugged. “That’s not so bad. Father trained us well. I can take on one Descended.”
Teller gave me a grave look. “It’s a battle of magic only, D. No weapons allowed.”
My stomach dropped. “Is there any possibility no one Challenges me?”
Lily jumped in. “Oh, yes! Especially if they believe you’re a Corbois. The other Houses won’t want to risk making an enemy of us.”
This proposition with Remis and Luther might be worth considering after all.
I frowned and rubbed my temples. The effort of thinking amid the voice’s endless drone—Fight. Fight. Fight.—had given birth to a brain-splitting headache.
“Diem,” Teller said slowly. “When are you going to tell everyone back at home?”
I ignored his question. “One of the cousins mentioned an Ascension Ball—do you know anything about that?”
“A ball?” Lily squealed.
Teller smiled at her happy outburst, the affection in his eyes reminding me so much of the way Henri sometimes looked at me. A knot tightened in my gut.
“It’s your presentation to the court,” he explained. “It’s the official beginning of the Period of Challenging.”
“Is there some kind of test at this ball, too?”
“The books didn’t mention one.” We both glanced at Lily, who offered a shrug in return.
A new voice, low and booming, reverberated through the cavernous chamber.
“Have you not realized that everything you do between now and the Coronation is a test?”
Teller froze.
Lily gasped.
I pinched the bridge of my nose and closed my eyes.
He spoke again. “The next time you organize a secret meeting in the dungeon, little sister, try to remember to close the door behind you.”
Lily chewed on her lip and gazed at the floor. Teller started to comfort her, then glanced nervously toward the stairs and
pulled back.
“Go away, Luther,” I grumbled.
“Your Majesty,” he said coolly. “There are many people looking for you. What a blessing none of them thought to search this far downstairs.”
His patronizing tone was like waving a torch near a barrel of kerosene. The voice was no longer chanting—it was screaming.
In the distance, I sensed Sorae pacing her perch and screeching wildly.
“Calm down,” I mouthed, telling myself I was talking to the gryvern and not my own spiraling temper. “I’m fine. There’s no
danger.”
Fight.
The voice, apparently, felt otherwise.
“What do you want?” I snapped at Luther.
“I believe you and I have some matters to discuss.”
I glared. “Oh, there are quite a few things I wish to discuss with you.”
When I looked at him now, all I saw was blood. The blood of so many children, slaughtered before their lives had even begun.
Luther’s emotionless eyes slid to my brother. “Is she normally like this?”
Teller raised an eyebrow. “You mean irrationally angry at everything and everyone?”
Luther nodded.
“Yes.”
Fight.
I practically snarled.
Teller shot me an apologetic look. “But she wasn’t always. Only recently. Only since...” His voice trailed off, the answer coming through our shared stare. Since she stopped taking the flameroot.
My blood was boiling. No, it had long passed boiling—it had been left to stew over a roaring fire and was now curling into steam from within. How dare they discuss me as if I wasn’t right here in front of them?
Fight.
I wanted to pummel them. I wanted to tear them to the ground. I wanted to drag my nails across their skin. I wanted to— “You need to use your magic,” Luther said.
I squinted, fighting to focus on anything but my hunger for violence. “What?”
“The godhood—that’s what we call the source of our magic—it hates being trapped in a physical body. Being leashed for too long without release makes it angry. The longer you hold it in, the angrier it gets.”
“You describe it like it’s a living thing.”
“In some ways, it is. Don’t you hear it talking to you?”
Fight. Fight.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Between the dull throb of pain in my forehead and the vengeful chorus in my thoughts, I could barely follow the conversation.
Five minutes. I just needed five gods-damned minutes of peace and quiet.
Fight. Fight. Fight.
“Shut up,” I seethed under my breath.
Luther’s lips curved smugly at being proven right. “What’s happening to you is normal. Descended who are new to their magic are often overcome with anger because they don’t yet know how to soothe their godhood.”
“That explains why everyone at school is an ass,” Teller muttered. “Why isn’t Lily like that?”
“Luther trained me,” she answered with a proud smile at her brother. “He started before my magic manifested to make sure I was ready.”
Luther nodded. “For most Descended, even a few days without a release can be dangerous. If you’ve been suppressing your nature all these years...” He gave me a slow, appraising regard. “You’re a walking explosive.”
FIGHT.
I certainly felt like an explosive. Preferably one aimed in the general vicinity of his head.
