Chapter 42
FORTY-TWO
CAIRN
I haven’t moved in an hour. And I don’t want to now. Alleria sleeps, curled against me. The room is quiet. I should be sleeping.
But the water beyond the window is changing.
I can feel it without looking. The tide is shifting, and soon the moon will rise. If Lysaena is to be crowned, it has to be tonight. I have no wish to stay in this palace an hour longer than I must.
I ease off the mattress, untangling myself from the warmth of Alleria’s body.
She makes a small sound of protest, turning toward me, and I pause, torn between wanting to stay and needing to move.
When she settles, burying her face into the pillow, I stand, drawing magic over my skin to summon clothes, and step out of the bedchamber.
Voices reach me, drifting down the passageway from the main antechamber, and growing louder as I move toward it. When I step through the door, it’s to find all eleven of the Guard scattered around the room, deep in discussion.
“An incomplete Sovereign means the Court itself is weak,” Vel is saying.
“A wounded animal in the water.” Brael’s voice is grim. “I’m surprised the Sea Court still exists at all.”
“Lysaena may not have the full mantle of the Sea Court, but she is powerful in her own right. That alone will have kept the other courts at bay.” I take the seat beside Therin. “But it’s been unbalanced for long enough. The Sea Court’s magic must be anchored.”
“When?” Kaelith asks.
“Tonight.” I turn to Brael. “I’ll let you deliver the news to Lysaena. I expect her to have the court assembled for her apology at moonrise, and the Witnessing will happen afterward. No apology. No crown. Remind her of that.”
“I’ll take pleasure in it.” He stands up and walks out.
I look around the room, meeting the eyes of each of them until I reach Riahn. “I know you have your issues with Alleria’s presence here. But she is Guard, and her magic is beginning to rise. I need to know you have her back.”
Her lips press together, then she gives a short nod. “Humans have much to answer for, but I will allow that if you have found it possible to forgive her for the things she did to you, then I shall do the same.”
“The things she did, she did without understanding.” Vel’s voice is soft. “We do not punish a child for believing the world she was given. She has changed. She is one of ours now. Her past does not stand against her.”
“When we return to the throne room, you will guard her. If Lysaena or any fae in this court so much as looks at her with ill intent, the Witnessing ends, and we turn the room into a slaughterhouse. Are we clear?”
“Are you speaking as the Eldráfn right now, or …” Therin smirks at me. “Or is this demented lover we’re getting?”
“There’s nothing demented about it.”
“But you don’t deny the lover part, or that your orders come from that part of yourself.”
“Which one ensures you do what I say?”
He shrugs. “Doesn't matter to me. I’m always ready for a bloodbath, regardless of the reasoning.” He pours a goblet of wine. “But I like Alleria. She’s good for you. And what’s good for you is good for the rest of us.”
“Good. Because I would rather leave the Sea Court a ruin than carry Alleria out of that hall a second time.”
“I don’t think it’ll come to that. Our little human is going to put the fear of the Nightwild into them all on her own.”
“She’s not human. Not anymore.”
His smile turns feral. “No, she’s Nightwild. And she’s ours.”
The court is assembled when we enter the throne room. Alleria is in the center of the formation behind me. To anyone watching, she looks cool and calm. Only I feel the truth of it, running through the bond that links her to me.
The moment her boots touch the abalone, her pulse kicks.
It climbs with every step she takes across the floor she knelt on hours ago, drowning in front of a thousand pairs of eyes.
Her breathing wants to turn shallow. The ice she’s wearing wants to crack.
I can feel her fighting all of it, holding the mask in place by will alone, and forcing each breath to remain slow and even.
And through it all, she still walks into the room, with her chin level and her face carved from frost. Not a single fae here will ever guess what it’s costing her.
Almost there.
Her spine straightens a little more. Her next breath comes steadier.
Pride fills me. She is magnificent in her refusal to bend.
At the far end of the hall, Lysaena stands before the throne, dressed in the silver and blue of the deep tide, with the same red crown upon her head. As we approach the dais, the gathered fae fall silent.
Lysaena steps forward. “Tonight, after centuries of waiting, the Witnessing will—”
“Stop.” My voice is quiet, but the word stops her dead.
Her eyes flash. “The moon is at its peak. The magic is ready to be anchored.”
“And it will be, once you fulfill the terms of our bargain.”
Whispers run through the gathered court. To halt a Sovereign’s crowning is a direct challenge to their authority. To do it in front of their entire court is a humiliation.
Lysaena’s jaw tightens. “Is this truly necessary right now?”
“You will apologize. Here. Now. And you will recognize her place.”
My sister stares at me, and I can almost see the calculation in her gaze as she weighs up whether her pride is worth more than her crown.
