Nadia #2
His gaze flicked toward the gate beyond the keep, though we could not see it from here. “And good luck with that.”
“The family?”
“The crown.”
“Ah.” I released his hand, shaking my head. “I expect both will prove equally unreasonable.”
Callum’s mouth twitched. “That seems likely.”
Augustin observed all of it with the expression of a man who’d orchestrated several generations of emotional damage and was now being forced to endure the repair work in public.
Good. Let him suffer.
“The household is gathered,” he said.
I drew a breath and looked at Enzo. He took my hand, the bond humming warmly between us as we turned and made our way toward the courtyard where the household had assembled to see us off.
Not the courtyard where the battle had torn the stones open. That one still smelled of blood, ash, and deep residue no one had yet agreed how to remove. This was the forward courtyard, the one that opened toward the field and the monolith beyond the broken outer wall.
Geren stood at the head of the household guard. Vessa waited beside him in her working coat, looking as if she’d been personally insulted by both ceremony and sunlight. Captains and senior officers held formation near the gate. Household staff lined the walls.
Liesel stood among them with her children.
Elian was very straight. Tomas was trying to see everything at once. The youngest perched on his mother’s hip, wide-eyed and solemn, one small fist tangled in the fabric of her sleeve.
Liesel met my eyes, and across the distance we exchanged the smallest of acknowledgments—a dip of my head, the answering incline of hers.
The gesture was slight, almost nothing at all, yet it settled something restless inside me.
Aldric’s promise had reached the keep. It had taken root here, living on in quiet ways, watching me now through the faces of three children who’d inherited a future he would never see.
At the courtyard’s outer edge, I came to a halt, and stillness rippled outward through the assembled household until even the air seemed to pause.
Beside me, Enzo’s hand tightened around mine once, a quiet anchor.
I had been told I should speak—briefly, according to Augustin.
Sovereignly, Enzo had added, because apparently my mate had decided that turning words into armor was foreplay for kings.
I still had no idea what “sovereignly” meant.
So I chose the only thing that had ever served me well.
I chose honesty.
“You didn't choose me,” I said. My voice carried across the courtyard, threaded by the marks at my throat and the old magic now awake beneath my skin. No shouting. No strain. Just words, and every person there heard them.
“I came here as the bonded mate of your prince. Then a war none of us asked for put a gate in your field and a crown on my head.”
A few faces shifted, and I felt the change ripple through the crowd.
Good. They were listening.
“I won't pretend this is simple because I respect you too much to lie to you.”
Somewhere near the guard line, Geren’s mouth may have moved.
May have.
“The keep now stands between two courts. Tharros and Mrachgorod. Veynetheir and the Shadow Court. That doesn't make you less Tharros. It doesn't make him less your prince.”
I turned slightly, enough for every eye to find Enzo at my side.
“He is the Sword of Tharros. He is the King Consort of Mrachgorod. He is more, not less. Anyone who forgets that will answer to me.”
A ripple moved through the courtyard—not fear exactly, and not only fear. Relief, too, threading through the gathered crowd.
I looked back at them.
“I'll be here. Not as a distant queen with a gate and a title and too many opinions about black silk. You'll see me in these halls. At your tables. In your yards. In your council chambers when someone makes the catastrophic mistake to invite me.”
That earned a small sound from the household.
Almost laughter.
The kind people made when they suspected a queen was joking but weren't yet willing to stake their careers on it.
“Mrachgorod and Tharros will stand together. The gate made us one problem.” I let my mouth curve. “We may as well become one solution.”
This time, the sound was real—small, but unmistakably so.
I drew a breath.
I let my gaze move over them.
Geren. Vessa. The guards who’d held the wall. The servants who’d carried water and bandages and bodies. Liesel with Aldric’s children tucked around her like something fragile and fiercely guarded.
“This is not me taking your prince away from you,” I said.
The courtyard went very still. Good. That had been the fear under half their faces, whether they knew it or not.
“This is not me borrowing your keep until Mrachgorod becomes convenient. This is not Tharros becoming a corridor to somewhere more important.”
