Chapter 49
Chapter Forty-Nine
Beaufort
I don’t know if one person suggests it or if it happens by instinct, but once the dead have been gathered up and the injured healed, those of us that remain drift toward the Great Hall, gathering inside its strong stone walls.
The hall itself is like nothing I’ve ever seen before.
It’s no longer gray, dingy, and foreboding.
Its walls, its vaulted ceiling, the stone floor, everything shines in a bright, iridescent white.
And people have already begun to decorate it.
Hanging the flags of their Quarters. Stringing strands of homemade, cobbled-together bunting.
Those with their newfound light-wielding skills send streams of it up into the air, exploding in fireworks above our heads.
There’s laughter. There are tears. Someone has raided the canteen, brought through dishes and dishes of food, and others have brought out alcohol they’ve had stored all along in their rooms. It’s a makeshift party. Music is blaring. Someone’s singing. People are already dancing.
“Do you want to dance, sweetheart?” I ask Briony, offering my hand.
She shakes her head, smiling at me. “I’m far too exhausted,” she says. “I just want to sit here with the four of you.”
I smile back at her, pushing the hair that’s fallen into her face and tucking it behind her ear. I kiss her forehead.
I still can’t believe we did it. She did it.
This woman. If you look at her now, you’d probably find it impossible to believe.
She’s so small, so tiny, so fragile. And yet, if you look closer, in a way I failed to do the first time I met her, you can see it shining in her eyes, in the tilt of her defiant chin.
There’s strength flowing through every single cell of her body and her being.
Fate was right to choose her. It could only have been her.
Pride swells in my heart and desire stirs in my belly. Perhaps it was always this stubborn, determined streak of hers that turned me on so much.
I’m about to offer her my hand again and suggest we embark on our own private party back in our tower when there’s a commotion, people pushing through the crowd, and I’m up on my feet immediately.
Most of my mother’s allies are dead. I don’t suspect any immediate danger, but who knows? These are unprecedented times we’re entering now. No Empress and no one to lead us.
But my shoulders relax when I see it’s Henrietta, followed closely behind by Linny, and by her side Arabella.
Hells Bells lets out a yelp of joy when she spots me and I rush forward and wrap the little girl in my arms. She squeals with delight as I spin her around.
“What are you doing here?” I say.
“Linny said you’re going to be the new emperor, and then I told Linny I wanted to come and find you, and so then Henrietta brought us here.”
She grins at me, and the immediate joy I’d been feeling vanishes in an instant. I place her back down on her feet.
“Do you understand what’s happened, Hells Bells?” I say gently. “Do you understand what’s happened to Mother?”
She nods enthusiastically. “Yeah. Henrietta said you killed her.”
“Jeez, Henrietta,” I mutter, squeezing the bridge of my nose between my finger and thumb.
“It’s okay, Beaufort,” my little sister says, reaching out to slide her hand up and down my arm. “You don’t need to be sad. Henrietta said you’re not going to jail.”
“No. Hells Bells,” I say. “I’m not, but… I’m not going to be emperor.”
However, my little sister isn’t listening to me, her gaze is bouncing around the Great Hall and all the people in it, her eyes widening slightly when they land on a couple making out in the corner. I step to one side to block her view.
“Of course you are, Beaufort,” Henrietta says. “You’re the rightful heir.”
I shake my head. “You’re forgetting my brother, and every other lowlife who probably has a claim to the throne.”
Henrietta and Dray snort together.
“Your brother?!” Henrietta says. “Your brother didn’t even come to fight this battle.”
Lynette covers Hells Bells’s ears with her hands. “He was drunk.”
“He still has a claim,” I point out. “And he’s older than me.”
“And I arrested him and locked him in the Black Tower,” Henrietta says, with a shrug. “Well, the three of us did. We did it on our way here.”
Despite the fact that Hells Bells’s ears are covered, she obviously hears, because she nods enthusiastically in agreement with her.
“You did what?” I say.
“He was being naughty,” Hells Bells says. “It was Nurse Marion’s idea.”
