Chapter 42 #2
They listened intently, together with the council members and soldiers who were slowly but surely moving closer as I spoke. Even though I hardly stopped to take a breath, it still took me longer than I thought to get to the end of the story.
“And where is he now?” Jasewine asked when I finished. “The Seelie King—where is he?”
“I don’t know, but I assume he’s back home, plotting his revenge. Nilah is safe. She’s with Maera and the soldiers.” The thought of Lyall being so close to her did make me uneasy, but I trusted she could handle herself, and I trusted he would not try anything, at least not tonight.
“I know the Ice Queen is safe, brother. What I need to know is how fast the Seelie King can strike should he feel compelled to do so,” Jasewine said, her voice hard, her eyes distant as the wheels in her head turned.
“We have to prepare now that you’re here.
I know all war strategies Sunnies have used in the past centuries—Raja, remember the books you gave us to read when we were little? ”
“I do,” Raja said, and her mind was working, too, as she looked down at her hands.
“The Midnights have always kept detailed records of all courts. We know how they operate—and you worked for the king, too. In his forge. You know his weapons,” my half-sister said, her black eyes glistening with brand new excitement. “We can take them—right, Raja?”
Raja flinched but nodded. “If we’re careful. The Seelies are strong. They have never lost the magic we or the other kingdoms have lost. They’re ahead of us, magic-wise, but we have better numbers and better swordsmen.”
“That will be what wins the war. Magic cannot last forever—once the soldiers tire, they—”
“There will be no war,” I cut her off—or tried to, but she continued.
“There might be. If he’s so intent on getting rid of the Unseelie King, we must offer our help, mustn’t we?”
“We should,” Raja said. “There is no other way.”
“And so we will. We’ll be ready. The Unseelies have virtually no army to speak of, but we—”
“Jasewine.” This time, I said her name louder, and it worked. She blinked and focused on me. “There will be no war. Lyall will not attack when he knows he’s up against three kingdoms and two armies.”
“Oh,” she breathed.
“I suppose that is correct. He is smart when he needs to be,” Raja muttered.
“And I’m leaving soon.”
That got—not just the two of them, but the entire room to stop breathing, and focus on me.
“What?” Raja demanded, while Jasewine screeched, “Again? Do you need me to remind you that you just got here?”
“I know that,” I said, and despite the guilt, the bad feeling in my gut, I forced myself to continue, to speak slower this time. My nerves were getting the best of me, so I stood up to face them, too.
“This time, I’m not coming back. Not as the Midnight King, at least.”
My words seemed to echo in the tall ceiling infinitely.
I looked at Raja first and nearly broke under that look of shock and fear and concern—especially of betrayal she gave. Very hard not to feel like a failure in that moment.
“I don’t…” Jasewine shook her head, but she couldn’t tell me she didn’t understand—because she did.
That’s why her voice trailed off and she closed her eyes, breathed deeply, fisted her hands in front of her.
“I was never supposed to be the Midnight King. I was never meant to rule.” Nor had I ever wanted to. “You were, Jasewine. You’ll make the finest Midnight Queen Verenthia’s ever seen.”
“Careful, boy,” Raja breathed, and I went closer to her, wrapped a hand around the back of her neck, saw her tears that she wouldn’t let slip out.
“You know this is the right way, Raja. She’s a better ruler than I would ever be.”
“You killed Helem. The throne accepted you—”
“And the throne accepted her, too. If you only knew how stubborn it can be, you would believe me when I tell you—if this palace had any doubts about Jasewine at all, it would have never allowed her to sit there, whether I asked her to or not. It would have never let me go the way it did.”
This I knew with a hundred percent certainty. There was no explaining what the connection to the part of the palace that was sentient felt like. It was like a presence, like a person but not quite. A mind that defied the definition of the mind that we currently had. Something…more, simply put.
And that more was incredibly strict about whom it allowed even through the doors—the Unseelie Court was enough proof of that. The Frozen Court was enough proof of that.
