Page 47 of Burn of the Everflame

She looked wounded by my question. “No, Diem. We have no power to cure that poison.”

“But the bust of you in his room—the tears of blood . . .”

“I thought Luther’s end had come. My sorrow bled through to this world. For him, and for you. You were the one who saved him.” Her grey eyes sparkled, lightning in a stone. “In so many ways.”

I tried, and failed, to tear my gaze from hers as she silently pleaded for . . . what? What did she want from me—forgiveness? Faith?

Luther’s belief in her had been absolute. He looked to her for guidance, not just as a supplicant to a divine, but as a wounded soul who wished for a different, better world. He believed Lumnos wanted that, too.

I trusted Luther without question. If he trusted Lumnos so completely, maybe the time had come for me to listen.

“Tell me what happened after your mother cursed Ophiucae,” I said.

“The nine of us recast the Forging spell. We set limits on the magic we passed to our children, and we put boundaries on the realms. We manipulated eye colors so no one could hide the magic they did or didn’t have.” She touched my brow above my eyes. “That’s why you’re different, Diem. Without Ophiucae’s blood, the changes to the spell didn’t bind to his line. The Forging magic can’t contain you.” She smiled. “I’m not sure anything can.”

I frowned. “Weren’t the mortals angry about what you all had done?”

“You must understand, we were panicked. We feared our chance at peace with the mortals was gone forever. So . . . we made them forget. Umbros wiped the memory of our brother from their minds.” She saw my appalled stare and hurried on. “We erased him from our children’s memories, too. A fresh start for everyone. And it worked. The fighting stopped.”

“You manipulated them. That’s not peace, that’s a lie.”

“We were desperate, Diem. Our children’s lives were at risk.”

“And what of your grandchildren? And their grandchildren? You left a powerful threat among them, but they couldn’t protect themselves because they didn’t even know it was there. You didn’t fix the problem. You just buried it for us to find.”

I jerked back and climbed to my feet, stalking toward the shore.

“You’re right,” Lumnos called out. “We paid a heavy price for it, in the end. I will only say that when those you love are in danger, you’ll do anything to protect them—something I think you understand.”

I glowered at the water. The lifetime I’d spent hating the idea of the Kindred couldn’t hold a candle to the fury I felt at meeting the real thing.

Most enraging of all was that I did understand. I’d helped the Guardians, even knowing their violent ways, to save the mortals, and I’d sunk my blade into mortal flesh when Luther’s life was at risk. The moral boundaries I’d set for myself in peacetime had been difficult to hold on to since the war had begun.

“You said you paid a heavy price. What was it?” I asked.

“When we bound our magic to the Emarion soil, it chained a part of us to this world. Our bodies died with our mortal mates, but when they passed into the afterlife, we could not join them. And now . . . we never will.”

“Never?”

“As a spell is cast, so must it be broken. To unweave our magic from the soil, all ten Crowns must act as one. After what we did to Ophiucae, he will never set us free. He was cursed for his pride, and we were cursed for ours.”

I reached for my mark, holding on to it like a beacon. Even with our bond only half complete, my connection to Luther felt woven into my very soul. These weeks apart had been almost impossible to bear. Imagining an eternity without him . . .

A foreboding chill prickled at my skin.

“We have watched every evil committed in our names, and we have grieved them all,” Lumnos said. “We wish only to end what never should have begun.”

“And you think I can do that?”

“If you cannot, I fear this world is doomed for good.”

I looked down at where the tide’s edge danced inches from the toe of my boot. One step forward, and the spell the Crowns had cast on the heartstone would strike me dead.

I hadn’t allowed myself to come this close to the edge before. I’d been too scared that a moment of weakness would push me too far to come back from.

But I wasn’t weak.

I’d been to hell and back, taken blow after blow, and I’d learned, I’d adapted, I’d come back swinging. I was Diem Bellator, and I was born to fight.