Page 137 of Burn of the Everflame

My soul cracked open, my body shuddering as tears spilled in torrents down my cheeks.

Between the rain and the tears and the crashing waves of emotion flowing from his heart and mine, I felt submerged. Each ebb and flow of the tide sent us colliding together before violently ripping us apart. I was drowning, and I was pulling him down with me.

“You have to let me go,” I pleaded.

“I will deny you nothing, if you truly desire it. I’ll never be seen in Emarion again, if that’s what it takes to bring you peace. But it won’t, will it?” He took my face in his hands. “This distance is hurting you just as much as me. I can feel it.”

He leaned in closer.

“I don’t know why you’re doing this, but if it keeps us apart, it cannot be right.”

Closer.

“What’s right is this.”

Closer.

“Us.”

His mouth lowered to mine, the space between us no thicker than stardust—but it was still space. A choice, and a promise to take nothing from me that I wasn’t ready to give, even though his body quivered with raging desire to do so.

There was so much more on the line than a kiss. After our tryst in the ballroom, I knew that if I let my resolve shatter again, there was no going back. This push and pull had forced us both to our limit, and one way or another, something was going to break.

Our faces were so close, my tears dripped to his cheeks, a warm caress amid the chill of the rain. I wasn’t sure whether it was strength or weakness that caused my body to lean in, my hands to grip his chest, my eyes to close, my lips to . . .

“My fate is yours,” he breathed. “And your fate is mine.”

It was the wrong thing to say.

So very, very wrong.

I jerked back so abruptly, it took Luther a moment to realize what had happened. Old habits ran deep, and before I could help it, my sorrow turned hot and forged into something pointed and sharp. My hands balled into fists, features twisting into a glare. “I told you there were parts of me I couldn’t give. You said you understood.”

Luther frowned. “I do.” He pushed off the door, walking toward me. “But . . . in Sophos, it seemed like you⁠—”

I yanked back again. “Sophos was a mistake.”

He stopped still. “You don’t mean that.”

“I do.”

I wasn’t even sure if it was a lie. The days we’d spent together in Sophos were the most cherished memories I had, but they made doing this, hurting him, the lowest I’d ever felt.

I called on the cold, apathetic darkness to consume my spirit, turn my tears to dust, and bury my tortured heart. “This was exactly what I feared would happen. I don’t need—” I bit down. Some lies were too cruel to speak, even for me. “What I need isn’t something you can give. I can’t be what you need, either.”

“You’re everything I need,” he insisted. “Nothing else matters.”

“And how pathetic is that?” I shouted back. “You’ve spent your entire life waiting to serve a grey-eyed Queen. You put everything aside for that. But you have friends, Luther. You have family that loves you. You have passions and goals you won’t let yourself even consider because you’re consumed by mine. I can’t be your vessel for experiencing life. I don’t want that for you.” I wiped the tears from my face. “I don’t want it for me, either.”

It might have hurt a little less if it weren’t a little true. Whether I survived this war or not, I had to make Luther see that there was more to him that mattered than what he could do for me.

“There has to be a Luther without Diem,” I said. “And right now, I have to be a Diem without Luther.”

He stared down at the tower floor, rain streaming down his skin in rivers and clinging to the ridges of his scar. I felt no emotion coming from him over the bond. The mark on my chest had never felt so cold.

“I was not aware,” he said quietly, “that you found me so . . . pathetic.”

I winced. “That’s not what I meant.”