Chapter Thirty-Five
THE NEXT NIGHT, KADEESHA FOUND HERSELF BACK atop the Yunna Mountains.
This time she was inside an enormous cavern that enclosed them entirely on three sides while the fourth side had a massive opening that allowed the silvery moonlight to stream in.
Hundreds of stalactites protruded down from the ceiling and a small stream of water cut through the center of the cave.
According to Malachi, since the Apollyon Court’s inception, it was where the land’s kings and queens had always been crowned and where the ruling monarch had always exchanged sacred marriage vows with the individual they’d elected to rule beside them.
During her ceremony with Rishaud, they’d each worn the colors of his court, but Kadeesha didn’t wear obsidian black during this second ceremony, nor did Malachi.
Rather, they were both clothed in silver garb that shone the same prepossessing hue as the nearly full moon above, a symbol of Nyaxia, the great Celestial that the Apollyon Court had once worshipped more actively, before the monarchy could no longer trust the court’s clerics.
Kadeesha’s gown was a metallic silver that clung to her body so snugly it looked as if the fabric had been painted on her.
Thousands of tiny glittering diamonds ran the length of the bodice, made of a whalebone corset in the fashion of a bygone era.
Scores more diamonds adorned the lower half of the dress, save for the high slit that traveled up her right thigh, shimmering under the moonlight too.
Yashira, who’d sent her dressmaids away and insisted on dressing Kadeesha herself for this wedding, had left Kadeesha’s hair partially unbound.
While the top portion bore several small fishtail braids, they stopped in line with the pointed tips of Kadeesha’s ears, giving way to wild, loose curls that tumbled down her back.
Symbolically, she bore no crown for now.
Malachi’s garments were just as resplendent.
He wore a formal brocade vest and pants sewn from glimmering silver cloth and the mantle draped across his powerful shoulders was from an animal Kadeesha—and most other fae—had never beheld in the flesh before.
It was made of fur like his usual black pelt, but this one was a metallic silver that had made Kadeesha’s eyes widen when she first saw it.
There was only one creature across the entire continent of Nimani with a pelt of such a hue—the night panthera that dwelled in the Yunna Mountains.
It was so savage and cunning a beast that not many who hunted it for the prize of its pelt lived beyond the attempt.
“Did you acquire such a mantle yourself or is it a family heirloom?” Kadeesha had curiously asked Malachi when he’d turned up at her room to escort her to their wedding.
The smug bastard had grinned in a manner that had nearly blinded her. “It is a rite of passage that every heir to the Apollyon throne must undergo to prove they are worthy to bear the crown,” he had replied, zero modesty in his voice.
Adding to his splendor, Malachi wore his crown of silver and obsidian and his dazzling grille.
Since he’d darkened her doorway, Kadeesha had been working very hard not to stare at him for an obscene amount of time.
It’d only fuel his ego. But now, as an Apollyon Court cleric—one of the vetted few Malachi had kept around for affairs that necessitated a cleric’s presence—stood before them singing a hymn about faekind’s reverence for the great Celestials and obedience to their will, Kadeesha was directly facing Malachi and had nowhere else to look except straight into his harshly beautiful face.
To steel her mind against dwelling on precisely how alluring Malachi was, she allowed a small, private smirk to play about her lips while the cleric sang on about studiously obeying the all-seeing designs of the Celestials and faekind serving as stewards that adhered to their venerated wisdom.
With good reason, Malachi was no more devout than Kadeesha.
So he certainly was no zealot. However, he’d chosen a hymn for the cleric to sing in honor of their impending union that wove that exact illusion.
As Kadeesha gazed at him, Malachi’s lips twitched in a tiny smirk of his own while amusement danced in his dark gaze.
Both tells silently projected to Kadeesha that he knew what she was thinking.
The way he was able to do that so routinely, detect her musings without her voicing them, had rattled Kadeesha from the very start of their interactions with one another.