I peer back at Briony in desperation.
“There probably aren’t really any other contenders,” Thorne points out. “Not serious ones, anyway.”
“Who says I want to be emperor?” I say in despair.
“Are you kidding me, man?” Dray shakes his head in disbelief. “Why the fuck wouldn’t you want to be emperor?”
Arabella giggles at the use of his curse word.
“I don’t think we should be talking about this now,” I say, motioning toward my little sister.
“You really don’t want to be emperor?” Briony asks, tilting her head to one side and assessing me with her tired eyes.
“I don’t think I’d be any good at it,” I admit, which is so different from how I would have answered that question before I stepped into the academy.
I’d always believed there was a good chance I’d take my mother’s seat on the throne.
I believed it was my destiny, my birthright, and – let’s face it – a role I was born for.
But I’ve come to learn that I have faults and flaws like every other person in here.
“I’m my mother’s son,” I say. “And I’d probably end up being just as bad a ruler as she was.”
“Your mother wasn’t all bad,” Briony says. “She kept the peace for many years.”
“Don’t you think the people should choose their emperor? Or empress?”
“Definitely,” Briony says enthusiastically, as Henrietta makes a loud gagging noise.
Briony scowls at her and continues talking.
“But there would need to be someone in charge in the interim….” She trails off and looks to Fox.
“Otherwise there could be factions again, more fighting like there was between the shadow weavers and the light wielders all those years ago. The divisions that led to the extermination of the light wielders completely.”
“I agree with Briony. There’ll need to be an interim arrangement. And you are the heir. I think most people expect it,” Fox says.
“And what if I get a taste for it?” I say, remembering all the power and privilege that was accorded my mother. “What if I get a taste for it and when the time comes I don’t want to let it go?”
“That won’t happen,” Briony says.
“It might,” I confess.
“We won’t let it,” she says with a smile, believing in me 100%, trusting in me with all her heart.
And I know with her by my side, I will be a better person.
“And we won’t let you be a bad ruler,” Dray adds. “We’ll keep you on the straight and narrow.”
“You?” I chuckle, because I can already imagine all the ways Dray will abuse the privilege of ruling the realm.
“You’re going to be in charge too, Dray?” Hells Bells asks, almost clapping her hands in excitement.
“Yeah, sort of,” he says.
“Then can you make it a law,” she asks, “that Nurse Marion can’t put me to bed before 8 p.m., that she has to let me have chocolate every day, and that I’m allowed to play with the weapons from the weapon room?”
“How do you know about the weapon room?” I ask her.
“Henrietta and Linny took me there,” she says. “Let me play with them.”
I scowl at Henrietta, who simply shrugs a second time.
“I like those rules,” Dray says. “But I’ll have to persuade the others first.” He winks at her. “Do you want to dance, Hells Bells?”
She nods enthusiastically, and then he’s whisking her away, spinning her across the Great Hall.
“She seems okay, doesn’t she?” I say to Briony. “Not too upset.”
“It may hit her later,” Briony says. “But you’ll be there for her, Beaufort. We all will.”
She wraps her arm around my waist, and I wrap mine around her shoulders.
“It should be you on the throne,” I tell her.
“Maybe,” Fox says, coming to stand the other side of Briony as we watch Dray and Arabella dancing in a haphazard manner across the Great Hall, other students leaping out of their way, “one day she will be.”
Later, I carry a sleeping Arabella up the stairs and into my bedroom. She doesn’t even stir as I slide off her shoes and tuck her into the bed, kissing her goodnight and tiptoeing away to join the others in the kitchen.
Henrietta and Linny have led those students still partying up to the shadow weaver common room with promises of breaking into the liquor cabinet, and Fly has already sneaked off with his boyfriend. It’s just the five of us now, and I’ve never been more pleased about it.
I’ve been waiting for this moment ever since the battle ended. Hell, I’ve been waiting for this moment for as long as I can remember. The moment when the five of us would be together without the threat of some danger looming above our heads.
