Long Live the Queen
Not an official throne—just a larger, finer chair that had been selected
from the sad lot of candidates.
Darrow, too, stared toward the open doors, face impassive. Yet his
eyes glowed.
The trumpets rang out.
A four-note summons. Repeated three times.
Pews groaned as everyone twisted to the doors.
Behind the dais, hidden beyond a painted wooden screen, a small
group of musicians began playing a processional. Not the grand,
sprawling orchestra that might accompany an event of this magnitude,
but better than nothing.
It didn’t matter anyway.
Not as Elide appeared in a lilac gown, a garland of ribbons atop her
braided black hair. Every step limped, and Rowan knew it was because
she had asked Lorcan not to brace her foot. She’d wanted to make this
walk down the long aisle on her own two feet.
Poised and graceful, the Lady of Perranth kept her shoulders thrown
back as she clutched the bouquet of holly before her and walked to the
dais. Lady of Perranth—and one of Aelin’s handmaidens. For today.
For Aelin’s coronation.
Elide was halfway down the aisle when Lysandra appeared, clad in
green velvet. People murmured. Not just at the remarkable beauty, but
what she was.
The shape-shifter who had defended their kingdom. Had helped take
down Erawan.
Lysandra’s chin remained high as she glided down the aisle, and
Aedion’s own head lifted at the sight of her. The Lady of Caraverre.
Then came Evangeline, green ribbons in her red-gold hair, beaming,
those scars stretched wide in utter joy. The young Lady of Arran.
Darrow’s ward. Who had somehow melted the lord’s heart enough for
Emotions
He arches an eyebrow. “With most people, you tell them what they want
to hear. You’re not always quite so flattering with me.”
“Well, Raphael, I worry that if your ego gets any bigger, it will need its
own magical realm.”
He leans closer to me. “But why is it, exactly, that I am the only one to
whom you show your real self?”
My heart is beating faster. “Because there’s no point pretending with
you, is there? I heard what you thought of me. Trash was the word that got
me, actually. You referred to my mother and me as trash. Yes, this was a
long time ago, and no, I’m not over it. I overheard everything. And I don’t
blame you, not after one of my mother’s spectacles, but I don’t see why I
had to be included.”
After all this time, I can’t quite believe I’m letting it all out.
He sits back. “I never said that. I wouldn’t have.”
My chest tightens. “But I remember it. Right after mother got drunk
again. She was falling down the stairs, and you had to help carry her back to
our room. You had already stopped speaking to me…” I’m dangerously
close to mentioning our kiss, and I really don’t want to betray how much I’d
thought about that single kiss over the past ten years, and we already know
I’m terrible at lying. “Anyway, you’d stopped speaking to me. But Mom
was drunk, and you and your rich friend helped carry her to our room at the
château. And the next day, I overheard you talking to your posh friend about
how we were trash.”
“I wouldn’t have said that.”
Anger flickers through me. “Not in English, but in French. ‘Des
ordures.’ One of you said, ‘People like us don’t spend time with people like
that,’ and the other one said, ‘Yes, isn’t she trash? She and her mother.’”
He nods, frowning. “Ah, guilty as charged, in part. I did say, ‘People
like us don’t spend time around people
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New Faces and Lullubies
“I’m Darius.” He waves. “Nice to meet you. I’ll get out in just a
moment. I just came for a quick reading.”
“Darius is addicted to Tana’s readings,” Serana explains. “You know
drug addicts? He’s like that, but for cartomancy. He’s here every night,
asking about love. Tana, where is my soulmate? Tana, is the fella I met
today the one? Tana, does this devil on the card mean I stop following my
old lovers through the streets of Camelot, or am I destined for a gorgeous
bad boy?”
“I also ask about weightier subjects, not just my love life,” Darius
snaps.
“I don’t mind either way.” Tana is shuffling her cards. “But before we
do your reading, I promised one for Nia.”
Darius scoots to the corner of the bed and gestures at me. “Ladies first.”
“It’s not necessary,” I say warily.
“Oh, let her get on with it,” Serana says. “Or she won’t stop harping
about it.”
I sit down between Darius and Tana, and she hands me the deck of
cards. “Shuffle and think of the future.”
I shuffle the cards, but thinking of the future seems impossible. I used to
have everything planned years in advance. But now? I have no idea what’s
happening.
I finally hand the cards back to Tana, and she flips the first one. I peer
down to see what it is, and a chill sweeps over my skin. I don’t know a ton
about tarot, but this one is obviously ominous. It looks like a tower struck
by lightning, with silhouettes of bodies falling from it. Flames rise from
some of the windows, and dark storm clouds surround it.
“The Tower,” she says.
“Like…Avalon Tower?” I ask.
“Perhaps. The cards shouldn’t be taken too literally.”
She frowns and flips another card, which she places across it. This one
The year began in March—the month, according to Chaucer, “in which the world began, when God first made man.” Officially it began at Easter, and because this was a movable feast falling anywhere within a period of thirty days, historical dating was imprecise. Hours of the day were named for the hours of prayer: matins around midnight; lauds around three A.M. ; prime, the first hour of daylight, at sunrise or about six A.M. ; vespers at six in the evening; and compline at bedtime.
These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth’s foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.
She is His everything
“You are already dead,” I pant out with dark menace. With vicious
promise. “The second you touched her. The second you hurt Auren and my
mother, you were done.”
“No, son. You are.” He rolls up one of his sleeves and drags the
dagger down his own arm, opening a vein.
“Culls cull the weak,” he goes on. “I will be king of the skies. I will
be king of Annwyn.”
He crouches down in front of me then, his dark eye boring into mine
as my mind spins. “I will take your dragon the same way our ancestors did
when they knew another Cull didn’t deserve the manifestation. And by
doing so, I will finally divest you of your greatest weakness. Your heart.”
I try to surge up, to launch myself at him, but I can’t.
My dragon is dying, unable to even roar anymore. My mother
bleeding, Auren threatened.
And I’m trapped. Fucking trapped.
His soldiers wait around my tortured dragon, while my father
watches the blood seep from his arm before deigning to look back at me.
“Pour the heartblood of the ward and its dragon into the veins of the
victor…and the victor shall manifest anew,” he intones, his expression
eager. The words sound like he’s repeated them thousands of times to
himself.
Cold realization freezes me and makes my stomach roil.
This is what he’d always planned. This is why he pushed me so hard
as a boy. He wanted me to manifest a dragon…so that he could murder me
and take it for himself.
“You’ve finally fulfilled your purpose,” he tells me with a biting
edge.
From my peripheral, I see soldiers pinning down my dragon’s feet.
See one of them positioning a sword right in front of its pulsing heart, ready
to pierce it through.
