Page 283 of Burn of the Everflame

I squeezed mine shut.

“I do.”

His bliss at my answer bloomed through me, and I’d never felt anything better—or worse. He took my hand and pulled me toward the house. “Come, see the inside. We can choose the details together.” He paused at the door and unfastened Sorrow’s Edge from my hip. “That can wait outside,” he muttered, tossing the sword to the ground.

“Luther, wait⁠—”

He swept me into his arms, beaming down at me with that incandescent smile. “The workers told me to carry you over the threshold. They said it’s a mortal tradition.”

My hand shot out to grab the doorframe. “Wait.”

“You don’t want me to carry you? Or . . .” His smile faltered. “You don’t want to go in?”

Neither.

Both.

He set me back on my feet. I hurriedly backed out of his reach, staring out into the trees to avoid seeing the home, or him, or the pain I knew this would cause him.

“Let’s go back to the palace,” I begged.

I felt the burn of his gaze deepen. The silence grew awkward, then pointed, though my head was unbearably loud with a fractured conscience, one voice demanding I tell him everything while the other warned of every dire consequence that might come to pass if I did.

When he spoke again, his tone was firmer. “Diem, this secret you’re trying so hard to keep . . . I already know what it is.”

The mating mark blazed hot on my chest beneath his coat. “What?”

“And I know why you didn’t tell me,” he continued. “You were worried about what I’d do. You were worried I’d try to finish it myself.”

Gods, he knew.

A voice of hope sang a bright note, louder than fate’s dirge. Hard as I’d fought to conceal that Luther was my mate, I’d desperately wanted him to know. If I was free of that burden, the others wouldn’t be so hard to bear.

He took my face in his hands and kissed me with all the ferocity of his conviction, a man who’d found his forever and wasn’t letting go. Slowly, I dropped my defenses and leaned my body into his, letting him feel the heat of my mark press against him. It built in intensity, spreading across both sides of my chest, growing hotter and brighter the longer we touched. It felt so right, I struggled to remember why I’d ever fought it at all.

“Tell me you love me,” he demanded.

“You know how I feel.” How could he not, with the proof of it scorching between us?

“Tell me.”

“I love you,” I breathed. “I’m yours.”

“This house, this life with me . . . you want it?”

“It scares me, what I’d give to keep it,” I admitted. More truths slipping free.

“Then you will. I don’t give a damn what that sword wants.”

I went still.

“What did you say?”

“That’s why you pushed me away, and why you gave up your power to the council. You think whatever magic is in that sword will take your life when you kill Ophiucae. You don’t have to hide it anymore.”

I blinked a few times as everything I thought I knew scattered into a new, unfamiliar order.

“In Sophos, when your blood touched the sword, it opened some kind of pathway,” he said. “Blessed Lumnos was there, and I could sense she wanted something from me, but I couldn’t understand what it was. Then I remembered what she said before—‘Give our gift to my faithful heir.’ I thought she wanted me to take the sword and use it on Ophiucae to spare you the consequences of the spell.” He frowned. “If it didn’t work, there must be something I missed.”