Dray has poured everyone a nightcap and is passing tumblers around as we stand in the kitchen. I come to join them, taking the liquor in my hand and swirling it, but not touching it.
There is electricity in the air, like that moment right before a storm, when you can feel it building – the pressure tangible – and you’re waiting for that crack of lightning, that boom of thunder that will break it all.
Of course, it’s Briony who does break it.
She takes my right hand in hers, pulling up my sleeve and examining the marks tracing across my wrist. She leaves my arm hanging in the air and then does the same to Thorne, exposing his marks and bringing his arm so it’s touching mine.
Then she does the same to Dray, to Fox, and finally she pulls up her own sleeve.
Our arms make a circle like the spokes of a wheel, and you can see how the pattern runs across our skin from one person to the next – a never-ending loop with no break, no beginning, and no end.
“This is it, then,” she says. “The five of us now.”
She lifts her vibrant green eyes from our arms to our faces, looking each one of us straight in the eye.
“None of you are going to make any grand announcements, are you? The need to go off on some adventure? The revelation of some secret wife or girlfriend? An undisclosed solemn vow to dedicate your life to the temple?” She shakes her head. “There’s nothing else stopping us from being together?”
“Nothing,” I whisper.
“Nothing at all,” Fox adds.
And then what she does next sets my heart thumping.
She takes the front of Thorne’s shirt in her fist, yanks him toward her, and kisses his mouth. It’s a kiss full of passion, full of desperation and need, a kiss that has Thorne moaning into her mouth. Then she pulls away, her hand still gripping his shirt, and steps a little to the side.
She stops in front of Fox. Thorne’s eyes are dark as night as he watches her rise up onto her tiptoes and kiss the Professor.
Her free hand rests on his chest, but he seems to know not to touch, to understand that she hasn’t invited him to yet.
She kisses him just as hard as she kissed Thorne, ending that kiss with a bite of his lip.
Then she steps to Dray next.
“Hey, Little Kitten,” he says, bouncing up and down on his toes with eagerness, a smirk hovering on his lips. “Gonna kiss me too?”
“What do you think?” she says, wrapping her hand around his neck and pulling his mouth to hers.
Their kiss is wet and noisy, and it’s clear as day how hard Dray is fighting the temptation to gather our mate into his arms. When she tries to pull away, he’s a little reluctant to let her go, but she sinks her fingernails into his hard abdomen and he gets the hint.
“Love your claws, Kitten,” he murmurs. “Love it when you play.”
She steps to me next, her right hand still gripping Thorne’s shirt. I lift my gaze to meet Thorne’s momentarily, seeing all the desire, passion, and want I’m feeling reflected right back at me before I drop my gaze to hers.
There’s just as much want, passion, and desire in those green eyes too.
“You want this?” I ask her. “You want all of us?”
“I’ve never wanted anything so much in my life,” she says.
My hands ball into fists.
She kisses me too, her lips soft and gentle, but eager and hungry, her tongue delving deep into my mouth.
I want to touch her so badly. I want to touch all those places that make her squirm and squeal and scream my name.
Fuck. I want to hear her scream Thorne’s and Dray’s and the Professor’s names too.
I close my eyes and let her kiss consume me completely. I dissolve into it, so much so, that when she stops, I blink my eyes open, completely lost.
She steps back to stand in the middle of the four of us.
“I don’t know exactly how this is going to work between the four of you and me,” she says. Dray goes to answer, but she gives him a look and he slams his mouth shut. “But it’s going to work,” she continues. “I know it, and I feel it, and I want it. I want it really bad.”
Dray’s always had the weakest restraint and the feeblest self-control, but it isn’t Dray who breaks first.
It’s Thorne.
He lets out a growl so deep it rumbles in his chest, his shadows flickering around him. He steps forward, lifts Briony in his arms, and marches her straight out of the room.
The rest of us stare at one another, a little shocked. I’ve never seen Thorne act that way before.
“Come on, dickwads,” Dray mutters, already scurrying to chase after our bond brother. “What are you waiting for?”