Chapter 198
Chapter 198
“Pippin…”
This was the way a husband was supposed to look when he first saw his bride, wasn’t it? Draven’s eyes went wide as he seemed to try to take all of me in at once. The dress, the stupid damn wig, the train.
And my tears.
“Gods, what’s happened?” He was moving closer and so were the rest of the wing, leaving Stefan to look on bemusedly. “What’s happened, love? Did the duchess make another rude comment about your dress? Were the ladies unwelcoming? I told them I needed them to make an extra effort?—”
“It’s not that.” My hands hovered in the air, then finally took his. That’s what we’d do after I’d walked down the aisle. A flower girl would rush forward and take my bouquet of arum lilies, a flower I detested, and then I would go and stand beside my king as he took my hand and pledged his troth. “It’s not…”
My throat worked because there were too many words to be said and I couldn’t work out which to say first.
“Cousin, can you give us the room?” Draven asked, looking over his shoulder.
“More secret wing stuff?” He nodded and winked at me. “Don’t you worry, lass. I’ll stand at the door and make sure no one comes in. Tell ‘em you’ve got a bout of cold feet.”
Truer words had never been said.
My eyes went to the floor, but I felt them cluster closer, and that was all the more poignant now. I’d taken it for granted that my men would be there when I was miserable, not realising that it was all going to be ripped away.
“The general came to see me,” I said, forcing the words out. I looked up and met Draven’s eyes, catching the moment his brows jerked down. “The divorce papers were signed in triplicate?—”
“And he wanted at least one version of them signed.” Brom’s jaw worked, and I knew why. He was fighting the urge to curse, to shout, and yet we both knew we couldn’t in the grand abbey.
“I thought you had that handled, Draven.”
Flynn was harder, more brittle, when we got back to the capital. He’d never liked being the son of a duke, and I knew why. Court was like quicksand. It sucked you in whether you wanted to engage with it or not.
“I did handle it,” Draven snapped, then rubbed his brow. “I’m sorry, but I’ve had many conversations with Rex about all aspects of the marriage, and I’ve made my position clear each time.”
“That doesn’t matter.” Ged shook his head sharply. “You think because you’re king that you can just say it will be so and that’s the way it will be.”
“This is not the time for another recitation of the contents of Marcus Lighthands’ frankly seditious pamphlets!” Draven snapped. We all went perfectly still, but I pulled my hands from his grip. That seemed to concern him, because he reached to take possession of them again. “I am king. Today I will receive my crown before all of the people. Rex fears change, but I welcome it. While I don’t think I can create the working class paradise Marcus proposes, I do believe there is some room for adjustment.”
He spoke too smoothly, so confidently, and I wondered how long he had practised this speech. Often, I feared.
“We have learned much about our past and we need to learn from the mistakes, but also the successes. We have had queens with multiple consorts before.”
“No.” Flynn shook his head sharply. “No, you never mentioned this before. I am not onboard with that idea at all.”
“What does he mean?” Ged asked Soren.
“To remove us as riders,” he replied grimly, staring at Draven as if he’d never seen him before. “Then turn each one of us into his consorts.”
“You want…?” Ged pointed to Draven. “Me and?—”
“Of course, not.” Draven shook his head sharply. “As I told you in great detail when you first joined the corp, just because I have an interest in men and women, it does not mean I am dying to bed every man and woman.” He looked Ged up and down. “You are far too hairy for my tastes, and you snore like a sawn log.”
Ged blinked.
“But the world doesn’t need to know what goes on in our bedroom. Just that we are all committed to each other before the gods. That we share a bond of real love, be it romantic.” He met my eyes, then Brom’s. “Or platonic. That’s what matters.”
“When.” Brom was outraged, I could see that. If they were capable, he’d have burned lines into Draven’s flesh with his eyes. “When, Draven. What’s the timeline for this complete shift away from tradition?”
“We are going back to an older tradition—” Draven said in a be-reasonable tone.
“One that was thrown out with the queens.” Soren shook his head. “You know your history, lad. You know it to be true. What makes you think society will accept a slide back to the ways of Gloriana?”
“I don’t want to be a bloody consort,” Flynn snapped. “Are we ignoring reality? I won’t be able to show affection to the one person I’ve shared my heart with, but I will with you? With all due respect, you’re not my type, Draven.”