I wondered if I’d said that aloud, because Luther uncrossed his arms and shifted into a battle stance. His gaze on me was purely tactical, a soldier assessing his foe.
“You need to burn some of it off. And you two,” he shot a hard look at Teller and Lily, “should be far away when she
does.”
“Could I hurt them?” I asked.
“Possibly, until you learn to control it. Frankly, the fact that your brother’s heart still beats is owed only to his impressive
ability to avoid pissing you off.”
“Then how are you still alive?”
That had definitely been aloud.
Luther’s joyless smirk rang with the promise of a battle. It was equal parts thrilling and immensely unnerving.
FIGHT.
“Leave us,” Luther ordered. Lily grabbed Teller’s hand, and they quickly scurried up the pitch-black staircase and disappeared.
I considered some horribly vicious jab about Luther’s commands, his titles, his very life being worthless under my new reign—but if I was being completely honest, all this talk of release had cracked open a tiny window of hope in my aching soul.
Once upon a time, I had been a person of happiness and joy. I’d laughed as deeply as I’d loved. I’d made lighthearted jokes instead of cruel insults or threats. I’d been patient and compassionate, quick to forgive.
This woman I had become now... I despised her.
She was strong, undeniably so, but in all the wrong ways. Strength could be fueled by love just as easily as hate. I had known that once, and I desperately wanted to find that part of myself again.
I wasn’t sure where that would leave me with my plan to tear down the Descended world, but I knew if I kept going like this, I would destroy myself before I could ever defeat anyone else—or end up losing myself to hate like Vance and the Guardians.
Luther and I glared at each other in wordless tension. His potent magic danced in his eyes, light and shadow twining like lovers embracing under the moonlight. Strands of darkness curved like barbed wire around his arms and chest while light slithered down the rippled planes of his torso, spiraling around his muscled thighs and leaving him encased in a glittering suit of armor.
Something stirred excitedly in my chest at the sight.
FIGHT.
“Why do you hold it back?” I asked, watching the magic pulse around him like a sentient force. “The Descended rarely use it when mortals are around.” My upper lip curled. “Afraid we might spot your weaknesses?”
“Our weaknesses,” he corrected. My throat burned with the urge to deny it. “We don’t like for mortals to see our magic, if we can avoid it. It can be... disturbing for them to witness.”
“Since when do the Descended care about disturbing mortals?”
He began to circle me in a smooth, predatory pace. “Do we not allow the mortals of Lumnos to live undisturbed? The Descended keep to our own cities and palaces.”
Something about his voice sounded false. Rehearsed.
I laughed harshly. “How very kind of you to allow us to live on land that was ours in the first place.”
FIGHT.
A low rumble that sounded suspiciously like Sorae’s growl shuddered through the thick stone walls.
Luther continued his path behind me and moved out of sight. I stubbornly held my stance.
“The mortals are free to live as they please, subject to the laws of the realm.” Again, his words sounded hollow.
“There’s nothing free about a life under laws we had no say in writing and have no real power to change.” I scowled.
“Perhaps it’s time for the Descended to learn how it feels to lose everything they value for a change.”
I knew instantly I’d gone too far. Revealed too much.
Luther went preternaturally still, every muscle taut under the strain of his power. When he finally spoke, his voice was deadly soft. “You would be wise, Your Majesty, to keep those thoughts well-guarded. Even a Queen can bleed.”
Fight.
Kill.
Destroy.
The voice had changed.
Focused.
As if it sensed a threat and was protecting its host. It prowled inside me, infecting my veins with a searing heat. My hands twitched with an ache to give in to its ruthless call.
Far away, Sorae was downright apoplectic.
“No,” I said quietly, pleading with the voice, the gryvern, and my own feral wrath to curb their bloodthirst. I couldn’t kill him—not now, not yet.
“Enough talking, Diem,” Luther stalked in front of me. An orb of pulsating light formed in one palm, a barbed knot of shadow in the other. “Use your magic, or I attack.”
My own fingers contracted at the sight of his, yearning to respond in kind.
Destroy.
“You don’t get to use my name, remember?” I hissed. “I’m Your Majesty to you.”
“Make me, Diem.” He flicked his wrist and a spear of darkness launched in my direction. I barely lunged away before it
sliced into the wall behind me.
“You could have killed me,” I shouted.
“So defend yourself.”
I reached to my thigh to pull my blade. A thorny black vine whipped at my hand, sending the knife tumbling out of my reach.
