Chapter 59 The Crown, A Penance
The Crown, A Penance
Lucian
W
endy doesn’t join me when I return to Ilyria. She said she couldn’t leave Azaire and didn’t want to bring him, either.
The castle is far emptier than usual, filling me with worry.
I go first to Lilac’s room, hoping to find her resting there.
I can’t begin to imagine how many people she has killed.
There were dozens beneath the rubble of the academy, and Wendy wouldn’t tell me how many more there’ve been since I left.
Instead of my sister, I find Calista, alone in Lilac’s bed with tear streaks staining her cheeks, though she wipes her eyes before any more fall. There would be so many more tears if she knew Folkara has fallen.
I have to tell so many people.
Perhaps she can feel it; tethered to Folkara by the nature of her power, she knows her parents, most of her friends and family, must be dead.
Calista rises when she sees me, muttering her apologies.
“What’s happened?” I ask, stepping inside.
“The coronation… they’ve adjusted the dates.” Calista takes a deep breath, pressing a finger beneath her eye to catch a tear. “Lilac and my brother ascend to the throne today.”
My jaw tightens.
Lilac is barely twenty. She’s not ready for marriage, a throne, or a crown. She’s not prepared for such political power—not when she can barely contain the magic Leiana passed down to her.
I turn and walk quickly toward the throne room. I won’t let it happen. I have to stop this.
Calista follows behind.
“Lucian,” she says my name in a way that tells me she knows I have a plan. “There’s nothing we can do to stop this.”
There is. I know exactly how to stop it. I quicken my pace through the kingdom.
“Lucian!”
“Lilac isn’t ready!” I turn towards her. “And neither are you… to let her go. You won’t have to. Just—come with me.”
She shakes her head. “I can’t watch Lilac wed my brother.”
I extend my hand toward her. “I promise that you won’t.”
?
I used to think the castle felt more like home to Lilac than it did to me. She was raised here, her parents belonged to the castle, and she belonged with them. It’s a shame I was so wrong. Perhaps Lilac remembers now, too.
The Memorium brought back Desdemona for everyone else. It brought back my parents for me, revealing the truth of my lineage and Lilac’s. I hope she doesn’t question everything the way I do.
When I reach the throne room, a few nobles, guards, and Labyrinth are present. None of them attempt to arrest me for treason, though I expected they would.
At the front of the room, standing before the towering twin thrones—marble adorned in shining silver, their seats lined with plush cushions—are Lilac and Kai, hand in hand, both wearing stark frowns. Behind them stands the coronator, holding Labyrinth’s staff and a pillow displaying the two crowns.
The staff should go to Lilac; it was always meant for a woman. Labyrinth received it because my grandparents only had two sons: Labyrinth and Silas. Silas killed Labyrinth to usurp the throne, then stole his name.
Lilac looks at me from across the room. Her gaze hovers just above mine, refusing to meet my eyes, telling me one thing—she’s guilty.
“Stop this!” I shout as I walk down the aisle, Calista beside me. Every gaze in the room shifts to me.
“Lucian, what are you…?” Lilac’s voice sharpens with the last word.
I stop beneath the twin thrones, lowering to a knee and bowing my head before my sister and Kai. Then I rise, taking a cautious step toward Lilac. Guards move to stop me, but she raises a gloved hand, already reminding me of her mother.
It’s too soon.
With her permission, I ascend the steps to the throne and wrap her in an embrace.
I whisper, just for her, “I know the murders have been you. And I know the Memorium has given you back your memories, too.” She inhales shakily, her grip loosening around me.
“This crown, this burden, was never yours. Calista is here and she still wants you. You can have the life you want, Li.”
Lilac pulls away, holding onto my arms as tears fall from her eyes, her lower lip quivering. She can’t take the throne now—she isn’t ready to be queen. She doesn’t even want to.
“It’s all right, Li,” I whisper. “It’ll be all right.”
Lilac shakes her head, her core trembling. Quietly, she says, “I didn’t mean to, Lucy.”