My fingers tightened around Enzo’s. “This is my home now, too.”
The words landed harder than I expected. Rude of them. I kept going anyway. “Which is unfortunate for anyone hoping I would be polite about it.”
Someone near the back made a sound suspiciously close to a laugh. Better.
“I protect what is mine,” I said. “And apparently that includes all of you now.”
The silence that followed was not fear. Or not only fear, at least.
Then Geren bowed. Every guard followed. Then the staff. Then the household, one line after another, bowing not to a guest, not to a rumor with knives, but to a queen who’d just told them she was staying.
I hated how much it mattered.
The walk out of the courtyard gave me a few precious minutes to pretend none of it had.
We stepped through the outer gate and crossed the field.
The bodies were gone. The blood was not. It had sunk into the earth, darkening the soil where men had died and monsters had been unmade. Already, green pushed through in thin, stubborn blades.
The country was healing. Not cleanly. Not quickly enough. But it had turned toward me, and I felt it now with every step.
The monolith rose ahead of us, black stone and old runes, vast enough to make every mundane argument about borders seem very stupid. In its center, the gate opened.
And through it, I saw home.
Mrachgorod.
The courtyard of my mother’s palace waited on the other side. Dark stone. Silver-inlaid arches. The same steps I'd run down as a child. The same walls I hadn't let myself remember too clearly for a hundred years.
Sela stood thirty paces beyond the aperture, and I knew her immediately.
Thinner. Hair silvered at the temples. But the same face. The same hands pressed now to her mouth. The same woman who had dressed my mother, hidden court secrets in plain sight, and survived long enough to send word when survival finally became worth the risk.
Behind her stood others. Old faces and new ones alike. My Court, gathered together and waiting.
I stopped two paces from the gate, and Enzo came to a halt beside me.
Behind us, the household waited in breathless silence. Ahead, Mrachgorod stretched beyond the gate, vast and watchful.
I hadn't planned what came next. For once, I didn't need to.
I turned to Enzo and lifted both hands to his face. His eyes warmed before the bond carried my intent. His hands came to my waist. He bent as I rose onto my toes.
I kissed him beneath the open sky, before every watching eye, and let the gesture speak what words never could. It was a declaration. A promise given in front of two courts, a wounded keep, a waiting kingdom, and the gate that had made our private bond into a political fact no one could ignore.
The bond went wide.
The marks at my throat brightened. Beneath his formal coat, the handprint over his heart answered. Zoya shifted on my shoulder but held her place, which was considerate of her and frankly unexpected.
Behind us, the household let out a collective sound—half-sigh, half-startled laugh.
Somewhere ahead, among the delegation from Mrachgorod, someone actually gasped.
Good.
Let them understand exactly what kind of queen they were getting.
I drew back just enough to rest my forehead against Enzo’s, unwilling to put any more distance between us than absolutely necessary.
“Nadia,” Enzo murmured.
“What?” I asked.
“Everyone’s watching,” he said.
“I know.”
“That was not a public kiss.”
“I know.”
A helpless note crept into his voice as he added, “You have just signaled to every member of two courts that the Queen of Mrachgorod is married to a man she intends to kiss in public.”
“I have,” I agreed.
“Your father-in-law is watching.”
I huffed a laugh. “Augustin has been watching every ridiculous thing we’ve done for years. He’ll survive this one.”
His mouth twitched, the beginning of a smile carefully edited for court consumption.
Reluctantly, I lowered back onto my heels and slipped my hand into his.
Beside us, Zoya lifted her head, her gaze fixed on the gate.
“Ready?” Enzo asked quietly.
“No.”
His thumb brushed once against mine, warm and steady.
“Want to go anyway?”
I peered through the gate toward Sela.
Toward the palace.
Toward the city waiting beyond the walls, full of expectations, problems, and people who had no idea what was coming.
A strange ache tightened in my chest—fear, excitement, grief, hope. Probably all of them at once.
“Absolutely.”
And together, hand in hand, we stepped into the shadows.
Thank you so much for reading A Poison of Shadows.