“No weapons. Only magic.”
“I told you, I don’t have m—”
A cloud of glowing scattershot rocketed toward me. I yelped and fell to my knees just in time for the sizzling points of light to sail above my head.
“Stop pretending. Get up and defend yourself.”
“I’m not pretending. I—shit!”
I rolled on my hip a split second before a shadowy axe sliced through the space I’d been sitting, leaving a jagged crevice in
the stone floor.
“So many lies,” Luther tutted. “Next, you’ll try to claim you didn’t kiss me.”
“I didn’t,” I snapped. “You kissed me. I was an innocent bystander.”
“There was nothing innocent about that kiss. From either of us.” He wet his lips, and heat coursed through my blood. “I think I’ve still got a few traces of your bloody handprints on my skin, if you’d like me to prove it.”
Destroy.
I lunged for my fallen dagger and hurled it at his chest. Luther sighed and twitched his wrist. A wall of pale blue light appeared around him, the blade bouncing harmlessly off its edge.
“This is beneath you,” he muttered, rolling his eyes.
He rolled his fucking eyes.
Destroy. Destroy.
I climbed to my feet, grinding my teeth nearly to dust. “I’m done with this conversation.” I started to stomp past him, but an explosion of glittering sparks sent me stumbling back with a shout.
“Use your magic. I know it’s there, I can feel it building around you. The light burns and the darkness bites—call to them,
craft them into the weapons you need.”
“I can’t.”
“I’m not stopping until you do.”
Destroy. Destroy. Destroy.
“I can’t control it,” I blurted out, a hint of desperation cracking through, but there was no compassion in his eyes.
“Try harder, Diem. Focus.”
“Fuck off,” I rasped, my chest near bursting with the effort of holding back.
“Then tell me why you’re so angry.”
Red mist veiled my vision.
No—blood.
Innocent blood.
“Tell me,” he barked.
Fight.
Kill.
Destroy.
“You killed them,” I screamed. “You killed all those children!”
“What children?”
“The half-mortal children, you murderous bastard. Aemonn told me all about it. You’re the one who executed them. You’ve been slaughtering them for years.”
Luther’s face paled. His ethereal suit of armor flickered in place. “You have no idea what you speak of,” he said softly.
“Are you not Keeper of the Laws?”
“Yes, but—”
“It’s your job to carry out all executions.”
“Yes.”
“Do you deny it, then? Do you deny you killed them?”
“There is more to it than you—”
“Do you deny it?” I snarled.
His nostrils flared, but he said nothing.
“Do you deny it?”
“Yes, I deny it!” he thundered back.
He hurled a volley of light-made arrows at me, then another, then another. I ducked and spun to avoid them, flinching as one came a hair from slicing my cheek.
Luther was panting now, his chest shuddering with harsh, ragged breaths. “Is this really what you think of me—that I’m capable of that?” Though he seethed through clenched teeth, something in it sounded almost wounded. “Is that why you hate me so deeply?”
Despite the chilly air, the heat building inside me felt as if it might consume me whole. I wiped at the sweat dripping from my face. “I have so many reasons to hate you.”
“Do you?” he growled. “Or is it easier to blame your anger on me than look in the mirror and confront the truth?”
Fight.
Kill.
Destroy.
My vision went hazy, my body at once too hot and too cold. Burning and freezing, scalding and crystallizing, incinerating
and shattering.
“Stop running away, Diem. Face what you are and what you’re meant to become.”
I groaned and squeezed my trembling palms to my temples. The voice was screeching with its cries to be unleashed, dragging its claws down my throat and smashing its fists against my brittle skull.
I couldn’t take it, couldn’t survive it.
“I thought you were fearless.” Luther’s lip curled back over his teeth. “So stop being such a coward.”
FIGHT.
KILL.
DESTROY.
I snapped.
One moment I was shaking, panting, and then— I was levitating. Hovering in the air, cocooned by a glowing white sphere that crackled and hummed as my hair danced around my shoulders in a churning breeze. Spiked tendrils of pale blue light twirled from the orb’s surface, slinking across the floor and transforming the dungeon into a luminous jungle of gnarled, sharp-tipped vines.
A hazy black liquid dripped from each thorn, as if bleeding from within. It swirled and swelled, the floor awash with it—a lake of shadows, then a sea, its ominous tide cresting in waves and lapping at the walls.