It’s an admission of guilt, yet I am so glad for it.
“I’ll help you,” I say, reaching for her cheek. “You’re the very best of this family.”
Lilac shakes her head against my hand, tears sliding beneath my palm. “I can’t put that burden on you.”
“I’d do anything for you, Li. You deserve it all.” I glance down the aisle at Calista. She can’t hear us, yet she nods.
Lilac looks into my eyes. “You sound like Azaire.”
I smile a little, wondering if she knows what’s become of him. “I should hope so,” I mutter.
He is the very best of me, and I fear I tore him from himself when I brought back his body. I’ll find a way to bring more than his body back. I have to.
“Lucian,” Labyrinth warns from the front of the room. But he’s not the true Labyrinth. He never has been. It’s insulting that I spent my whole life so unaware. “If the throne must pass to a man, then it should go to me—”
“Silas,” I cut him off, using his real name as I glare at my father figure. My voice teeters on the edge of something dangerous as I say, “We both know why you shouldn’t.”
As Labyrinth steps toward us, I raise my hand, shadows swirling around my arm like a violent storm. Everything he and Leiana did was for my power—and he will never get it.
“I know why you were desperate to control me,” I warn. “It won’t be so easy this time around.”
Labyrinth’s eyes widen as he takes a step back, his gaze on the shadows along my arm.
At the back of the room, guards stand at attention. I look in their direction. Some are Draes. Earlier, when Desdemona and I were searching for the Soul Ruby, I thought I’d seen Drae guards. It isn’t entirely unusual to employ them, though you don’t often see them in the castle.
“Take him,” I command. Gasps echo through the room as the legion steps forward, then stops, stricken, as Labyrinth glares at them.
“Lucian,” Labyrinth whispers.
“Take him!”
This time, when the guards step forward, Labyrinth can’t scare them away. The small crowd parts as they move through the throne room, stopping before Labyrinth. He shakes his head, muttering, “Don’t you dare.”
Though he doesn’t fight, not as fiercely as he could. Perhaps he knows he cannot win. Perhaps the guards, too, have received memories of the true rulers.
They take Labyrinth by his arms, pulling him out of the room. He looks over his shoulders, meeting my gaze, then Lilac’s. He says nothing more.
Kai glances at me next, his gaze shadowed—a glamour still covering the bottom of his eye. He puckers his lip, looking guilty, and I push past his glamour to see a long, thin scar running from the waterline of his eye nearly to his chin. It likely impaired his sight, and I’m curious why he hid it.
Lilac glances behind us, nodding to the coronator. The staff in her grasp looks different; the Stone of Light is missing. Leiana and Labyrinth truly did put it in the shackles to contain me.
As I step toward the coronator, Lilac and Kai move apart. I thought Kai would put up more of a fight.
“Wait!” Calista shouts, and the coronator freezes. “Who’s claiming Folkara?”
Broken gasps echo, thin in the large room as the whispers grow. No one knows that Folkara no longer exists.
The coronator backs up, clutching the crown tighter, as if it’s her choice whose head it rests on.
I can’t answer about Folkara before the crown is on my head.
The coronator doesn’t resist as I slip into her subconscious, like smoke through the cracks of a door.
I push into her limbs—first her legs, walking her toward me while keeping my own body motionless to conserve energy.
When she’s in front of me, I have to hide my ragged breath.
It isn’t hard amidst the cries of concern in the room.
I raise the coronator’s hands, and through my control, she places the crown on my head.
Then, she hands me the staff.
The very thing that has controlled my ancestors now vows to control me. The staff in my hand, a penance. The crown on my head, a pledge. And across from me, Lilac looks the spitting image of Leiana.
A reminder that familial ties can never be torn.
A promise that the abuse of a generation will be handed to the next.
A vow to carry it. I will take the last thing I’ve ever wanted for her.
I look over the room at my subjects, an order on my tongue. It breaks my heart to give it.
“Bring me Desdemona Althenia.”