Page 46 of Burn of the Everflame

Four Crowns on my head.

The blood of a Kindred in my veins—not a distant ancestor, but the man who had given me life.

Magic of unimaginable strength.

A mate. A mate.

And a calling. A war to fight, and the weight of a world on my shoulders.

Once upon a time, I’d dreamed of an adventurous life. A chance to travel the world and help people in some deeper way than mending maladies and scratches. I’d craved a certainty of who I was, wondering if the identity of my birth father was the missing piece I needed to discover what I was meant to do.

Be careful what you wish for.

I sighed and looked at Perthe’s grave at my side. After the Kindred’s revelations, I’d stormed off in a daze and come here, the only place on this island I’d ever felt any peace.

“May I join you?”

I jumped at the unexpected voice. I glanced back to see Lumnos standing nearby. “May I?” she asked again with a tentative smile.

I shrugged and looked away. So many times in my life, she’d been silent when I’d needed her help. Now she wouldn’t leave me be.

She knelt first at Perthe’s grave and set a kiss on the stone I’d placed to mark it, then brushed her fingers over the flowers I’d tucked beneath its edge. “I’ve seen him, you know. On the other side.” She looked at me. “He’s happy. He knows how much your brother and Luther meant to you. He feels honored that he⁠—”

“Stop,” I cut her off with a glare. “Don’t try to make his death something good. His blood is on my hands. And the Crowns.” I looked back at the sea. “And yours.”

Undaunted, she sat on the grass beside me, offering silent companionship as we both gazed at the glittering horizon. “You don’t like me,” she noted.

I shrugged again. “Why should I?”

“I am your aunt. I know how much you value family.”

“You don’t know me.”

“I know you very well, Diem. I have been watching over you since the day you drew your first breath.” She smiled sadly. “And I will do so until your last.”

My temper frayed. “Then where were you when I needed you? If you watched me, then you watched me suffer. You watched my life fall apart. You watched me beg for your help at the Challenging. You watched my father—” The words choked as tears sprang to my eyes. “I hope I entertained you, because your watching has never done me an ounce of fucking good.”

She looked stricken. “There’s so much I wish I could have done. The barrier between life and the beyond is a delicate thing. If we interfere too much, all of existence could fall apart.”

When I didn’t give her the absolution she seemed to want, she reached out and laid a palm on my arm. Again I felt a flush of warm, comforting energy that felt so much like Luther, drowning out my instinct to resist.

My mating mark lit up, an acute reminder of how much I loved him—and how much I missed him. I grimaced at the bittersweet sensation and tried to rub it away.

“I could not help you in all the ways I wished, so I gave you someone who could.” She inclined her head to my mark. “I protected his heart as a boy so that someday, as a man, he might give it to you.”

My blood went cold. “Are you saying you forced Luther to love me?”

“Love can never be forced.”

“He’s devoted to you. He’d do anything you asked. If you told him—if you even suggested⁠—”

“I told him only to serve the grey-eyed Queen. Nothing of his heart. Believe me, Diem, that choice was his alone. I saw the futures that did not come to pass. There were many in which he denied me, even some where he renounced his faith. But there was not a single one in which he did not love you.”

“Then how can you say it was a choice?”

“It’s true that how we feel is rarely chosen. But how we act on it, whether we embrace it or ignore it and bury it deep—that’s the choice. Everything that has passed between you and Luther, everything that might still come to pass . . . that can only be decided by the two of you.”

My brows dug deeper, my nerves unsoothed. “Was it you who cured his godstone wound? The bargain I offered . . . have you to come to collect?”