Chapter 30
Excited chatter bombards my ears, the hubbub of dozens of people in a too-tight space. Shadows pile in the corners while torchlight illuminates a sea of Aethrolian gray.
The air in my lungs deserts me. I crane for a glimpse of the fae, but people cluster around the dais—too many of them, blocking my view. “Move,” I shout.
It’s the opposite of proper, but to my surprise, people obey. Someone catches sight of my expression and tugs at his neighbor’s sleeve, and soon everyone is turning to look, the crowd shifting at my command.
Maybe because I’m desperate, or maybe because I’m Graced, now.
Who knows. Who cares.
The crowd parts. I take a single step, my pulse throbbing in my throat, tingles rushing into my fingertips. Because…
Because…
The world tips. A high-pitched whine rings in my skull, blotting everything out. For a second, I just stand there, throat working, heart in free fall, my head drifting somewhere overhead.
He stands with his back to me, but I’d know the lines of that body anywhere. The slope of his shoulders, the taper of his waist, the contours of his thighs. The drape of white hair, hanging down his back.
My mate.
My Amriel.
A strangled cry bursts out of me. He must hear it, because he slants a glance over his shoulder, one that’s almost shy. When our eyes connect, I burst into bloom. I’m a riot of heat and color inside. Of joy. Of life.
He turns fully, his eyes shimmering with a wealth of intention. His mouth twitches, snicks up at the corner. “Princess.”
I can’t see, can’t hear, can’t breathe, can’t do anything but fly toward him, suddenly unbound from the laws of physics.
I’m running and leaping, crashing against him, my arms locking around his neck, my legs clamped around his waist. I bury my face in his skin as I gasp and tremble and cry.
As I haul in lungfuls of his beautiful scent. As his arms come up to cradle me close.
“I thought you were dead,” I wail. His skin is wet, and so is my face, the strands of his hair sticking to my cheeks. “Oh, goddess, I thought you were dead. I thought you’d left me.”
He breathes deeply, his chest rising and falling, so wonderfully alive that I break into a fresh round of sobs. His hand skims up my back, cradles my nape. “I would never leave you. Never. Not unless I had no other choice.”
I cling to those words, let them roll through me, ride the wave of his baritone as it rumbles from his chest into mine. Then I rear back and grab his cheeks, pressing a kiss against his mouth. Hard and urgent, no softness at all. Just relief and victory and please don’t leave me again.
He kisses me back with relish, as if we’re the only ones here. And I swear we are. There’s nothing but blue sky all around us, limitless and infinite. Eternal.
When I finally disengage and let him set me on my own two feet, I can’t look at anything else.
He gazes down, his dimples on display, and though I know that everyone here is staring, that silence now has this room in a death grip, none of it touches me.
Nothing but the sound of the world remaking itself as our future unfurls before us.
Amriel takes my chin in his hand, his thumb smoothing along my jaw.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to get here.
I only…well, your sister refused to travel by gyre again.
She said she’d rather die. Which is a little dramatic, if you ask me, but since she’d just saved my life, I agreed to bring her home on foot. ”
My sister. My sister.
When I look around, Carina stands nearby, her glance slanted to the side as she grinds a toe against the floor. She peeks up at me, and I throw myself at her, squeezing so tight her breath gusts against my ear. “Thank you,” I babble. “Thank you thank you thank you.”
She squeezes me back with more vigor than I thought her capable of. “Of course,” she says. “Healing him was easy. And Velindra was…interesting. To say the least.”
Something in her tone has me pulling back, holding her at arm’s length. A fae man hovers behind her—Varian, who I remember from dinner the other night. He stares at Carina, his look fond, but somehow also hungry, and…
Oh. Oh.
I suck in a gasp. I’ve seen that look before, on the Shadow’s face. And on Calen’s, when he looks at Ravenna.
My startled gaze finds Carina’s. She ducks, her cheeks pinkening. “Later,” she says, low and hurried. “We’ll talk later. When we’re not in a crowd.”
Right. The crowd.
I spin to face them. All around the room, mouths hang open, and I inch toward Amriel again, my hand groping blindly, as if to assure me he truly exists.
My fingers make contact with his sleeve, and I realize he’s wearing some type of clothing I’ve never seen before—a fitted green jacquard vest with hook closures down the front, and a snug black shirt beneath.
Equally snug black pants encase his thighs.
I frown, raking my gaze over him from head to toe. “What…what’re you wearing?”
“Oh, this?” he says, but his sly tone can’t erase the twinkle in his eyes. “Haven’t you seen fae formalwear before?”
I shake my head. And look around to realize all the fae are dressed similarly. Goddess, so many of them have come. Rhialla. Calen. Ravenna, who beams at me, her hands clasped excitedly beneath her chin. There are also a handful of other faces I recognize, and dozens more I don’t.
