Page 254 of Burn of the Everflame

“No,” he shouted back.

“Luther loves you,” Eleanor hissed. “Of course he’d do it.”

“Out, Taran. That’s an order from your Queen.”

A snort rang out through the door. “I break your orders all the time.”

“You can’t hide forever. If you love Zalaric, you have to trust him.”

“Exactly,” Eleanor said, though her stare was pointed at me.

I dropped my voice to a hush. “I know Luther would complete the bond, Eleanor. That’s why I can’t tell him.” Her brow scrunched in confusion, and I let out a long, heavy sigh. “Just promise me you won’t say anything.”

“I won’t,” she vowed. “But Diem . . .” She gently brushed my hair aside, gazing at my mark with a hopeful joy I couldn’t manage to share. “You’re tied to him now. Whatever your reasons . . . Luther deserves to know.”

“I deserve to know what?”

I shot a panicked look at the doorway, where Luther stood beside my mother. I hurriedly moved my hair back into place. “Uh . . . we were just discussing . . .”

“Your cousin,” Eleanor jumped in. She turned to him and crossed her arms. “You deserve to know that Taran is being the biggest baby in all of Emarion and refusing the orders of his Queen.”

Luther eyed me closely, surely sensing there was more unsaid. His curiosity was forgotten as he drank in my gilded splendor. Warmth pooled in my belly at the long, possessive linger of his stare on the revealing bodice and the way his fingers curled at his side.

“No one denies my Queen,” he said, voice rough. “Especially when she looks like that.”

Eleanor smirked. “Isn’t the dress marvelous?” She not-so-subtly shoved me toward him, but it was my mother who stepped forward first.

“Diem, you look lovely,” she gushed, pulling me in.

I awkwardly returned the embrace. I had vowed to put the distance between us to rest, but I wasn’t sure how. I still couldn’t reconcile the mother I knew—the warm, loving healer who had been content in a small but meaningful life—with the fierce Guardian leader who had galvanized a continent into rebellion.

It didn’t help that I wasn’t letting her be my mother. I’d made her my advisor, though my reasons had been strategic, not sentimental. Not once had I sought her out for comfort or support. I’d badly needed it, and I knew she badly wanted to provide it, but something had held me back.

When she pulled away, her smile was strained. “That dress is stunning. You were meant to wear it.”

“Luther, don’t you agree?” Eleanor called out. “Isn’t it perfect?”

He made a quiet noise. “Almost.” He curled an arm around my waist and splayed his palm low on my back to draw me against him. The tip of his nose dragged along my jaw as he leaned close and rumbled, too low for anyone else to hear. “It will be perfect when it’s on the floor beside our bed.”

My face—among other body parts—flushed with heat. Luther set a deceptively chaste kiss on my lips and leaned away, the corner of his mouth twitching up at the sight of my reddening cheeks.

There was a playful twinkle in his eyes I hadn’t seen in him since before the island, and never in the presence of others. He was making his usual effort to conceal his emotions, but for once, he was utterly failing.

He was happy.

And I couldn’t understand why the sight of it made me so sad.

“You look . . .” I paused and took him in. I hardly had the words to describe him. His suit was my gown’s mirror image, an explosion of color and texture from head to toe. Golden textured silk had been stitched with an inferno of metallic thread and gemstones, with a tall, sculptural collar that towered over his head like a gilded crown. Nearly every inch of him glinted with light as he moved—a blazing sun embodied.

At the center of the dazzling finery, a dark silhouette stretched wide across his chest: a soaring phoenix, made of simple, matte black thread, with a pool of glittering garnets at its heart. I wondered what it was meant to represent—his dark strength in a fiery world, or the emptiness inside that he had waited a lifetime to fill.

“ . . . handsome,” I finally finished.

Kinglike, I wanted to say.

“It appears there’s a theme,” my mother said, showing off the army of tiny beaded phoenixes rising up her sleeves. I glanced at Eleanor, squinting at the strange symbols on her skirts in search of the flaming birds. She grinned and raised her arms, then began to spin. As she turned, the symbols blurred to form an illusion—a small bird, hunched low and curled inward, slowly spreading its wings as it lifted its head and took flight.

I bit my lip. Though it was beautiful, it was also very Corbois. “I know he loves to tease Taran, but I think Zalaric might have gone too far.”