Page 102 of Burn of the Everflame

Alixe thought for a moment. “Maybe we should try doing this there.”

“No,” Luther and I said in unison.

Odd, I thought. I knew why I was avoiding the remains of our family home, but I didn’t know why Luther was so opposed. Did he think I couldn’t handle it—that it would put me right back into the dark, angry place I’d been after my father’s murder?

Did he not see that I was already there?

“If only we knew how the Kindred made it,” Alixe said. “There must be something about it in the Sophos archives. Perhaps Doriel can look.”

My stomach churned at the mention of Doriel’s name. Another thing I was dreading.

“The Kindred didn’t create godstone,” I said. “It came from the remains of the Everflame.”

“The Everflame was real?” Alixe asked. “I thought that was just a mortal folktale.”

I might have scolded her, if I hadn’t wondered the same. The Descended were proof that the Kindred had once walked the earth, but the mortals could only cling to blind faith through stories passed down over generations.

“Very real,” I said. “And the Kindred are as clueless as we are why it turned into godstone when they cut it down.”

Luther gave me a strange look. “How do you know that?”

I immediately bit down on my lip, grimacing at my slipup. His shrewd gaze noted the gesture.

“Diem . . . who told you?”

The lie rose so easily—Oh, I read it somewhere, perhaps in Sophos. A safe, easy excuse. Plausible enough that even if he didn’t believe me, he wouldn’t dare admit it.

But lying to Luther this way felt too much like a betrayal. He’d allowed me my secrets and my space. He’d even swallowed his complaints when my trip to Ignios stretched weeks later than planned (though I’d known the second he received the news by the anger vibrating through the bond). I didn’t want to repay his patience with lies. I wasn’t ready to face what the truth would bring, either.

“Let’s stay focused,” I hedged, pointing to the burnt remains of the chair. “Any other ideas what I’m missing?”

Luther’s stare lingered with the threat that his question would not be forgotten. As tension thickened the silence, Alixe seized her usual peacemaker role and jumped in.

“After the Challenging, I noticed there were black rocks mixed in the sand on the floor. I assumed it had come from something destroyed during the fight, but now I wonder . . . what if you made godstone then, too? Was there anything similar to how you used your magic that day and the day your father was—” She stopped abruptly.

“Murdered,” I finished. “You can say it.”

“I’m sorry. I know you don’t like to think on it.”

“I think on it every day, whether I wish to or not.”

“Indeed,” Luther murmured, his eyes on the palace.

It was easy to forget that he also knew the pain of losing a parent in a violent way. While I’d had the luxury—if one could ever call grief a luxury—of openly mourning my father’s loss alongside my brother while others offered their sympathies, young Luther had nothing and no one. He hadn’t even been allowed to admit she’d existed.

I wondered if he’d ever truly grieved her, or if that fuse was still buried inside him, waiting for its chance to burn.

I shifted close enough for our hands to brush. It was the first time we’d touched since the day I returned from Ignios. If he hadn’t appeared the second I landed, his palms gliding beneath my cropped linen top and up my bare ribs as he helped me dismount Sorae, I wasn’t sure what I would have done to ease the bond’s desires, but it would have bordered on obscene.

Reluctantly, I began to pull back, but Luther’s fingers hooked in mine and held fast, pleading without words for me to stay.

“Our magic is fueled by emotion,” he said. “Perhaps that plays a role. Both of those days tested you emotionally.” He paused. “The night you returned from the island . . .” He trailed off, sensitive to Alixe’s presence.

I’d lost control then, too. Hidden in the clouds, I’d let my godhood burn with all the rage my heart couldn’t hold. But unless the people of Lumnos City had missed a hailstorm of black rock raining down on their heads, no godstone had formed that night.

I shook my head. Luther frowned. “Are you sure?”

Alixe backed away from the not-quite-conversation we were not-so-subtly trying to hide. “I should go check on the Ignios Descended.”