Jasewine had already been accepted. I knew it the day I was allowed to leave because she carried the crown, agreed to fill in for me while I was gone. She’d already sat on that throne chair, had made changes to it, had made it her own. She belonged there more than I ever would.
“She’s the right person for the job, and I think deep down you know it, too,” I said and kissed Raja’s forehead.
A single tear slipped from the corner of her eye.
“I can’t…I can’t be an actual queen, brother. Do you understand? I don’t even…I don’t…” Jasewine shook her head, and I found it oddly soothing when she called me that. Brother. A big word after having been called a bastard all my life.
“All of this—all of this pretending and place-holding—this isn’t like being an actual queen!
” She moved around me and toward the throne, suddenly anxious, ignoring the council members who were watching still with their mouths wide open, as they should.
Witnesses—that’s what they were. Witnesses, so that when this conversation was over, Raja and Jasewine would have no trouble convincing anyone of the truth.
“Jasewine,” I said, but she was still shaking her head, pacing in a circle.
“I don’t even look like a queen—you look like a king! That crown was made for you, Rune! You look like a king!”
Any other day those words would have made me laugh. I looked farther from an actual king than anyone in the history of this realm—but I wasn’t about to try to convince her of that when she thought she didn’t look like a queen.
Because she absolutely did.
“Maybe I do,” I said, taking the jacket off to leave it on the chair. “But I wasn’t born to serve a kingdom, sister—only a woman.” And she was alone right now, waiting for me.
A pause, and Jasewine had stopped pacing around, too. She looked at me with her eyes wide and her lips parted, like she couldn’t quite believe what I said.
“That…that—” she grabbed her hips, nodded a few times, shook her head—“might be the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”
“It’s just the truth.” Romance didn’t interest me right now, just the idea of what my future would look like. Nilah was with me in it or it didn’t exist—there was no third option. “And I’ll always be here, Jasewine. For anything—I’m a shadow message away.”
Again, her mouth opened and closed a few times before she was able to whisper, “Are you suggesting that I need you, Your Highness?”
“Probably not, but if you do…” I grinned. “I’ll be here within hours.”
It was a promise I intended to keep no matter what.
“I assume this has been going through your head since the beginning,” said Raja, her voice low, calm—which was worse than if she’d chosen to scream at me.
Still, I held myself. “It has.” Since the first time I talked to Jasewine in private, I knew. I’d just needed to see what the palace would make of it, if it would allow her to take my place—twice—and if the kingdom would fall apart when I left.
“So, there is nothing I can say to change your mind,” Raja concluded with a nod.
“No.”
She closed her eyes.
“Raja, it’s the right call.”
“If you say so, Your Highness.”
This, too, was worse than if she’d spit on me.
“Raja,” I said, but she raised a hand.
“I will come to terms with it. If you really do not accept your true duty of taking care of your people, then you are right. You are not fit to be king.”
Her words weighed on me, but I’d carry them. I had known she wouldn’t be easy to convince right away, but I had faith. This woman was my family. I would never give up on trying even if it took me a thousand years. I’d get through to her soon enough. I believed it.
“But she is,” I said with a nod, and both our eyes fell on Jasewine standing at our side.
“Are you seriously just going to give me this kingdom, Rune?” she asked with half a heart, both terrified and excited at the same time, so much so that her cheeks had turned a bright pink.
“I am,” I said without hesitation.
Her eyes squinted. “People don’t just do that, you know.”
“Well aware.”
A pause.
“Did you hit your head or something when you were away? Because the seer told me that you were a changed man, but I expected to find you with an arm missing—not your damned mind!”
I pulled my lips inside my mouth to stop a smile. “I’m not missing anything. I just know exactly where I stand and where I belong.” Which was with Nilah. “I do have requests that I will take your word on, though.”
“You can’t have my firstborn, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said.
I was actually speechless for a minute there.
“What? Fae used to exchange firstborns all the time. Pick up a history book for once, will you?” The red on her cheeks continued to intensify—and somehow, I became more sure than I ever was that this was, indeed, the right decision.
