Aaron #3
They rise, and Ellie falls in beside me as we step out onto the balcony.
The realm spreads out underneath us—thousands of them, a sea of upturned faces packed into the dead courtyard.
They’re witches and warlocks who’ve spent years forgetting how to hope.
As the shouting builds, my feet leave the floor and I rise up into the air above them, blue-gold light spilling off me into the dark.
Then the roar cuts out all at once, into a silence so total I can hear the wind.
“Until tonight I had a whole life,” I call down, and the magic carries it to every ear in the realm.
“A mate I’d burn the world down to keep, a son on the way, a home and friends and a family that loves me.
A place at a table I waited my whole life to earn.
I left every bit of it on the other side of that line and walked in here to you—not for your pity, but so you understand what I’m willing to give up to stand on this balcony. I’ve already given it.”
Not one of them moves.
“You don’t know me. You’ve got no reason to trust a Blackwood, after everything Blackwoods took from this realm.
So I’m not going to ask you to trust me.
I’m going to ask you to watch me.” I lift my hand over the dead courtyard.
“King Amir means to wipe the Witching Glen off the face of creation. He’s wanted it for years, and he very nearly got his wish.
That is not going to happen. Not while there’s breath in me. ”
I turn my hand over the realm, and the magic pours out of me.
The magic leaves my hands, and the ground drinks it down.
Green chases it out from the base of the tower, racing across the dirt faster than anything living should move.
At the edge of the courtyard, a dead tree shudders and forces new leaves through its own cracked bark.
Below me, the cabins straighten on their foundations while their roofs knit themselves shut.
By the time the cold finally gives, the people have stopped watching the ground and started grabbing onto each other, and the sound that comes up off them isn’t cheering—it’s the raw, broken noise of a few thousand people who forgot this was ever possible.
“I’ll give you your realm back,” I call over the roar of it.
“All the beauty and life that was stripped out of it. But I’m not a charity, and I won’t be a martyr.
If I serve you, you serve me. An even trade—king and realm, both.
That’s the only kind of crown I’ll wear.
” My voice drops, and the magic carries it out across the courtyard anyway.
“And hear me on this. If you ever turn on me, I’ll do exactly what every soul here has done to you.
I’ll give up on you and never look back. So don’t give me the reason.”
The wildflowers are still spreading.
“Here’s what I believe,” I tell them. “You’ve got the same right to be forgiven for the Great War as every other supernatural walking around free.
Aya Bailey betrayed all of us—every people, the witches and warlocks worst of all.
But she’s ash. She’s been ash a long time, and no realm can live forever inside the worst thing that ever happened to it.
” I look out over the green I just made.
“It’s time to move on. All of us. Together. ”
I give them a second. Then I open my hands to the whole roaring sea of them.
“So. What say you?”
It moves through the crowd like wind through a field, and they go down.
Every witch, every warlock, thousands of them dropping to their knees across the courtyard with their heads bowed.
The roar changes pitch as they fall, deepening into something that climbs up through the tower and into me—the sound of a whole realm claiming a king and being claimed back.
I look over at Ellie, who’s gone down on her knee on the balcony with the rest.
“Now what?” I ask her.
“Now, my lord.” She lifts her head, her eyes wet. “We rebuild.” She bows her head again.
I sink back through the air until I’m standing on the balcony again, and below us the whole realm rises to its feet. I turn to Ellie.
“My mate and my son are coming here to live with me in six months,” I tell her. “I want this realm ready for them, and I want it perfect.”
She bows. “My lord.”
“Oh, I fucking hate that.” But I’m grinning, and she bows again anyway, smiling now.
I walk back in off the balcony into the tower, this huge restored tower that’s mine now, and I look up the long throat of it at all the empty space climbing into the dark, and I decide right there what it’s going to be.
A library, the biggest one any realm has ever seen, instead of a cold throne room for one man to rattle around in alone.
An academy, even, a place where I’ll stand at the front of a room again and teach these witches and warlocks what their own magic is worth.
I add it to the long plan, the one that ends with my mate and my cub here, home, with me. And I’m still smiling when I head down the hall, the witches and warlocks of the Glen bowing their heads as their new king walks past.