Page 112 of Burn of the Everflame

“Diem?”

No answer.

“Diem.”

Silence.

My voice turned softer. “My heart.”

She flinched, then slightly turned her head—as much of a greeting as I would get.

I set down her sword and harness, then gripped the back of my sweater and dragged it over my head. I knelt before her. “Lift your arms.”

Her eyelids fluttered as her steel-grey gaze paused on my bare chest and the spot where my scar wreathed my heart.

“You should go.” Her words were dandelions in the wind. So terribly fragile, one breath from ruin.

I kept my face still, refusing to burden her with the evidence of how her dismissal wrecked me. “Not yet.” I held the sweater over her head. “Lift your arms,” I said again, more gently.

She stared up at the open hem, yet she made no move to take it. Her grip tightened on her chest, her fingernails clawing for purchase against her skin.

“We agreed, remember?” I said. “When we’re alone, there’s no Queen or Prince. Only us. Equals. And that means sometimes you answer to me.” I lowered my chin, trying to catch her eye with my smirk. “You seemed to enjoy taking my orders in Sophos.”

My heart cracked when my words provoked no answering smile, no heat from those intimate memories, no response at all. Her stare fell again to my chest, hovering at my heart before dropping to where she covered her own. She shifted to force the hair on her shoulders to fall forward and further curtain her from my view.

The realization destroyed me: she was hiding herself. She’d done the same from the others, masking herself in oversized clothes while she recovered from the island’s effects, but even in our earliest days, when the line between enemies and something else had been razor-thin, she’d never hidden her body from me.

Fury rose in a blazing rush. She was the one who taught me to embrace my scars. Did she really think there was any form her body could take that I would not love?

My jaw clenched hard, though I forced my expression to stay calm. I set the sweater down. “I’ll get you something else to wear.”

I walked to a trunk and began to rifle through its contents. While she’d been in Ignios, I’d stocked her tent with as many comforts as I thought she’d accept. A trove of warm, practical clothing. A plain wool rug to combat the frigid soil. A small pile of books that I knew made her laugh, though she’d yet to touch them. And weapons. So many weapons.

I gathered an armful of soft pieces fit for sleeping, then halted in my tracks. Diem had risen to her feet. She was wearing my sweater, its hem grazing her upper thigh.

As I came closer, she toyed with the ends of the sleeves and avoided my eyes. The movement gave me hope. If she was nervous, at least she was feeling. I did not fear Diem’s sorrow or her rage, but the Diem who felt nothing scared me more than anything I’d ever known.

I offered the clothes, and she took them. This time, she made no effort to hide as she slipped on undergarments and a pair of warm stockings, though she declined to trade my sweater for a thicker one I’d brought her.

I set it aside. “Gather up your hair.”

Doubt flitted over her face until she watched me withdraw her golden pendant from my pocket. She quickly swept her long waves in a pile on her head.

I circled behind her and reached over her shoulders to drape the thin chain around her neck. Her skin pebbled as my fingers slowly and deliberately brushed the column of her throat. I leaned in and breathed her in, savoring her unique floral scent. Prior to Diem’s arrival in my life, I’d encountered that fragrance only once before, on what had been the happiest day of my life—until one moment in a Sophos library forever replaced it.

I took the hair from her hands and gently combed my fingers through her curls, then wove them into a loose braid, grateful that Lily had insisted on teaching me the skill when she was young.

My fingers trailed down her shoulder. “Shall I get you food?” I craned my head around. “Warm cocoa?”

I did not get the laugh I’d hoped for. Her throat worked, and she shook her head.

Blessed Kindred, I wanted to pull her close. She was so near I could feel her heat, yet out of reach in all the ways that mattered.

“Do you remember what you said to me in Umbros, just before you discovered I’d been wounded?” I asked. “It was something your father told you: ‘You don’t have to see all of someone to love all of them.’ I may not see everything you’re going through, but I love you, Diem Bellator. All of you.”

As her eyes fell closed, a single tear broke free and trailed down her cheek. I kissed it away, then scooped her up into my arms and carried her to her bedroll. Once she was tightly tucked inside a cove of cushions and blankets, I knelt at her side.

“Tell me to stay.”