Page 204 of Burn of the Everflame

“Then I’ll do it again. I’ll force her to keep leaving until she stays away for good.”

He dropped his chin, his features stern. “And that’s different than forcing her to stay?”

“Luther, if she chooses me over him again . . .” My voice broke. “He’ll never forgive her. She’ll lose him.”

He set his palm over mine. “It’s not your choice to make, my heart.”

The fight drained out of me. I looked at Tybold, who sank low enough to perch on the ivy-covered wall that circled the palace grounds. Both gryverns had fallen silent, their gazes locked. They were no longer quarreling with each other, but waging a war against their own hearts: How much is love worth giving up?

Tybold’s glare smoldered as it shifted to me. His talons curled like fists, gouging lines in the stone. He growled, low and rumbling.

I held his stare. “I’m sorry,” I said, and I hoped he understood it was about so much more than Sorae.

He spread his mighty wings. Launched for the sky.

And moments later, he was gone.

46

DIEM

Sorae watched the sky as Tybold left, her eyes fixed on the spot where he had faded into the evening dark. If I knew how to rebuild the bond between us, I might have done it right then and there, if only so she didn’t have to endure her pain alone.

But my beloved gryvern was used to suffering on her own. As generations lived and died around her, solitude had been her constant. When Teller—shirtless, with flushed cheeks and rumpled hair—and Lily—lips swollen, dress askew—emerged onto the terrace to investigate the noise, Teller reached to comfort her, and Sorae ducked away. She curled into a corner and hid her head beneath her wings.

“Thank the Blessed Mother,” someone muttered. “Our gryvern is smarter than our Queen.”

The crowd smashed back into focus. A ring of glaring faces surrounded me on every side. I’d taken a priceless power away from my army, and they hated me for it.

And I hated them back.

The Descended had every advantage, yet their hunger for more was insatiable. They raged at any tip of the balance in anyone else’s direction, even though their thumbs were glued to the scales. And the mortals knew what it felt like to be those gryverns, stripped of their voice and forced to submit. It disgusted me to see them so eager to put others in the very same chains they had fought to escape.

Could no one be content without someone to crush beneath their heel?

I stormed away from Luther and shoved a path through the crowd, my anger rising with every disapproving look and mumbled jab. I aimed for my tent in camp, but at the sight of my mother standing beside it, I almost fled for the forest instead.

“You did the right thing,” she said as I approached.

“No one else seems to think so.”

“They’re scared, that’s all. Today made the war more real for everyone. They’re realizing how much is at stake if Ophiucae wins.”

And you just made that outcome a lot more likely.

She didn’t say it, but it was true.

I told myself I didn’t care. I reminded myself that I’d done the right thing, and I made a promise that I would never let any goal make me as ruthless as my sire.

I just wasn’t sure I believed it.

“You did the right thing this morning, too,” she said, a bit more gently. “Sometimes, death can be a mercy. You’re a healer, you know that.”

“I’m not a healer anymore.”

“You will always be a healer, Diem. It’s in your heart.”

Her words wound around my chest, squeezing tight.