Chapter 43
TERRAN
“How is she doing that?” I asked Lyra, finally able to breathe.
We stood at the base of the Sky Pinnacle where candidates for the next ruler of Aetheria tested their skills against each other.
The sheer rock face of vertical stone offered no quarter.
Gusts of wind sliced through the air which smelled thin and cold, a reminder that in this place, only the most powerful could do battle.
There were four candidates in total, Mev, thankfully, among them.
Two had dropped out already with only Mev and an Aetherian noble, and long-rumored as a potential for his predecessor, remaining.
He was strong, but Mev was stronger.
“I don’t know,” Lyra said beside me. “Removing air is more difficult than manipulating it. I’ve seen Galfrid attempt something similar, but I doubt anyone taught her to do that, including him.”
When the spectators realized what Mev had been doing from her position near the top of the mountain, it was too late for any of them to fight back, if this had been a battle.
Making it as difficult to breathe as if we were up there with her, Mev had created a moment of stillness that kept me uneasy, even after she returned the air to normal.
It was a skill that would be difficult to counter.
“It’s as if Elydor itself chose her,” Lyra said.
“I agree. Maybe her arrival awakened something dormant and Elydor recognizes her as part of the Gate’s balance, lending her extra power.”
Since I was watching Mev and her opponent, I didn’t realize Lyra was staring at me until Kael chuckled. When I looked at her expression, I may have scowled.
“That was incredibly insightful. And enlightened,” she said.
“I will have you know—”
“Look,” Kael exclaimed as those around us gasped.
Mev had lifted her hands, bending the high winds into a dome over the Pinnacle. Clouds ripped apart and then reformed into a roaring vortex above her opponent, pressing him down with invisible weight.
Both stayed that way until… he yielded.
For a time, no one moved. Then the mountain itself seemed to exhale and wind rushed over the stone as if carrying word of what had just taken place.
The air was alive with power, with the certainty that something in Aetheria had shifted.
Even the elders, usually unmoved by contests of might, stood silent in reverence.
This was not merely victory. It was the birth of legend, the moment the chronicles of Elydor would mark as the day Mev of Aetheria bent the wind to her will and claimed the skies as her own.
Cheers erupted around us, giving no hint that Mev might face the same type of rebellions as I was, though so far, there had been no further reports of unrest. A new king. And now, a new queen.
“Congratulations,” Lyra said to Kael as Galfrid approached the pair. Soon they would descend, and Aetheria would have its first half-human ruler.
“I cannot believe it,” he said, my brother’s shock apparent.
“Mev has become quite powerful,” Lyra said as the crowd began to file down the mountain around us.
They would gather in the palace courtyard where Mev would be crowned immediately.
She was already Aetheria’s queen, the most powerful in their clan since Galfrid had renounced his claim to the crown earlier, but a ceremony, according to Lyra, would simply make it official.
“I knew she was but… this is unexpected.”
“You are not happy for her?” Lyra was anything but pleased by my brother’s reaction.
“She will be targeted,” he said, staring at the spot where the contenders had stood. “Some may be unhappy with the outcome. Unhappy her father is stepping down. Or that she is partially human.”
I knew my brother. The catch in his voice was fear.
“She has the ability to make others stop breathing,” I reminded him. “Think on that, Kael. It’s never been done before. Mev is as strong, if not stronger, than even her father. In time, she’ll master every skill of his.”
“And has already an arsenal of her own,” Lyra added.
“Trust in her skills. Support her. Mev will be fine.”
Kael looked at me as if we were strangers.
“What?” I snapped.
“You’re just… different. Thank you,” he tossed to Lyra, taking off as Mev appeared through a break in the trees with her father.
“I suppose he thinks you are responsible for this… difference in me?”
“I suppose he does.”
I pulled Lyra toward me, knowing Kael was right.
“And I suppose you’ll be wanting some sort of reward?”
“Only if you agree with him.”
Only a handful of stragglers remained as the crowd had moved on. If anyone had told me I’d be standing at the base of the Sky Pinnacle with Lady Lyra of Aetheria in my arms, I’d have thought they were mad. And yet… nothing had ever felt more right.
“You fish for compliments,” I teased.
“I do.”
Smoothing back her hair as the wind picked up, I offered them freely.
“My brother often said our mother was the best of my father, and I understand now what he meant.”
“We are an unlikely pair.” Lyra leaned her cheek into my hand.
“Perhaps the reason it seems to work?”
“Perhaps.”
I dropped my hand as Kael, Mev, and Galfrid approached. Mev was clearly exhausted, though she ran straight into Lyra’s arms.
“Thank you,” she said, “for training me. Believing in me.”
Lyra squeezed her and murmured something I could not hear. When Mev let go, she looked at me.
“You have some interesting motivational methods, but they worked. Next time, a bit of warning before you cause a potential avalanche would be nice.”
“A warning would have weakened its purpose.”
Mev’s lips twitched despite the exhaustion lining her face. “Maybe.”
“Congratulations, your majesty,” I said with a bow. “That was well done. A most impressive display of air-wielding.”
Mev glanced between us with my brother and Galfrid looking at her proudly.
“I had no idea I could do half of that,” she said, “but I just remembered what you told me when we first started training, Lyra. That the air was never mine to command but something to listen to. And today, it listened back.”
“It did.” Lyra beamed. “In a most spectacular way.”
We began to walk, collectively, away from the Pinnacle.
The crowd had moved on, chasing the ceremony, the promise of a queen crowned at the palace gates. Mev walked ahead with Kael and Galfrid, the new center of their world.
“You don’t have to play the brute all the time,” Lyra said softly. The wind tugged strands of hair across her cheek, and she didn’t bother brushing them away. “Sometimes, the warning matters more than the avalanche.”
I stepped closer, close enough that the sharpness in her eyes caught the last shreds of daylight. “And sometimes,” I murmured, “the avalanche is the warning.”
Her laugh was low, unguarded… and tempting.
“Do you know what I saw up there?” she asked.
“Mev nearly killing us all with air?”
Her head tilted upward, the corners of her mouth daring me. “I saw you watching her. I saw you see yourself in her.”
I should have denied it, but the words stuck. Elydor had chosen Mev, just as surely as it had cursed, and chosen, me. Power that came unasked, unwanted, reshaping everything it touched.
But Lyra… steadied it.
“I am nothing like her,” I said, though my voice lacked conviction.
“No,” Lyra agreed, brushing her fingers over mine, feather-light, as we wrapped them together. “You’re worse. And better. And far more infuriating.”
Suddenly the mountain, the trial, the crown… they were distant things.
“Lyra.” My voice was rough.
She didn’t wait for me to finish. She stopped and rose onto her toes as her mouth found mine. I caught her against me, one hand fisted in her hair, the other dragging her flush to my chest. The kiss was a clash, sharp edges and long-denied hunger, but beneath it thrummed something steadier.
When we finally tore apart, breathless, the world was no less dangerous, no less uncertain. But for the first time, I didn’t care.
Elydor had chosen its queen. And I had chosen mine.
“After the crowning,” I murmured, thumb at her throat where her pulse raced, “I collect what I’m owed.”
Her slow smile made my own pulse race.
“I’m yours to command… Your majesty.”