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For every spark that has lost its light and needs a little help remembering how to glow.
He smelled like the forest—my favorite place in the world, the only place I felt truly alive. He smelled like home.
“I should put all four of your heads on a pike for treason. I just assaulted the Queen, and you cowards stood there and watched me do it. The next time someone lays a hand on her and you don’t kill them where they stand, I’ll carve out your eyeballs and feed them to the fucking hounds. It doesn’t matter if it’s me or the Regent or Blessed Mother Lumnos herself. Do your damn jobs and protect our Queen.”
Right before the most passionate, all-consuming, world-forgetting kiss I’d ever had. A kiss made of fire and lust, hatred and hurt, and perhaps something more. Something that lit a spark in my chest... and between my legs.
“You would be wise, Your Majesty, to keep those thoughts well-guarded. Even a Queen can bleed.”
“It takes a lot of work to make me look this presentable.” “No, it doesn’t.” He crossed the room and batted my hands away, deftly untangling the clip and setting it aside. “You forget the conditions I’ve seen you in. I know how easily your beauty shines through.”
“We may be vipers, but you’re no mouse. You’re a fucking dragon.”
“Not even if you despise me. Not even if I am nothing to you. Because my calling comes from a higher authority than even you can claim, Your Majesty. As she guarded my heart, I will guard over yours. Even if it kills me.”
“All is forgiven. Friends?” “Friends,” he agreed. “Advisor?” “Don’t push your luck, Corbois.”
“It’s just skin. You’ve seen me in much less, remember?” His glittering eyes shot to mine. “Impossible to forget.”
“You threatened to cut my hand off within minutes of meeting me. You attacked the Royal Guards several times. You snuck around the palace alone. You ran into a burning, collapsing building. All while you apparently believed yourself to be a mortal. With respect, my Queen—” He returned my narrowed eyes and leaned his face to mine. “—your survival instincts are shit.”
Even at a distance, we were somehow connected. Every time I looked his way, his pale eyes were locked on me as if I were the only object of interest in the room.
My body was a sparkling chandelier, every nerve ending alight in a symphony of flames that flickered with each unsteady breath. The feeling of being in his arms—the rightness of it, the overwhelming sense of being safe and protected. Accepted. Loved.
I was drowning in this man. From the moment I met him, I had been kicking against the current and holding my breath, struggling to get back to the safe, familiar surface—but every look, every touch, dragged me deeper still. I felt the burning of it in my lungs, as real and visceral as if I were plunging into the Sacred Sea itself. And maybe it made me weak, or a traitor, or a fool, but gods did I want to close my eyes and sink forever.
Luther tipped his forehead until it lay flush with mine, our eyes closing as we bathed in the charged air humming around us. “You are my Queen, and I am your sword. Point me at your enemies, and watch them fall. Lead this world, Diem, and I will follow you—into war, into death, into the tundra of hell itself.” He took my palm and set it against his chest, just above the patch of unscarred skin that lay beneath his jacket. “You are the fate my heart was spared for. As long as it beats, you will never fight alone.”
I don’t just want a piece of you—I want them all.” His thumb raked across my lower lip. “I want every breath, every laugh, every tear. Every taste of your mouth, every inch of your skin. I want to kneel at your feet, soaked in the blood of your enemies, then worship your body until you scream my name.” His hands slid to my hips and tugged me closer. “Yes, Diem, I want to serve you—in every way a man can.”
“I want to burn alive in that fire in your eyes. I want it to melt me down and forge me into the weapon you need me to be. I want to stand by your side for the rest of my life, and I don’t need you to marry me and make me a fucking king to do it.” “Luther,” I rasped, begging—for what, I wasn’t sure. “I pledged you my loyalty, and you have it, no matter your choice. But I cannot keep lying to you or to myself. I want all of you, Diem.” His lips brushed against mine, his words breathing straight into my lungs. “You already have all of me.”
“Everyone says this phoenix represents dying and coming back as something new, but I disagree. I think it’s a symbol of surviving when the world burns down around us. It’s a reminder that no challenge can destroy the parts of us that truly matter. We’re not reborn in the flames. We’re revealed
“Who hurt you?” Luther demanded,
The one thing I desired most was the one thing I could never, ever have again.
“The darkness is closing in,” I whispered, “and I don’t have the strength to find the light.” “Then make your own.”
“Then keep trying. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, pick yourself back up, and try again. And don’t stop until you figure it out. That’s what the Diem Bellator I know would do.”
“What was Father’s most important lesson?” he prodded. “The one he reminded us of every time we sparred?” “Survive,” I said hoarsely. Teller nodded as he recited our father’s teachings. “Survive. At whatever cost, to whatever end. Survive first—” “—mind the consequences later,” I finished.
“My father is going to want it back.” “Then give it to him,” I said sweetly. “Pointy end first.”
“I’m sick of keeping things from you. I want you to know everything. Every secret I have is yours.”
“If I try to help you, are you going to fight me?” His grip tightened as he leaned down to my ear, his gravelly voice dropping low. “Or will you be a good girl for me again and obey?”
“I would have walked into the flaming heart of the sun itself,” he shot back. “If you are suffering, nothing will keep me from coming to your aid. Least of all something as trivial as death.”
“I can advise,” Taran muttered. “I know things.” “You’ll get there,” Lily soothed, giving Taran an encouraging pat on the arm. “I believe in you.”
“Perhaps, for the right person, we endure the pain, because the torture of never having them at all is the more unbearable fate.”
Then his lips were on mine. And nothing else existed. There was no Crown, no Challenging. No arena of spectators exploding in a gossipy uproar.
Light and dark. The two sides of Lumnos’s magic. Both misunderstood, for although we often ran from the shadowy unknown toward the clarity of day, the light could blister and burn just as the dark could shield and soothe. It was in the meeting of the two, the dusk and the dawn, where peace was truly at its height.
If my worthiness was to be judged by my choice of opponent, then let this decision be a reflection of my soul. I would not kill the weak merely because it was easy, nor kill the cruel because it was gratifying. I would kill only the guilty—and only when justice allowed for nothing less.
“Why do you refuse to fight me?” My defiance slipped, and my eyes broke away. “Tell me,” he roared, fingers squeezing around my throat. “Because it wasn’t a lie for me!
Luther never wanted to fight me. He wanted to lose to me.
“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.”
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.
“Child of Lumnos,” the Sophos Crown began, “may your blood now reignite the flames of your realm. With this ritual, your reign begins. May you serve your people well.”
