Page 143 of Glow of the Everflame

I shook my head. “I’m not so sure. Maybe there are some things love can’t survive.”

“It can. If the love is true, there’s nothing it won’t endure.”

“How do you know?”

When he didn’t answer, I lifted my eyes to his—a critical mistake. The depth of the emotion I saw there crested over me and pulled me out with the tide.

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, butgodsdid I want to close my eyes and sink forever.

My throat squeezed tight with emotion—for all the things I should want, but didn’t, and all the things I did want, but couldn’t have.

“I don’t know what to do,” I whispered, my walls cracking open and exposing the raw nerve of my deepest, most vulnerable fears. “About the mortals and the Guardians. About my magic, the Twenty Houses, the Challenging. About Henri, and...”

About you.

“Diem,” he murmured.

My shoulders drooped. “I pretend like I know what I’m doing, but it’s all a fraud. I’m letting everyone down—”

“You’re not.”

“I am. So many lives are at risk, and I can’t stop making mistakes. How am I supposed to take down the Crowns and stop the Descended when I can’t—”

I froze.

Shit.Oh,shit.

I shrank back, terrified at how much I’d just revealed. It had felt so easy, so natural to show him the parts of myself I never let anyone else see. But he was still a Descended Prince—and I’d just flashed the knife I’d been hiding behind his back.

“I misspoke. I’m not... I wouldn’t—”

“Diem,” he said again, firmer this time, his dark brows furrowing.

“I... I didn’t mean—”

“I know what you meant.”

Fuck.

I started to pull away, but something in his eyes—something bright and tenderly guarded—held me still.

“You’ve asked me why I serve you,” he said. “This, my Queen. This is why.”

I shook my head, too scared to even breathe. “I don’t understand.”

“More than any of the other Kindred, Blessed Mother Lumnos loved the mortals. She never wanted them forced into submission—she commanded her Descended to guard them from harm, not be the cause of it.” He took my face in his hands, cradling it in his palms. “Even before you had the Crown, I felt her urging me toward you. The more I see of you, the more I understand why. She wants change, and she believes you can achieve it.” His thumb brushed across my cheek. “And so do I.”

I could do little more than gape in silence. Though I knew Luther harbored sympathies for the mortals... was it possible our goals were truly aligned?

“I do want that,” I finally stammered, “I want that more than anything, but what can I do? I can barely get through a day without getting myself killed.”

“You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for. You are the bravest person I’ve ever met, and you are resilient, even when you fail. You are unswerving in defense of those you love and the things you believe in. You never stop fighting—”

“Those things don’t make me wise, Luther, they make me reckless.”

“They make you the Queen that we need. I know you have no fondness for the Descended, and yet you see beyond the blood that runs in a person’s veins. I have seen that in the kindness you’ve shown Perthe, my family... even Aemonn, for Kindred’s sake. And I saw it tonight, in the mercy you asked me to show the Guardians. Any other Descended Crown would have slaughtered them, and any mortal Crown would have let them slaughterus. But you...” He looked at me like a flower raising its head to the life-giving sun. “You chose the harder path. If we ever wish to see peace in this land, we need a leader like that—a leader like you.”

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