Her eyes move across the hall—across every rival, every fae who has watched her rule for three hundred years and would carve the throne out from under her the moment she shows weakness. She’s looking for a way out. A loophole. A delay. Some thread of the bargain she can twist to spare herself.
There isn’t one. I made certain of that.
When her gaze comes back to me, I let her see my thoughts. No mercy. No second offer. The apology and the crown, or nothing.
Power wins. It always does with her.
She turns to Alleria and falls silent. I watch her throat work, as she battles against the thing I’m forcing her to do.
“I apologize for the actions taken against you in this court.” Lysaena’s voice is tight. “I challenged you under the old law. I poured the deep into your mind, and I meant for it to break you.”
She pauses, and the rest is delivered through gritted teeth.
“I misjudged your standing. You are not prey, and you are not a pet.” She spits out the word. “You are Nightwild, outside the laws of the four courts, and under the protection of the Eldráfn. No fae of the Sea Court will raise hand or magic against you again. My word binds us all.”
The silence in the throne room becomes absolute. Every Sea Court noble watches as their ruler is forced to submit to my demands. All eyes turn to Alleria.
She gives Lysaena a single, cold nod.
“The debt is paid. Now we crown your queen.” I turn to my Guard. “Take your places.”
They spread into a ring in the center of the room, evenly spaced across the abalone floor and facing inward. I take my place at the head, in front of the throne.
“Kneel, Lysaena.”
For the second time today, my sister lowers herself before me. She sinks to her knees in the center of the circle, and lifts her chin.
I reach for the sea, and it answers me without hesitation.
The throne room begins to rise. The floor lifts beneath us, the hall tearing free and climbing through the deep. Turquoise water races down past the arches in great streaming sheets. We climb, fathom after fathom, the dark thinning around us as the surface draws near.
Then the sea parts above us.
It draws back into towering walls on every side, the whole ocean held frozen mid-fall, and through the opening at the top spills the night sky.
The moon hangs full above the column, and its light falls through the held-back water, pale and cold and silver, washing over the circle, the kneeling Queen-in-Waiting and the upturned faces of the court.
Now.
The magic of the Sea Court rises with the tide, surging up through the floor and the bones of the palace, vast and ancient and cold. The Guard catches it. I feel it strike each of the twelve, then flow outward to connect them to each other, forming a boundary that contains me and Lysaena.
The threads pull taut, twist into one, and run inward. To me. As the Eldráfn of Nightwild, I am the conduit. The anchor. The sluice.
I close my eyes and lift my head, letting the power of the moon flow through me.
It answers with the violence of a tidal wave, slamming into me and merging with the Sea Court magic. I twist it, direct it, and drive it downward into Lysaena to anchor her claim.
The magic strikes the crown atop her head and shatters it, sending red coral and gems in every direction. Lysaena screams as the blast throws her backward across the polished stone.
The conduit shatters. The threads snap. The power tears loose all at once and crashes back into the sea. The moon vanishes behind a wall of returning water, and the throne room sinks back down to the depths.
The throne room dissolves into panic. Fae shout and point at the shattered remnants of the crown, while Lysaena remains crumpled near the dais gasping for breath.
I don’t move. In the center of the unbroken circle of my Guard, I stand and turn the failure over in my head from every angle. The tide was at its zenith. The moon poured through the parted sea unobstructed. The twelve members of the Nightwild Guard held the boundary. I channeled the power cleanly.
For a moment my attention catches on the one thing here with no place in a Sea Court rite—every fae I freed, still bound to me. When I opened myself as the conduit, did all those tethers foul the channel? Bleed the power off before it could anchor?
No. They took no part in this.
There was no flaw in the execution.
The rite did not fail. We did not fail.
The magic refused to anchor.
The laws of Underhill are clear about crowning a new Queen. A confirmed succession requires two things.
The Nightwild Guard to witness the claim, and the death of the reigning Sovereign.
For three hundred years, the Sea Court was missing the Witnessing. It could not be made while we were sealed in the mortal realm, and the mantle could not pass.
But tonight the Guard stood witness. Tonight we gave the rite everything it needed.
No.
The denial rises before the thought forms. But the magic does not lie. And it has just turned its back on my sister in front of the entire court.
I lift my head, searching out Brael. His eyes meet mine, wide and horrified.
The blood still runs.
The meaning of the words ignites a rage so hot, the abalone floor beneath me starts to burn.
Lysaena pushes herself up from the floor, her crown in pieces around her, and stares at me with dawning horror. She felt it too, and she knows there is only one thing it can mean.
Queen Lirael Thalor is not dead.
My mother is alive.
And for three centuries, the human mages have been bleeding her.