“I don’t want your firstborn, Jasewine.” And as hilarious as it was that that’s the first thing that popped into her head, I didn’t laugh. “Raja stays with you until she chooses to step down. She is the regent, in charge of your council and your army. That doesn’t change.”
“Are you serious right now?” Jasewine strode closer to us, hands on her hips—and it did scare me for a second until she said, “What the hell would any of us do without her? Forget choosing to step down—she’s never leaving,” Jasewine said, then looked at Raja. “You’re never leaving, Aunt Ra. Right?”
“I will be staying here, in my home, as is my duty to my people.” The look she gave me cut me wide open all over again.
Patience, I reminded myself. I had to be patient with her. She was hurting. She felt betrayed. She needed time, and I’d give it to her.
“Your word, Jasewine,” I said. “In front of these witnesses.” Because fae affairs changed within hours, and though I was confident about who Jasewine was, I still needed to make sure.
“You have it,” she said with a nod. “You have my word.”
The whole room heard her voice.
I nodded. “The army of the Frozen Court. I hereby, as the Midnight King, formally renounce all rights transferred to me by King Helem based on his deal with the former Ice Queen over it, and when I leave here tonight, I leave with the army, and with their Key of Command, which I will deliver to the new Ice Queen personally.” The key that had been a symbolic token that Queen Veyra had created to promise her army to the Midnight King.
It was still here, in the study—I’d seen it locked in a glass box.
A diamond half the size of my fist, buzzing with power.
Whispers from the council members. They were surprised, and I expected nothing different.
These people were used to clinging to any kind of power that they could without really understanding what was happening with their home, with their magic.
It was because of the former king that they’d created the idea that an army was the most powerful thing one could possess in today’s Verenthia.
But it wasn’t.
Magic was. It belonged to everyone equally, and the stars wanted balance. No court should have two armies—but more than that. Nilah needed it.
“There are no wars to fight. There will be no battles. An army of a people belongs to that people,” I said for their benefit.
“You mean, their queen,” Raja said under her breath, but I didn’t let it get to me.
If she thought I was doing this for Nilah—I was.
Whether she believed I wanted balance, too, at the same time, was irrelevant now because she would find out soon.
When everything fell into place, they would all find out.
“And their queen, yes,” I said and looked at Jasewine, whose cheeks had gotten paler now, and she looked less excited and more concerned by the second. “Just like the Midnight army belongs to you now.”
The whispering continued, grew louder. Raja walked over to the council members with a raised hand, spoke to them about respecting the king’s wishes, while I took Jasewine by the hand and moved her a little closer to the windows, to the waterfall.
With a single thought, the magic that she’d no doubt put over it to keep the volume down removed itself, and we heard every drop, felt it on our side as it sprayed us.
“I don’t know, Rune,” she said, and when she looked up at me like that with those wide eyes, she looked so much like her sisters. Like her father. My father.
Like me.
“You were made for this. You know you will be better at it than me.” There was not a single doubt in my mind about that. She loved the Midnight Court. She loved politics, too.
She grabbed my arms, dug her sharp fingernails in my skin. “This is too much! I don’t know—I don’t know what you want me to say, Rune!” And she was downright terrified now.
But I smiled. “Simple. Say yes.”
Jasewine didn’t say yes right away, but I knew she would.
She asked me to go meet the Seer of Shadows with her down in her chambers in the Great Library, but it was only a matter of time. She wanted this, even if she thought she shouldn’t, because of whatever impact Helem’s attitude toward ruling had had on her. But she wanted to rule, and she would.
I went with her to the seer as Raja held an emergency meeting with the rest of the council members, and she hardly looked at me as we crossed ways, but I had hope that she would come around, too.
Especially when things settled, and she saw what the future could look like when the power was balanced, and all four fae kingdoms were equals, as it was always meant to be.
I had faith, and I would wait as long as it took.
She had me forever, and so did Jasewine.
But when this day was done, it would be time for me to leave.
I finally had a home to go to, and nothing in any realm or any time was ever going to keep me from her again.