“Nor you mine.” Draven tried to chuckle, but we all stared. “I like my women fair and my men dark and brooding. Come, everyone will be waiting and?—”
“Let them wait.” He stared at me and finally seemed to see it. There was no smiling, no joking, no assuring me out of this. “I won’t leave this room. I will not walk down that aisle, not until it's all out in the open. You’ve been a highhanded bastard since the moment I met you, always concocting schemes behind our backs. You did it at Blackreach!”
“For you!” All good humour was gone, and instead there was a passion that nearly made the air crackle. I heard the far off roar of one dragon, followed by many, and it felt like a perfect counterpoint to this. The moment when the last mask was put aside. “I don’t want any of this either!” He turned away, wrenching at his collar and loosening his cravat with an ease I frankly envied. “This was never supposed to be me. Felix was supposed to be the one marrying the queen, and I…”
He sucked in a breath and that gave me hope. All he could see was the crown and its responsibilities, but what if…? What if he set it aside? The papers reported increasing dissatisfaction with the throne due to the fact we weren’t there when the duke’s men attacked. The civil war was seen to be a mistake, as if we didn’t know that. They weren’t in our position. They didn’t have to find a solution with the knowledge we had at the time. If we knew… If we’d anticipated…
“So don’t.” I said that in the softest tone I could, but the bluntness of my words had him turning around. “Don’t be king.”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“Am I? What did we get for all of our struggles? The threat of a revolution. If you take that crown, you’ll be fighting to keep it because you know Marcus isn’t going to stop. He’s been infected with the ideas of the continent.”
“Gods be damned, letting that seditious material into Nevermere,” Draven grumbled.
“He said he wanted to be prime minister?” I forged on. “Let him. Let him be the one to disappoint the people over and over. Don’t take the throne and…”
I stepped closer, the small measured steps I’d been coached to take up the aisle, but it wasn’t towards my king, but the man I wanted to make my husband.
All of them.
Rex’s words reverberated around in my head in ways he wouldn’t have anticipated. People didn’t care what living arrangements the common folk had, because land, titles, and wealth weren’t tied to their marriages. There were all sorts of households back at Deepacre…
“Choose me.” I was told brides often cried on their wedding days, but I bet none of the ladies would have thought of this. “Choose us, Draven. Don’t accept the crown and?—”
“Choose to walk away from all this bullshit.” Brom moved closer. “You’ve never wanted any of it. Remember what we used to dream of as lads.”
“Of flying away on our dragons?” Draven’s voice broke on that, but he quickly mastered himself. “That was just a pipe dream.”
“Is it?” Flynn moved towards me, and when he took my hand, I clasped it tightly. I needed the strength I felt there. “What’s the fucking point of it all if we can’t be happy? My father and my family were murdered in their beds for the position they held. Why the hell would anyone willingly take up such a role? It puts a target on our backs, and who knows that better than you?” He shook his head. “Pippin’s right. I’m done living like this.” He yanked the collar of his dress uniform open. “I won’t, not for another day, because…”
I could imagine what he would look like, dressed so finely as he stood down the end of our local chapel. I could marry him there in front of my whole estate. I could walk out into the sun to the sound of people’s cheers and just be… his wife, his love. We could run the estate together, all of us, and then?—
“I’m done. They say they’re going to pass a new law to allow riders to live out in the country.” He wrenched the insignias off his collar. “Consider this my resignation. A gentleman farmer? Yes, that would suit me and Glacier just fine.”
“And the rest of you?”
I saw the betrayal there in Draven’s face and knew what he was feeling. So alone, because that’s what I’d felt seconds before. He didn’t have to be, that’s what he needed to see. He was raised during his mother’s reign of terror, but he could step free of it finally. She was dead, so was his uncle, but killing the duke hadn’t freed him in the way he needed. This would.
“Gods, I’d spend my days on the right end of a scythe, making sure your crops were harvested on time,” Ged told me. “Because that’d be a damn sight better than being forced to pretend I’m something I’m not.”
“And you, Soren?”
Draven almost quivered with the tension within.
“Lad—”
“Majesty,” Draven corrected sharply and Soren nodded in response.