But now that she was carrying his child and they were standing toe to toe about to be wed, it seemed like an act far greater than a source of aggravation.
It was far more intense. More intimate. Exceedingly more unnerving.
She broke the disturbing connection forged by their silent communication and shifted her focus to the gathered enemy-turned-ally monarchs who stood in a line to her right.
Each vassal king had dressed in the respective color of their court—gray for stone, blue for water, crimson for fire, and white for wind.
There was both an eagerness and lingering reticence about the monarchs who’d verbally agreed to pledge future oaths of fealty to Malachi and Kadeesha.
The monarchs clearly yearned for the greater autonomy she and Malachi had promised, but an undercurrent of deep mistrust and hostility toward the Apollyon crown that southern fae had warred with for centuries remained.
As it should, a perhaps guilty voice sounded within Kadeesha.
Malachi didn’t intend to allow them to live very long under their newly granted autonomy.
She shoved the thought aside lest her face give something away; lest it give away her hypocrisy, considering Malachi himself wouldn’t continue living very long after Rishaud was dealt with if she had anything to say about it.
She’d weighed Yashira’s counsel at length and had decided to hold steadfast to that aim.
It had nothing to do with sparing the other monarchs; she pitied them, but they’d chosen to be embroiled in the games of power and crowns and bloodshed that had always been played among the fae courts.
No, Malachi had to die because he’d always hold enmity toward her folk and seek ways to make them pay for the crimes of a dead king.
Then there was the personal reason that was as significant to her: Kadeesha refused to live out any future other than one where her path would always be hers and hers alone.
She had let Sylas dictate so much about her life.
Then she’d been ready to turn over power to Rishaud to do the same.
Now that she’d tasted what it truly meant to be free, to truly govern herself outside of the stifling influence or stubborn desires of any male, she refused to go back.
And although Malachi wasn’t actually a one-to-one comparison with Rishaud at the moment, she couldn’t be certain of what he’d evolve into.
Like herself, he’d only lived for around two and a half decades.
That was a fraction of time within an immortal lifespan.
After holding absolute power for centuries, she had no idea who Malachi would become as an Elder or even an Ancient.
If he was an arrogant, brutal, high-handed male now, who would he become in the future?
You think on him too much, Zahzah huffed into her mind.
The vassal monarchs were positioned to the right of her and Malachi, and Zahzah, along with the full thunder of the squadron’s kongamatos and Nkita flyers, stood behind the monarchs.
Kadeesha had positioned her squadron there to ensure the good behavior of the vassal kings when a later part of the ceremony would leave her and Malachi vulnerable.
Kadeesha would trust no other with her life.
Malachi had expressed a similar sentiment about his Cadre, which was why they stood behind him.
You’re right, she told Zahzah, annoyed with herself. I’ll have to rectify the nuisance.
When you do, may I eat his bones?
Something within Kadeesha recoiled at Zahzah’s request, though it had no business doing so. What did she care what became of Malachi’s corpse after she killed him?
You cannot, she said to Zahzah and told herself the denial was only because she couldn’t explain allowing such an act to her future child.
As the cleric finished her hymn, Kadeesha glanced to the individuals gathered on Malachi’s left side.
Yashira and Nychelle stood beside each other.
It struck Kadeesha that Yashira appeared as much a queen mother attending her child’s wedding as Nychelle did.
Nychelle was dressed in an opulent black gown, and Yashira wore a dark purple one that was just as lavish.
The lord primes of Malachi’s court that were not his Cadre stood in a line to the left of Nychelle.
A sudden wave of vertigo washed over Kadeesha and for an extended moment it was as if she was yanked out of her own body and was gazing upon how right she and Malachi looked standing before the cleric about to exchange marriage vows.
The surreal experience lasted only a flicker of a breath.
Then, the disorienting sensation vanished and she was deposited back within her own skin …
skin that held her Marking, which currently burned, hinting to Kadeesha what she’d experienced had been perhaps more than a moment born of brief insanity or panic or maybe even guilt.