Page 278 of Burn of the Everflame

My shoulders shook with laughter. “It’s too late. You already are.”

He let out a loud whine.

“You’re still a Bellator, though,” I added. “Still a Corbois, too. You can’t get rid of me that easily. We’re family to the end.”

Taran glanced at Diem. “Family,” he repeated. He looked back at me, still pinned beneath him. “You two didn’t get me a mating gift.”

“What would you like?”

“An honest answer.”

“What’s the question?”

He thought for a moment. “Back in Sophos . . . I almost lost you, didn’t I? Both of you.”

I hesitated. “We were heavily outnumbered. It was a gift from the Blessed Mother that we got out alive.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

My mouth closed. I was still wrestling with what happened that day—and, perhaps, what almost happened. Even if I knew for sure, it wasn’t my answer to give.

“You know, when you told me to leave that night, I wasn’t gonna do it,” Taran said. “Then you had to be the asshole who said ‘go get your mate.’” He sighed. “Fuck, Lu. I had to go. I couldn’t take knowing I found the person I want to spend forever with and I lost the chance to do it because I died waiting for a stupid perfect moment.”

“I’m glad that didn’t happen,” I said.

“Me too. What an idiot that would have made me, huh?” He thwacked me hard on the chest and winked. “Go get your mate, brother.” He jumped off me, striding toward Zalaric and yelling, “Zal, sober up. We need to talk about family holidays. I am not doing Solstice dinner at House Hanoverre.”

I badly wanted to enjoy the irony of Taran wrangling a drunken Zalaric away from the party, but his last words to me stuck in my head, setting my blood aflame. A question hung on my lips, the closest to escaping I’d ever allowed it.

I climbed to my feet and walked toward Diem. “My Queen,” I said as I approached.

She hummed absently, still staring south. “If Vance’s army kept marching past Umbros, how long would it take them to get here?”

“Is that where the Centenaries think he’s gone?” She nodded, and I frowned. “Arboros might let them pass through uncontested, but Faunos won’t. Neither will Fortos. Without Ophiucae to help them, it could take them weeks, if they make it here at all.”

“And with Ophiucae’s help?”

I paused as the full weight of her meaning sank in. I waited for her gaze to meet mine, and when it didn’t, my voice turned quiet. “Your army is strong. We’re trained and well-armed. We beat him twice in Lumnos already⁠—”

“The first time, he fled when he realized I was immune to his magic. The second, I killed the Sophos Descended he sent. Yes, my army is strong, but Ophiucae can’t be defeated by strength alone. If I hadn’t been here, Lumnos would have fallen.”

“Then it is a good thing you are still here.”

“Am I?” she whispered.

She massaged her wrist, rubbing her thumb in repetitive strokes as if there was something she was trying to wipe away. The movements turned more forceful, fingers curling to scratch angry red lines across her arms.

My eyes narrowed in on the movement. She’d been doing that often lately. I’d seen a similar tic in my father after he lost his magic to the broken bargain at the Challenging.

Shadows sprang from my palms. They spiraled around her waist, her arms, her neck, grazing every inch of bare skin her gown revealed. Her eyelids fluttered at their touch, but there was no familiar flash of silvery light, nor any pulse of her godhood soaking my magic in.

I’d been around Diem before when she was recovering from flameroot. Though her magic took days to return in full, I’d always been able to sense her aura, weak but growing.

Today, I felt nothing.

As if she was truly the mortal she’d once believed herself to be.

“You didn’t answer me,” she said. “How long until they’re here?”