“My king.” His arms crossed his chest. “I’ve been in the corp for a long time, and I know how all this works. Change is slow, and that’s a good thing, because there’s no such thing as a bloodless revolution, but…” He let out a long sigh. “The thing I’ve always liked about you as a leader is that you’re never one to sugarcoat things. If you think a fight is going to go to shit, you make that clear and then find a way through it.”
Draven sucked in a breath to reply, but Soren forged on.
“I don’t think there is a way through this one. That weight you’re feeling? Have been feeling since the moment Prince Felix died? It’s the crown. A monolithic thing, caught up in history and pageantry, and I know I’ve got no place in that and I think you knew that.” Soren shifted closer to me. “I’m with Pippin. I have been since the moment we met, and I felt like some old lecher, unable to keep my eyes off her.”
“Well, you are positively ancient…” Ged muttered, only to earn himself an elbow to the ribs.
“You knew.” There was a dangerous note to Brom’s growl. “You’ve always known. Always one step ahead of everyone else but never confident that you can convince people to do it your way, so it’s better to beg for forgiveness than seek permission.”
He shook his head and then turned to me, reaching up and plucking the wig off. It was tossed aside and I felt instantly lighter.
“I will always choose you, Pippin, always. I stood beside you in that chapel, hoping like hell you could come to love me.”
Tears filled my eyes as I nodded fiercely.
“I did. I really, really did.”
“As much as I knew I was falling for you, I should never have signed that paper.”
“No, you shouldn’t have.”
He reached around and untied something, loosening some of the pressure. My greedy gasp of breath had the others moving. The train was removed, the corset untied until I was just standing there in my, admittedly still quite grand, underdress.
“I feel so much lighter,” I said, raising my arms.
Not just because of the dress. Glimmer was at the window, pushing it open and I looked past her to see our dragons landing in the courtyard below. People were cheering at their arrival, and it hurt to be the one to disappoint them, even as I knew I had to.
“Your mother said I would never be queen.” I turned towards Draven then, even as I stepped away. “Turns out she was right.”
“No, Pippin.” I hated the pain in his voice. It felt like he was tearing my heart from my chest, but it was better that than to suffocate it. “Don’t do this! We can find a way, I know it.”
“We can.” My men were already heading towards the window, because they knew. Male dragons competed to mate with a queen, and that’s what they were doing. “Choose us, Draven. Choose the future you always dreamed of.” Tears rolled down my cheeks, but for just a moment, I dared to hope. “Choose me.”
“No, Pippin, we?—”
I nodded, because I only needed to hear the first part. Some people are too caught up in the ties that bind them, but I…? I would cut through each one, if that’s what it required to be free. I slung a leg through the window and found Soren there, ready to help me out. Glimmer was already running across the courtyard and scaling Glacier’s neck, ready to leave.
What about the other queen dragons? I asked her. You know Rex will be looking to find a more suitable girl to impress upon one of them.
Humans are strange creatures , she said. They think far too highly of themselves. I snorted as I climbed into the saddle, feeling Flynn settle behind me. Zafira is gone and there are no more captive queens for him to coerce. The wild dragons, they will not leave any of the eggs unattended, not until the hatchlings are ready to be moved, and then…? It will depend on the human’s actions if any of them stay.
For a moment, hope bloomed anew. Draven came rushing out after us, but when the people started cheering at his appearance, he stopped. I don’t think he wanted their adulation, because he scanned the masses with a grim look on his face. Take another step , I thought furiously. Another one and keep coming.
But he didn’t.
“Take me home,” I told Flynn as I placed a hand on Glacier’s neck. “You know where to?—?”
“Always, my queen.”
He reached around, a familiar devilish look in his eyes as he tilted my head backwards and then, before the whole of the capital, he kissed me.
“There’s no going back now,” I said when he pulled back.
“No, there’s not. C’mon, lad!”
Glacier took one step, then another forward, and I raised a hand. Not to wave to the people watching everything that transpired, mouth wide open, but for Draven.
Tell him I will always love him , I pushed towards Darkspire as the massive green dragon landed heavily beside his rider. Always.
He knows .
I had been a wide-eyed country mouse the first time I saw the capital from dragon back. Now I was just pressed tightly to Flynn’s chest, shivering. There was nowhere else I’d rather be, though. If I had the choice between being true to myself or living according to other’s dictates, then I would choose me every time.
Took you long enough. Glimmer looked over from where she flew beside me. A queen decides her own future . Let’s see how ours unfolds.