Page 101 of Glow of the Everflame

I steeled my hammering heart and fought to keep from turning to the source. A servant refilled my wine, and I took it into my hands, managing to restrain myself to a sip.

“High praise, coming from you, Prince,” Ethaline said, her lashes fluttering prettily. I rolled my eyes.

“It wasn’t praise,” Luther said flatly. “It was fact. Only someone with a death wish would think of Challenging her.”

My attention started to drift toward him. Aemonn pulled it back with an exasperated groan.

“This conversation is a bore. For once, I am in agreement with cousin Luther. Diem hardly needs to prove herself to us.” Aemonn raised his glass and tilted it to me. “House Corbois supports you, Your Majesty.”

I answered his flirtation with a thankful smile. Selfish as his motives may be, he had decided to stand by me tonight, and I was grateful for it.

“Your eye color is quite unique,” Tyris cut back in. “They almost seem...”

“Grey,” I answered. “They’re colorless.”

“And the mortals you grew up with never thought that was strange?”

“Oh, they did. The children used to tease me for it. They said grey eyes meant I had no soul and ate newborn babes to stay young.”

A cousin far down the table leaned forward and called out, “Were they right?”

I smirked back at him. “Cross me, and you’ll find out.”

A loud ripple of laughter followed. I dared a glance at Eleanor, who was beaming at me proudly. Our strategy was working. My face lit up with renewed courage.

“So where do those grey eyes of yours come from?” Tyris asked.

“From Blessed Mother Lumnos,” Luther answered.

Everyone at the table turned to him. I had no choice but to do the same, but now it was Luther who refused to look at me. The blade he’d left in my heart twisted even further.

He stared into his wine glass as he rolled it in his fingers. “Lumnos had grey eyes. She gifted her offspring with blue eyes at the Forging, but hers always remained grey.”

“How do you know that?” I asked softly—so soft that I wasn’t sure he’d heard me, until his own slate blue gaze finally lifted to mine.

There was an answer written in his features, but it wasn’t one I understood. It was an answer loaded with secrets and hard truths and pain he had yet to share. A door he had locked up tight, welded closed, and covered in chains.

A door he was daring me to open.

“Luther is our resident expert on all things Mother Lumnos,” Aemonn jeered. “He’s always been such a devout little disciple. I heard he even has a full-body statue of her in his bedroom. Howscandalous.”

“It’s only a bust, not a statue.” The words came out of my mouth before I realized what I had done—what my words had implied.

The room went quiet.

“You were in his bedroom?” Iléana demanded, her glare so sharp it could draw blood.

I spent the night in his bedroom, I wanted to say, but my liquid boldness had thankfully not yet hit that level of shit-starting.

“Curious, indeed,” Aemonn murmured. I glanced to see him watching me, his expression markedly cooler than it had been earlier.

Luther’s voice turned venomous as he shifted his focus to Aemonn. “Mind what you say about the Blessed Mother, cousin. Heresy is a crime punishable by death.”

Aemonn smiled. “You are certainly the expert on that,Keeper of the Laws. So many lives have met their sad end at your hand for such infractions.”

I couldn’t stop it—the doubt that crept in. The suspicion. The judgment.

I knew Luther hadn’t killed the half-mortal children under the progeny laws, as Aemonn had once suggested. But there were other unjust laws, more flimsy excuses to execute mortals at the King’s whim. And those victims hadn’t escaped. I had seen their bloody bodies. I had attended their funerals.

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