But I’ll learn. I’ll learn the names of everyone here.
“We’ve come to return your sister,” Amriel says, “but also to make you a proposition.”
I blink. “What proposition?”
“It doesn’t matter,” my father’s gruff voice cuts in. “The answer is no.”
My gaze slips past Amriel. My father sits atop his throne, his expression stormy. Torchlight deepens the crags in his face and makes his eyes look darker than they are.
“Sariah completed the labyrinth,” he says to Amriel. “She’s no longer bound by the terms of the treaty. As a Graced member of this family, her place is here. I won’t marry her off to the fae. Not even to their king.”
My breath catches, molten emotion piling inside my chest. “Marry…?”
Amriel snorts softly. He’s looking at me, though he directs his words at my father. “You misunderstand me, Edmond. I’m not asking for your permission. I’m asking for your daughter’s. I couldn’t care less what anyone else has to say about it.”
Fresh murmurs ripple around the room. Still, Amriel doesn’t look away from me. My father makes to come toward us, but someone steps in to restrain him—Calen, maybe.
Amriel takes my hands in his. I squeeze, gratified by the feel of his fingers, so callused and warm and rough.
By the way our bond sighs to life, untainted now by pain.
It grows and expands and sings, and when I look into my mate’s eyes, I see both halves of him peering back, those twin pools of gold deeper now, richer, more.
He’s whole now. Healed.
Amriel lowers himself to his knees. Shocked exclamations ripple around us, but they might as well be happening on the moon.
“What…” I falter, try again. “What’re you doing?”
That cocksure smile slides across his mouth. “Begging. The first time we stood in this room, you begged at my feet, so now it’s only right that I do it at yours.”
A tender barb snags in my throat, emotion pricking at my eyes.
“I thought I knew pain,” he says. “Before. But these past few days… Well. I can only laugh at myself, now. Because true pain is not being able to touch you. Not being near you. It’s failing to catch your scent in the hallways.
It’s knowing an entire mountain range separates me from the sound of your voice. ”
I blink and blink and blink, but everything has gone fuzzy, my vision blurred.
“Which is why I’m begging you to come back to Velindra,” Amriel continues.
“Stay with me. Always. Be my mate, or my wife. Whichever one of those words means more to you. And I know I should’ve asked you before.
I realized it when I was dying. Funny how you only know what you should’ve done with your time when you have none left.
But I see now. And I’ll do better. Every day, if you’ll let me. ”
I can’t help it. Tears overflow. Happy ones—joyful little streaks that charge down my cheeks.
Amriel waits, hope swimming in his eyes, even though he must feel my answer etched in the roots of my soul. Must hear me shouting it down the bond at him.
But he seems to want me to say it out loud, because he doesn’t move, just kneels at my feet in front of all of Aethrolia.
“This is an outrage,” my father cuts in. “Sariah’s needed here.”
I scoff, not even sparing him a glance. Needed?
I wasn’t needed as a child, when Carina earned her Grace and Ishanna passed me over.
I wasn’t needed as a teenager, when I craved nothing more than my father’s approval and he refused to give it.
Or as an adult, when the fae king wrested me from my family and my father did nothing to stop it.
He didn’t need me then. And now I don’t need him.
“I Claim you,” I blurt at Amriel.
Gasps fill the room. Amriel’s eyes widen. “You what?”
“Amriel of the fae,” I say, thinking back to the words he used that night. “I hereby Claim you, by the rights granted to me by…well, myself, I guess. Because I don’t need a treaty. Just the truth in my heart. And in yours.”
Love and devotion swell in his eyes, and a whole host of other emotions—everything at once, all I’ll ever need.
“I Claim you,” I say again. A smile tugs at my lips before blossoming in full. “So stand up. We’re going now.”
He laughs. Actually laughs, and then he’s surging to his feet, gathering me close, his gyre emerging from his pocket, already pouring light.
My father breaks into a shout. But Calen holds him back as I snuggle my face against Amriel’s chest.
“I’ll be back,” I call. I still have plenty to attend to here—conversations to be had with Carina, amends to be made with my sisters.
But not right now. Not today.
All around the room, gyres appear, filling fae hands. Only Varian stays behind, looking longingly at Carina. It’s the last thing I see before reality rips apart.
In the void, I tip my face up, seeking Amriel. He drops a hard kiss onto my mouth, one that makes my head swim and my knees go liquid.
I don’t notice the rest. Not the violent lurch of the world or the jolt of our arrival. I just kiss him, and kiss him, and when I finally step back, I breathe more deeply than I have in weeks.
This time, the sweet, magic-rich air of Velindra courses into my lungs.
Because we’re back in his castle. In my bedroom.
I’m finally home, where I belong.