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“You won’t have to do anything. I’ll handle it myself. I can make the magic look like it came from you.” Then I understood. Luther never wanted to fight me. He wanted to lose to me. He sank to his knees. His head drooped, his hands wrapping around the backs of my thighs. “Let me do this for you,” he begged. “I could hope for no greater death than this.” Splinter by splinter, my broken heart began to rebuild.
me—” “I don’t put my faith in gods and goddesses.” I smiled sadly. “But I do put it in you. You were born to be King.” “Not without you. You are my Queen. The realm needs you. The mortals need you. Teller, Lily, Eleanor—they all need you.” His arms locked around me like he was bracing to stop fate from snatching me out of his grasp. “I need you, Diem.”
“It’s rude to kiss a man like that and then die, Your Majesty,” Luther panted, his breath hot against my swollen lips. I hummed. “I guess that means I’ll have to live.”
“Remember who you are, Diem Bellator.” He clasped the medallion at my neck. “But remember you are a phoenix, too. We do not fear the flames, for the hotter we burn, the higher we fly.”
“Burn, my Queen. Glow so bright, the darkness trembles.”
“I can do this,” I said quietly. “I am Diem Bellator. Daughter of my mother Auralie. Chosen of my father Andrei. Protector of my brother Teller. Healer, warrior, and Queen.” My chin rose, my voice growing louder. “I can do this.”
An emotional fighter is a sloppy fighter, my father whispered in my ear. Let him focus on seeing you beg at his feet rather than die at his hand.
But they were still my people. The blood of the Kindred ran in my veins as surely as my mortal blood. If I wanted to be truly worthy of my Crown, I had to stop denying that truth. I was mortal. And I was Descended. And I would fight with everything I had to protect them both.
Now, Daughter of the Forgotten, the voice whispered. Now, you are ready.
that chance away. I was a Queen, with a realm in peril and a populace who needed me, and I would have to do far more than walk. Whoever it was that watched over me—the voice, the godhood, maybe even Lumnos herself—had forced me to learn a painful but necessary lesson.
The magic doesn’t just answer to you, it’s part of you. Be proud of who you are, and embrace it.
“The true measure of strength is not in the lives we take, but in the lives we save. Rhon Ghislaine, I spare your life today. Take your second chance and use it wisely—do not make me regret my mercy.”
Luther gazed at me like I was the embodiment of hope fulfilled. Like I was the answer to every question he had ever asked, the harmony to every song he’d ever sung. He looked at me like I was the sun and the moon and the stars, all the light in the world, shining a path for him out of the lonely dark.
He cocked his head. “The Challenging isn’t over until one of us dies.” Rhon pushed off his heel and launched into the air, one arm coming around his back clutching a slim, glittering black knife and thrusting straight for the center of my chest.
I had tried to show mercy. I had offered them peace, something beautiful and human, a chance at a better world, and they had turned up their noses. Fine. If I could not persuade them with peace, then I would do it with fear.
“And what of House Corbois?” I murmured softly. His hand slid around the back of my neck and pulled me in for a deep, reverent kiss. “House Corbois will kneel, my Queen,” he breathed when we parted.
“Citizens of Lumnos,” I announced, “I am no longer Unchallenged. My reign begins today.” In the distance, the cry of an approaching gryvern, newly freed of her order to stay away, pierced through the air. My smile finally cracked at the sound of Sorae’s triumphant roar. “Kneel before your Queen,” I commanded. And, one by one, they did.
However, he was having an affair with a woman named Florille, and she, not Avana, became pregnant first. But Florille...” His gaze lifted to mine. “Florille was a mortal.”
OMG HE IS HALF BREED TOO
“Years later, Florille somehow made it back to Lumnos. She waited outside the Descended school with a bouquet of flowers. Even though she hadn’t seen me since I was an infant, she looked at me and somehow knew instantly I was her son, and I knew she was my mother. Meeting her was like coming home for the very first time.”
“They began to argue. She threatened to tell everyone the truth if he didn’t let her take me away. So...” He swallowed thickly, face twisting as if the words were an agony to speak aloud. “So he killed her. Or he tried to—until I stepped in front of his attack.” “Your scar,” I breathed.
“That’s when the Blessed Mother appeared. She healed me and told me it was not yet my time. She said her people needed help, and I could bring it to them, if I was brave enough. Then she showed me a vision of myself as a man, kneeling to a powerful grey-eyed Queen.”
“No—I came to swear fealty to you. I had my sword out to offer it in your service. Then I saw you standing there half-naked and spitting fire, the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, and I became...” He smiled guiltily. “...distracted.”
“Your mother has been manipulating us all with her secrets for too long. She has much to answer for, and I’m done protecting her.” He snarled and turned to the front of the boat, staring forward with narrowed eyes. “The moment you’re coronated, we’re going to get her.”
“Go get coronated, my Queen,” he murmured against my lips. “We’ve got a realm to save.”
“It doesn’t bother you to kill them even though you can speak to them?” “Humans can speak, it doesn’t stop them from killing each other.” She shrugged. “If I didn’t have magic to control them, the beasts in my realm would eat me, too. Guilt and compassion have no place in the food chain. Only survival.”
But if it only grew here, how had my mother obtained so much of it? And why had that knowledge upset Luther so deeply?
I knew her voice instantly—the Queen of Umbros.
“Good luck, Daughter of the Forgotten.” It was barely more than a whisper. When I spun back to see the Montios King staring into the center of the Temple, my presence seemingly forgotten, I started to wonder if I’d imagined it.
“Blue,” they whispered. “The stones should be blue.” A series of popping sounds rattled around us as each of the obelisks and their fires died out, leaving the Temple cast in murky darkness.
“Her,” I yelled, pointing in her direction. “She did this! She knows something, she came to Lumnos and she—”
my mother sprinted toward me with arms extended. “Diem!” she screamed. “Diem, run!” And with a deafening boom and a blast of fire and rubble, everything exploded. And my world went black.
“Vance,” she gasped, grabbing his arm. “You made it.” Her old colleague nodded solemnly. “Did you get all our plans completed here?” “Every last one. It should only be seconds now.”
“Diem,” she breathed. She bolted to her feet, no longer caring if she was in the path of the bomb’s— Oh gods. The bomb. “Diem!” she shouted. “Stop,” Vance hissed. “You’ll ruin the mission!”
Omg her mom is the leader of the guardians- the one away on the secret mission. Holy shit
