29. Elara
Elara
“The queen.”
The man whose entire job is apparently announcing people has a voice like a cathedral bell, and it rolls out over a thousand upturned faces, and every single one of them is pointed at me.
I stand at the top of the staircase — the one you could drive a truck up — in a dress I hate, with hair I didn’t ask for, in a room that has clearly never heard the word restraint in its life, and I think, very clearly, what the fuck is this.
Gold. Gold everywhere. Gold columns, gold ceiling, gold dripping off the chandeliers, gold on the sconces and the railings and the little cherub situation happening above the windows, more gold than I have seen in my entire life combined, more gold than should structurally exist in one room.
And something deep in my chest rolls over and settles.
Settles. Like a cat finding the sunny spot.
A warm, low, satisfied weight spreading out behind my ribs, content for the first time since I fell into this realm, and it takes me a second to understand that the feeling isn’t mine.
Or it is mine, but it’s the other mine. The one everybody keeps insisting lives in here.
Are you kidding me.
I shoved a full-grown dragon three entire steps. I growl, allegedly, and can’t hear it. My tattoo feels like a lighter sparking under my skin. And through all of it, every impossible thing, you’ve been dead silent — and the first time I really feel you, actually feel you, it’s now?
For GOLD?
We are going to have a conversation about priorities, you and I.
The settled feeling does not care. The settled feeling would like to move in.
And then I make the mistake of looking past the gold at the people, all of them, the entire realm in formal wear staring up at me in ringing silence, and the panic arrives right on schedule.
I can’t do this. I cannot do this. Who ordered a ball?
Who decided I’m a queen? Nobody has shown me a single document.
There’s been no test, no ceremony, no background check — there has to be a mistake, some other Elara, a realm full of dragons and they’re all looking at a journalist from Chicago whose greatest achievement this year is a listicle about fictional men, and I can’t, I truly can’t, my feet are not moving, I am going to stand on this staircase until I die and they will dust me seasonally—
And then I find Rayner.
Across the whole room, past a thousand strangers, at the far end of the room with the others, up by the throne situation, and he’s already looking at me.
Of course he’s already looking at me. He smiles, slow and sure, and dips his head, just once, like we’re the only two people here and everything is already fine.
The panic lets go of my lungs.
I don’t ask why that works. I’ve stopped asking why they work. It works, and I can breathe, and my feet remember their one job.
Then, floating above the strings and the murmur of a thousand people, I hear a laugh. One specific laugh, choked off in the middle like somebody elbowed its owner, and I know exactly whose it is, and I remember all at once what I’m wearing.
The heat starts at my ears and goes all the way down. I’m going to descend this staircase like a dignified pastry, and then I am going to have Gunnar executed as my first official act, and the realm will understand, because the realm can see the dress.
I start down the stairs.
And for a minute — one whole minute — it’s exactly what it’s supposed to be.
The music swells back up. The crowd sighs.
People bow as I pass like a wind moving through a field, and it’s beautiful, it’s genuinely beautiful, and some tiny traitorous part of me that has read ten thousand ballroom scenes thinks — oh.
So this is what it feels like on the inside.
I reach the floor. The crowd folds back to make a path, a long golden aisle of smiling faces between me and the throne end of the room, between me and my men, and I can see them at the end of it. All five. Erik a pace ahead of the others, eyes on me like a rope I could walk across.
I start toward them.
The first tug at my dress, I think I’ve caught it on something.
I glance down. A man’s hand is holding my hem. A stranger, bowed low, his fingers full of white fabric, and he’s not letting go, and his face lifts, and the look in it is want.
“Excuse me—” I pull. The fabric slides free.
Another hand catches the other side of the skirt.
Then another.
They’re reaching out of the crowd. Bowing and grabbing at the same time, murmuring my queen, my queen while their fingers close on ruffles, on tiers, and I keep walking because I don’t know what else to do, and something at the back of my skirt gives with a long ripping sound, and a piece of my dress just — leaves.
Goes into the crowd. A man holds it to his face.
I watch as he takes a long, deep breath and I am not okay.
“Stop—” I’m turning, trying to see all of them at once, and there is no all of them, there’s only more of them, the aisle that was so wide narrowing on both sides, smiling faces leaning in, hands and hands and hands, and I look for someone to stop this, a guard, an attendant, anyone.
Nobody moves.
Nobody moves.
The music keeps playing. Beautiful, unbothered, like the strings can’t see this, and a sleeve seam pops at my shoulder, and I hear my own voice saying excuse me, excuse me, please— in the tone you use when the world has stopped making sense and you’re still trying to be polite to it.
And then a hand closes around my bare wrist.
Skin. Not fabric. A stranger’s hot fingers wrapped all the way around my wrist, and everything in me goes white.
“Don’t touch me—” I wrench free and stumble sideways and another hand catches my arm, above the elbow, gripping, and someone’s fingers graze my hair, tugging at a braid Colette spent an hour on, and a palm presses flat against my back and pushes, and they’re saying my queen, my queen, my queen, reverent and hungry at the same time, and the smell of them is everywhere, wine and smoke and too many bodies, and I can’t get a full breath, the dress is a cage, the crowd is a mouth, and I hear a sound come out of me that I have never made before — high and cracked and nothing like words.
Far away, at the end of what used to be the aisle, the wall of my men breaks.
They’re moving. All five, coming off the platform fast, Erik’s face like nothing I’ve ever seen on it, Leif’s mouth forming orders, Gunnar shoving somebody into a column, and I sob out loud with relief because they’re coming, they’re coming — and the crowd surges and closes between us like water.
Bodies and bodies and bodies. I can’t see them anymore.
I can’t see them anymore.
Someone pulls the back of my dress hard enough to bend me, and I’m screaming now, really screaming, and the music is still playing, and nobody in this golden room full of a thousand people will look at me like anything is wrong—
A hand closes around mine and yanks.
Hard. Out of the crush, through the wall of bodies, air, space, and relief floods through me so fast my knees nearly give, because they got to me, one of them got to me—
“This way,” says a voice I have never heard in my life.
He’s young. He’s a stranger. Gray sleeves, sweating face, terrified eyes, and his grip on my hand is crushing, and he’s not pulling me toward my men, he’s pulling me away from them, along the wall, fast, behind the columns, and I’m fighting now, really fighting, hauling backward with everything I have, and it’s like hauling against a machine.
“Let go of— help— HELP—”
The music swallows it. The gold swallows it.
A panel in the corner of the ballroom stands open where no door was, black as night, and he drags me toward it while I claw at his fingers, and the last thing I get of the light is white fabric — my dress catching on the panel’s edge and tearing, a long piece of it ripping away and staying behind, caught on the corner like a flag.
Then the dark takes the rest of me.