Epilogue
THE SERPENT
Lips parted, my mouth hovered over Livia’s, and her pants and sighs became my own. On either side of her head, my palms flattened, bracing my weight so I could lift my chest, giving us space to see where our bodies were joined.
Livia’s knees fell open even more, spreading for the slow, deep thrusts of my hips.
What began as gentle kisses traded in the dawn’s light, slowly shifted into stolen touches, sweat, and groans. Tender and without the fear of something soon snatching her away from me, I lavished her body. My tongue swirled over her breast, slowly licking and nipping at the puckered tip.
A breathy squeak was her reply when I scraped my tooth along the side. Her fingers dug into my hair, tangling the waves, holding my face to her skin. My hips snapped, deeper than before.
Livia jolted, a soft plea of my name on her tongue.
“So close,” she mumbled, her head falling to one side, a look of bliss and flushed pleasure on her cheeks. “Erik, don’t stop.”
There wasn’t a damn thing that could get me to stop. I bracketed onto one elbow, sliding my hand between us to tease the swollen bud at the apex of her core. Livia whimpered and bucked to meet my thrusts.
Familiar heat rolled in my gut, lower and lower, until my head was lost in a delirious, intoxicating haze.
Our door slammed against the wall in a frenzy of rattled wood “Bloodsinger, merfolk! They’re swimming and Heartwalker said there’s a damn whale, and ahhh!”
“Rorik!” Livia scrambled for the quilts.
Her knees shot up, catching between my legs.
“Shit.” My teeth dug into my lip, fierce enough I risked blood, and lost my balance so close to the edge of the bed.
Before I could stop it, in a flurry of linens, legs, and curses, I tumbled onto the floor. Naked, half covered by the top fur. A shamed king with a painfully hard cock and his queen shrieking at a snickering boy.
“Erik, gods, sorry. Rorik, get out of here.” Livia wrapped the quilts around her breasts, seething at her younger brother, tossing pillows across the room. “How did you get in here?”
“The steward.”
I would relieve Alistair of his centuries’ long service as soon as I could feel my damn cock again.
“Rorik, would you leave them alone until . . . oh bleeding hells.” Elise Ferus, mother to the woman I’d been consuming, naked and breathless moments before, had now entered the room.
Where was the earth bender? Stieg? Perhaps Aleksi and his fathers would care to join in our mortification.
Rorik snorted. “Bloodsinger fell off the bed and flashed his ass—”
“Rorik!” Elise blustered. “Hush. Now!”
Flat on my back, I groaned and covered my face with my hands.
“Maj!” Livia shrieked. “Close the door! Gods, I beg of you.”
Elise, still scolding her son, paused to say, “There is a latch that locks, my girl. For a reason.”
“These are the royal chambers!” Livia insisted. “They are private.”
Elise huffed. “Erik. Good morning.”
“Queen,” I mumbled behind my hands.
“Forgive me, but I was told the king and queen had arranged for a morning ceremony. This may be your palace, but I expect the both of you by the next toll, or chime, or whatever they call it here. Fully clothed.” In the next breath, the door slammed shut again, and silence coated the room.
It couldn’t be helped, I laughed. A sound from deep in my chest vibrated through my ribs until it broke free and could not be reined back.
Livia poked her beautifully heated face over the edge of the bed. “It is not funny, Bloodsinger.”
That only made me laugh again.
Livia fell back onto the pillows, a palm on her forehead. “I’m never going to leave this room again.”
I crept back onto our bed. “Best plan you’ve had.” I kissed one of her breasts. “In fact, I’ll make it a proclamation this very morning.”
She laughed when I kissed the other swell. Lazy strokes of her fingers smoothed across the scars on my back. “Are you ready for this?”
“Ready?” My face nuzzled into her throat. “Yes. No question.”
Livia sighed. “Then, I have terrible news.”
“What is that?”
“We need to leave our bed.”
My mother’s gardens were in full bloom, filled with sea folk and the whole of House Ferus. Only a week had gone by since we’d sailed through the sea barrier (I could not very well call it the Chasm) and returned to the Ever.
Four days since missives across the Ever gave up that over half the isles and noble houses were, at long last, free of the darkening. Even the Daire from Skondell returned with her folk to their sanctuaries and culture on the small isle.
Even with all the people around us, it was strange not to see any of the other royals besides Aleksi. Mira had been reluctant to remain in the earth realms, but one glance at her mother’s face had her reconsidering.
They would be back soon. Or it would be us who went to them.
