Page 40 of Burn of the Everflame

“No point hiding it now,” Ignios said. “It was our parents. Our mother came to Emarion, too.”

I frowned. I’d heard countless tales of the Kindred, but never any mention of their mother. Then again, I’d heard no mention of Omnos, either.

“What about your father?” I asked.

Their faces twisted in matching torture, like the answer was a battle to give. Even Sophos seemed to be struggling to speak. “Heartstone magic requires more than skill. There must always be a balance. Coming here gave us a chance to live. In exchange . . .” He looked down, voice turning quiet. “The heartstone took our father’s life as payment.”

“A future taken, and a future given,” Lumnos said, holding my gaze with a strange intensity, “and our mother’s future, burdened by guilt for what she’d done. It was love that bound them all.”

“When our brother threatened that future, we asked our mother for help,” Sophos said. “She crafted a sword called Sorrow’s Edge and infused it with a spell to kill him.”

I froze with a horrified stare. A mother plotting to murder her son at the request of his siblings. I’d wondered once if the Descended’s long lifespans had corrupted them so badly, they no longer understood the value of life. Now I wondered if their Kindred ancestors were the real brutes to blame.

“You think us heartless,” Fortos guessed, and I couldn’t deny it. “You’re wrong. It was an act of mercy.”

“It was an act of love,” Lumnos said, still looking oddly insistent. “You have to remember that, Diem. Our mother cared for him as much as any of us. She loved him too much to let him become a thing of evil.”

“Or so we believed,” Faunos muttered.

Several shot him bitter looks, though others pursed their lips in tacit agreement.

“Before you judge us, hear the rest,” Sophos insisted. “Our mother requested we build a tomb on the island. A way to honor his memory, and a place to keep his body safe so the mortals couldn’t defile it. Lumnos was the only one of us he had any fondness for, so she was tasked with luring him to the island while our mother completed the spell. Mother asked the rest of us to stay away.”

“That,” Meros said drearily, “was our third mistake.”

“At the last moment, our mother changed her mind,” Sophos went on. “She couldn’t bear to kill him, so she cursed him instead. She placed him in chains that could only be unlocked by the blood of an heir.”

“An heir conceived in love and born of a mortal,” Lumnos corrected. “She thought that if he could fall in love with a mortal, as the nine of us had, his heart would be redeemed.”

Faunos scowled. “She spared his life, and he killed her for it. Took the blade from her hands and drove it right through her chest.”

Lumnos bristled, her eyes dropping low. Umbros studied her with a curious frown.

“Foolish woman,” Fortos grunted. “Their hearts are too soft. That was the day I decided only a man would bear my Crown.”

“And yet a Fortos Queen stands before us,” Meros said pointedly.

“And her soft heart might save them all, in the end,” Umbros said.

“Wait,” I cut in. “If your mother changed the spell, how did Omnos die? And how did Ophiucae take his place in the cell?”

Their stares fixed on me with equal bemusement and dismay.

“Diem,” Lumnos said, “Omnos is the name your people gave to our brother. His real name, the name given to him by our parents, is Ophiucae.”

I blinked. “My birth father is a Kindred?”

“You are the heir that freed him. And you may be the only one who can stop him.”

12

LUTHER

Auralie kept hold of my arm as we followed Alixe, Eleanor, and Cordellia in a sprint through the palace halls. Frantic Corbois and members of the Crowns’ delegations scurried around us in a frenzy.

When we spilled through the front entrance, the same invisible force I’d felt earlier crashed against me. I swore at myself for not recognizing it sooner as Ophiucae’s aura. My senses had been distracted by so many strong Descended in one place, but out in the open air, it was clear—Diem’s sire was close.

And getting closer.