My hand flew to his chest with a mind of its own, resting over the center where the flesh had been the most damaged.
Rage simmered in my blood. An injury this brutal was no accident. This wound was meant to kill. The thought of someone doing this to him at all had my heart hammering in my ears, but to know that it happened when he was so young, so defenseless…
“Who did this to you?” I breathed, feeling as if flames might spew from my fangs like a gryvern.
“It doesn’t matter. They can’t hurt me anymore, and I won’t let them hurt anyone else.”
“Tell me,” I snarled. “Why are you protecting them?”
“It’s not them I’m protecting.”
I glared up at him, but his face was resolute, his jaw a block of steel. I’d come to know this look by now. “I told you, I’m done with people keeping secrets for my benefit.”
“And I told you, I’ll do what I must to protect you, even if you hate me for it.”
An angry sound built low in my throat. I moved to pull away, and his hand braced over mine, holding it firm against his chest.
“I will tell you someday,” he vowed. “When I can. When it’s safe.”
“When will that be?”
He thought for a moment, then his expression turned roguish. “Get through the Period of Challenging. Make it to the Rite of Coronation. Then I’ll tell you.”
“If you’re so certain I’ll survive the Challenging, why not tell me now?”
“As I said, I have many tools to ensure your coronation.” He smiled. “Motivating you to stay alive is one of them.”
His smugness was annoyingly charming. “I don’t need to be bribed to stay alive, Luther. My survival instincts are pretty strong.”
“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.”
I couldn’t suppress my laugh. He had a point—even now I felt no shame, only pride, at each of those decisions.
Reluctantly, I let him keep his secret, shifting my attention back to the scar that so viciously slashed his body in two. “How did you even survive this?”
“Blessed Mother Lumnos,” he said reverently. “I should have died that day, but she protected me.”
I thought of the shrine in his room, the candles and flowers so lovingly laid at the marble bust.
“Is this why you serve the Crown? Why you serve me? Because you think it’s repayment to her for saving your life?”
Our eyes met, a tempest brewing in the shimmering sea of his gaze.
“That is a complex question.”
“It’s a simple yes or no.”
His fingers wove within mine, clutching my hand where it lay on his chest. “Nothing about this is simple.”
My focus dropped to his chest, just above his heart. The night of the armory attack, I’d had a vision of the two of us, standing together on a killing field, bathed in silvery fire amid a ring of death and destruction. In it, I had raised my hand to the left side of my chest, and he had done the same. When the vision ended, Luther—the real Luther—had been standing in front of me making the same gesture.
Looking at him now, a bare patch of bronzed skin sat in the same place, curiously unmarred. It lay directly in the wound’s path, but the lines of the scar routed around it as if deflected by some other force.
“That night,” I began, “just before the roof collapsed… the vision—”
“Us, on a battlefield.” He nodded. “I remember.”
I frowned. “What does it mean?”
“A message from Blessed Mother Lumnos, I suspect. Though it’s not always clear what her visions are meant to convey. What seems obvious at first can be—” He eyed me slowly. “—deceiving.”
My head cocked. “Lumnos sent visions to you before this?”
His back went rigid, his expression looking as if he’d revealed more than he had intended.
“Wait a minute, are we doing training shirtless?” Taran’s voice echoed across the dungeon. He bounded down the dungeon steps and ripped his tunic over his head to reveal a tanned chest rippling with more muscles than I knew a person could have. “Bless the Kindred for that.”
Alixe paused on the stairwell as she took in me and Luther standing half-naked and chest-to-chest, my hand clasped in his. She quietly assessed us. “I can take the big dumb oaf and come back later.”
I recoiled from Luther, too quickly and too clumsily to be anything other than an admission of guilt. “Not at all,” I blurted. “We were just—I mean, we, uh—come on in.”
I moved to dress, but Taran threw an arm over my shoulders and trapped me at his side. “You heard the Queen, Alixe,” he joked. “Shirts off. Show us what you’ve got.”
I ducked out of his grasp and pulled my tunic back into place. “Gross, Taran. She’s your cousin.”
“Distant cousin. Four generations removed. And House Corbois has never let something as silly as being related get in the way of a good pairing.”
“Extremely gross. You know that can lead to facial deformities and low intellect.” I propped my hands on my hips and squinted at him thoughtfully. “Come to think of it, that explains a lot about you.”
He shot me a savage grin. “Big words for a girl who can’t shield.”
He threw out a fist and a ball of hissing shadow hurtled toward my face. I raised an arm in reflex, but the orb slowed as it approached me and grew in size until it encased my head. The darkness blocked out the world, turning my vision into an endless, gloomy void.
I staggered backward, and the orb stayed with me, keeping me blinded and lost. A pair of hands tickled my sides, and I yelped in surprise. I punched wildly, but my fists caught only fabric as Taran ducked out of range.
“I’m your Queen, you know,” I shouted. “I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to attack me.”
“Lesson number one,” Taran’s mocking voice rang out. “No rank during training. Anyone’s fair game—even you, Queenie.”
The dungeon came back into view as the shadowy sphere faded away. “Fine. But the second I’ve mastered my magic, I’ll remember this. And retribution’s going to hurt.”
“Good,” Luther answered. He was fully dressed, arms crossed over his chest, the imposing facade of the brutal Prince glazing his features. The sight of it in the presence of his friends took me by surprise. “Use that emotion. When you’ve used your power in the past, it was always when you were pushed to an emotional limit.”
“That’s normal for our kind,” Alixe added. “The godhood feeds off our emotions. It usually manifests for the first time when we’re extremely angry or threatened.”
I frowned as I thought of the curious voice that seemed to thrive off my temper. “So this godhood—it’s a piece of the goddess Lumnos?”