It wasn’t difficult to sail to the Ever for earth fae, not now.
We’d ferried one of their longships behind us on our journey home.
Their oars, their sails, nothing snapped.
Tait and Gavyn offered to sail on their odd serpent-like ships when Livia’s family returned, to ensure it was safe for any vessel to cross into new seas.
The trouble was the dive beneath the surface. Avaline had already arranged some of her more curious people from the House of Tides to take up posts on the earth fae side of the barrier. They would summon the tides to open for trade and council in turns to come.
Joron had a proclivity to shelter his people, cutting them off from the vastness of the world. It was now more of a challenge to keep people from the House of Tides to remain in the Ever. So many wished to explore and learn and see a land they did not know.
In truth, we already knew Mira and Sander would return for no other purpose than the royals insisted. Different kingdoms, yet we were more like a fifth land of the earth realms, simply with more seas.
Jonas was another matter.
Alistair delivered a missive from the prince only a day before, stating Jonas knew what had been troubling him, and he had his solution. He would not tell us yet, merely stated we’d know soon.
Ominous, and the worry he’d lined on Livia’s face promptly reminded me I’d never gotten the prince back for all his battering when we first met.
“Ah, you chose to join us finally.” Aleksi pinched Livia’s ear as we stepped through a vine-wrapped archway. “Rorik is getting rather impatient.”
When wasn’t the boy impatient? Livia’s brother had taken to the ships of the Ever. Every waking moment he would plead with me, with Tait, Celine, anyone, to let him step aboard and take to the seas.
Sewell was the only one who’d yet to tell the boy no and spent endless chimes each day sailing on sloops in the coves with Rorik at the helm in an oversized tricorn.
Narza stood near a wooden table lined in herbs and dried blossoms. Clay bowls were arranged near a circle of candles.
On one side, Tavish and his family stood by with Maelstrom and Tait. They were to stand for the blood of the king. But I could not, in good conscience, exclude the others. Celine, Gavyn, Sewell, and a freshly groomed Stormbringer joined.
Blood-related or not, they were the ones who’d raised me.
“Step forward.”
Once Narza was confident this was possible, we’d planned this privately, thinking it would be small and intimate. Livia’s family, as it turned out, was rather expansive when all placed together. They took up a great deal of room.
Aleksi stood between his fathers. The earth bender’s sister, her consort, and their four children, all grown and the eldest of the cousins, had joined. Their son kept a hand around his wife’s shoulders; the scar on her cheek was where all this truly began.
She’d been the one King Thorvald attacked when Valen filled my father’s chest with his axe.
Strange, to have them here. For this reason.
Beside Valen and Elise were Livia’s grandparents, one mortal, one fae, much like her parents. Rorik kept drifting to the side of the sea fae until Stieg promised him a Rave dagger if he would keep still.
The warrior was blood to none of us, but like Celine and her folk, Stieg deserved a place here.
The only one who did not truly belong, at least not to me, was the pensive watch of the elven from one of the upper windows.
The woman had willingly returned her herb bands to her neck, agreeing not to use her affinity against us.
She’d calmed the dangers of the Chasm, but I did not know what to do with her.
Small grins, a few flickers of feeling, had ignited over her face as of late, but Livia informed me she remained unlike the woman she first met. My songbird was hopeful, but I wasn’t convinced that woman would return.
I shook thoughts of the elven away, turning my focus to the table.
Narza lit the candles. “Bonds are no small thing. Complicated spells, but powerful. Bonds of the heart come from willing blood of two separate lines. These, when valued, when loved, and when cherished, are the heart of the Ever. They are what brings the royal line its full potential.”
Livia slipped her fingers into mine, beaming at me; I could not help but smile back.
Narza reached for Livia’s hand. “Blood is offered, willingly, ardently, and with desire. Is this true of you?”
“Yes.” Livia watched in fascination as drops of her blood spilled into one of the bowls.
My grandmother looked to me. “The heartbond of the House of Kings was destroyed, but we have found nothing that says a new bond cannot be formed with another. Do you willingly claim House Ferus as yours, ardently, and with desire?”
I swallowed, my throat all at once tight. Some, like Joron, would see this as a betrayal of the House of Kings. They would say the Ever King sold himself to the earth fae. I hardly cared. My loyalty was to the woman at my side, thrones and crowns be damned.
It meant something to know every soul of House Ferus came to prove they, too, accepted it.
I nodded and held out my hand for my grandmother. “Careful.”