Luther yielded a step as the inky darkness splashed against his legs. He shielded his eyes at my blinding glow, but my own eyes had perfect clarity as they narrowed on him.
And he was grinning. Grinning.
The sight of it undid me.
I was a dying star, exploding and imploding, consuming all I touched.
My piercing screams were echoed by the roar of my distant gryvern as a blast of pure energy ripped from my chest. Luther cast a shield in a dome around me, and my power blazed past it like a fire through parchment. Magic crashed against the dungeon walls, fissures splintering across the rattling stone ceiling.
Luther grunted with effort and crafted another shield around me, then another. The silvery flames that shot from my skin burned through each one with ease, dissolving into a mist that froze as it landed and coated the obsidian waves with a foam of glittering frost.
I lost all sense of self. My body was no longer one soul but thousands of them. They flowed like roots from the soil beneath the palace, snaking through the stone and burrowing under my skin. They pulsed in rhythm in my core, each one lending their power to my own.
One stood out in particular, a spirit brighter than all the others combined. Its face wavered in my vision, too hazy to see clearly except for one feature: two grey eyes, so much like my own, staring back at me. Their corners crinkled as if in a smile.
A smile of promise. A smile of fate.
It might have lasted only a second, or an hour, or a lifetime. When it ended, I was on my knees. A starry glow still shone from within, my veins coal-black under luminescent skin. The floor had cratered beneath me, and between the cracks, sprouts
were visible through the rubble.
And then I heard laughing.
I looked up. Luther’s magic armor had vanished. His clothes hung in tattered shreds that smoked from where they’d been singed, the scar across his chest peeking through the ragged fabric. His bloody body was covered in a collage of cuts and burns, one eyebrow half-scorched from his face—but he was radiant. Practically giddy. His smile stretched from ear to ear, his eyes gleaming with delighted shock.
There was no more cold veneer—this was Luther unmasked, and he was boldly, unreservedly happy.
I barely recognized him.
“I knew you had it in there,” he breathed. He shook his head and laughed again, a full-body ripple of childlike wonder.
“Blessed Kindred, you’re incredible—and that was just a hint of it. You’re going to be unstoppable. I have no idea how keeping all that in for this long didn’t burn you alive.”
I stared down at my open palms. The same hands I’d always had. And yet...
“Do you feel better?” Luther asked. When I didn’t answer, his smile faltered. “Did the release help?”
Yes.
And no.
He had been completely right. The explosion of power was a pressure valve for my anger. My mind was now clear, my heartbeat steady, my skin cool and refreshed. The voice was as silent as death.
But its crimson fog had lifted to reveal something I’d been hiding from for months—maybe since all the way back when I was a scared little girl having visions I didn’t understand.
I was Descended.
I had magic.
I was strong, and I was fast. I could heal.
And I would live for centuries. Millennia, maybe.
But my family wouldn’t. Henri and Maura, they wouldn’t.
I would get decades with them at best—if I was lucky. And they would be painful, heartbreaking decades where I stayed young while I watched the people I loved wrinkle and weaken and wither to dust.
I would grieve and bury them, one by one, in the cold soil. I would watch helplessly as everyone who ever knew them died, too, until it was only my head, my heart, that still carried their memory.
And then I would be alone. So completely, eternally alone.
And no magic in the world could prevent it.
Alone. That was my destiny.
“I accept.”
Luther tentatively edged closer and helped me to stand, his hands gently curling around my arms to hold me steady. “You accept what?”
“I’ll claim House Corbois,” I said hoarsely. “But only if you protect my friends and family for as long as they live. Even if I die in the Challenging.” My hands began to tremble. “Promise me that, and I’ll do it.”
“Diem...” His voice was soft and painfully tender. He arched his head down in an effort to catch my gaze. “What’s wrong?”
Everything.
I looked up, my fractured, bleeding heart reflected in his concerned eyes. “If you want my trust, then give me your word you’ll protect them, even if I can’t.”
A tear escaped, streaming like a river down my cheeks. I’d once been horrified at the idea of crying in front of him. Now, I was simply trying not to shatter.
“Please, Luther,” I whispered, my voice cracking.
“Of course.” He brushed the tear away and nodded earnestly. “I won’t let anything happen to them. I promise.”
Without another word, I pulled out of his arms and walked away, up the winding staircase, along the twisting corridors, through my heavily guarded chamber doors, and into my cold, empty bed.
I let the tears flow unchecked, and I wept until the world fell away.
