“I am ready. I’ve been ready. I’ve wanted to tell you this since the day I met you.”
I frowned. “Then why haven’t you?”
“Because, while I was ready… you were not.”
I started to argue, but the pain—and relief—on his face kept me quiet. I could sense that guarding this truth, whatever it was, had worn rough on his soul, and he was ready to let it go. I had sworn to trust him, and now it was time to keep my word.
I nodded and wove my fingers through his with a light squeeze to show my support. For a moment, he stared at our joined hands in silence.
“My father’s wife, Avana,” he began, “is not my mother. Not by blood nor any other measure. After their marriage, Blessed Mother Lumnos sent my father a vision that his firstborn son would be the most powerful of the Lumnos Descended and the unquestioned heir to the Crown. 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.”
My eyes went wide with sudden understanding. Luther—the beloved, feared, universally respected Prince Luther, the late King’s favored and the hero of the realm—was a forbidden half-mortal, just like me.
No wonder he had been so guarded. And no wonder he had been willing to take such risks to help my mother. This could destroy not only him, but his entire family. If this was the secret my mother was holding over his head, Luther would have been willing to do anything to keep it quiet—even betray his King.
“My father took both women to spend a year at a house in the countryside so that when Florille gave birth, he could pass me off as Avana’s full-blooded Descended child in order to avoid my execution under the progeny laws.” He paused, his features hardening. “It’s not uncommon in the large Houses for parents to be cold to their children, but Avana openly despised me. She wanted nothing to do with me, and for years, I did not know why.”
His eyes turned stormy. “After my birth, my father sent Florille to an institution for the mentally unstable in Sophos to discredit her in case she told anyone about the pregnancy. But she never stopped thinking of me. She never stopped trying to escape and get to me…”
Roughness colored his voice and gripped my heart as it ached for him and the boy he had been. I lifted one of his hands to my lips and pressed a kiss to his knuckles as his fingers tightened around mine.
“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.” He grimaced, the agonizing effort of reliving these moments evident on his face. “She told me the truth about everything. So much about my life finally made sense—why Avana hated me, why my father had been so insistent that I prepare to be King, even though my magic hadn’t yet come in. Florille wanted to take me out of Lumnos and away from him, but she had no money, and she was too weak and wounded from her escape. For months, I kept her hidden in unused rooms in the palace so she could heal while I saved up gold for a new life.”
His expression darkened. “But I was young and inexperienced with keeping secrets. I had not yet learned to hide my emotions. My father noticed that I suddenly loathed him and Avana. He suspected I’d learned the truth, so one day, he followed me, and he found Florille.
“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. My hand flew to his chest, and he nodded, covering it with his own.
“His magic ripped my body apart. He thought I’d been killed instantly, but my mother realized I was alive. She threw herself over my body to protect me. He hit her with another bolt of his magic and left us both there to die.”
“Oh, Luther,” I whispered. I snaked my other arm around his waist and pulled him close, laying my head against his chest. His heart was pounding, a tremble in his hands as he clutched me tight.
“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.”
I took a sharp breath and pulled back to look at him. “She showed you… me?”
He stared into my eyes like he was looking beyond them and into the past, seeing the vision all over again. “She never showed me a face, only the eyes. I knew the Kindred had grey eyes, so I believed Lumnos herself was planning to return to Emarion to reclaim her Crown. But when I saw you with Lily that day in the palace, I couldn’t help but wonder…”
“That’s why you helped me, isn’t it? That’s why you protected me all those times at the palace and covered for me when you knew I was lying.”
He nodded. “I could feel your power, I could sense how strong it was. But you swore you were a mortal, and Maura said she saw your brown eyes as a child. And you said your father was from Fortos, not Lumnos. None of it made sense, but I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I felt in my soul that I was meant to help you.
“When we shared that vision the night of the rebel attack, I saw a crown over your head, but it wasn’t the Crown of Lumnos. It was something else, something I’ve never seen before or since. I thought perhaps it was the Blessed Mother’s way of telling me you were one of her disciples, like me. Then the King died, and Lily told me the magic had chosen you…” His eyes lingered on my glowing Crown. “I finally understood. You are the Queen I was always meant to serve.”
“But you came to the lodge that night to kill me,” I protested.
“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.”
My cheeks warmed. “Why didn’t you say something? If I had known—”
“Would you have believed me? You hated the Descended, you had no faith in the Kindred, you thought I murdered your mother. To you, I was the enemy.”
He was right, I realized. I wouldn’t have believed him. I would have accused him of concocting a ridiculous story to win over a new Queen, and it would have pushed me even further away.
He nodded, seeming to read my thoughts. “I decided to prove myself through my actions instead. I wanted to show you that I would serve you, whatever you demanded of me. Even though I failed you at times, I hope you see now there is nothing I would not do for you.”
“I do.” I cupped his cheek, and he leaned into my touch. “And you never failed me, Luther. Far from it.”
I knew nothing would ever erase his guilt over my father’s death. I recognized it, because it was the same burden I carried, too. I suspected that even finding and killing the murderer would never truly free either of us from our self-appointed blame.