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Staring down, I brushed the pads of my fingers over the gold cuffs encircling her wrists.
“What is it, Goll?” she persisted.
I leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to her lips. “It means something I’ve known for some time.”
I took one of her hands in mine and turned toward my Culled, all of them staring with wide, wondering eyes.
“Kel Klyss,” I bellowed across the clearing. Then I raised her arm, her cloak falling behind her, her sleeve sliding up to reveal her slender arm and the gold cuff the gods had placed there. “I present to you Tiarrialuna Hartstone Verbane! My mizrah, my wife”—I turned to her, my heart in my throat as I declared before all—“and myqueen.”
Her breath hitched, but she kept her chin up and her face forward.
“The gods have declared it so, and I affirm it. I welcome it. Queen of Northgall!”
She squeezed my hand, a single tear sliding down her milk-pale cheek, but she kept her eyes forward.
Soryn was the first to break from the shock of the first wife and queen to ever be claimed by a wraith king. He thumped his fist to his chest and fell to one knee. “Queen Una!”
Keffa, Pullo, Morgolith, and the others fell instantly to one knee, loudly thumping their chests. All horns bowed. “Queen Una!”
They didn’t say it once but began to chant her new name, her rightful role as my partner in this world and hopefully the afterworld when this life was done. For I could not bear to ever part from her.
When their chant grew louder, smiles on their faces and joy in their voices as they lifted them in praise, she finally turned her head to me.
Her face shone bright, glistening with tears. She was too overwhelmed to say a word, it seemed. She did not need to.
As the Culled continued to chant her name, I pulled her into my arms and pressed my lips to her ear. “My beautiful queen.”
I held her close as the Culled echoed her new name to the sky, the sun dipping slowly and kissing the horizon with gold.
Chapter 45
UNA
“Your father is dead.”Athelyn faced me with a concerned and surprised expression. “You did not receive my message?”
I’d known this already. Somehow, I’d known. “When?” I asked. Gollaya pressed his palm to the middle of my back beneath my wings in comfort.
“Not long after I left Northgall, actually. I sent word, but we heard nothing back.”
Goll rubbed his palm up my spine and back down in a soothing stroke but said nothing.
Exhaling a deep breath, I said, “We’ve been traveling since your visit to Näkt Mir.”
A lump thickened my throat, but the tears didn’t come right away. Perhaps it was because I’d been mourning his imminent death for years, or perhaps because it had been so long since I’d actually spoken to the father I knew as a young girl. The one who’d do anything for me. Even rage a war against an entire realm of dark fae.
For whatever reason, I didn’t crumble at this news. Father was dead, and I needed to mourn him. I needed to see his tomb, but I must see Baelynn first. “Where’s my brother?”
“In his bedchamber.” Athelyn clamped his jaw and whirled. He led us through the palace, what was once my home.
Soryn and Keffa followed close but at a respectful distance behind us. We’d left the majority of the Culled in the great hall where Hava had set about organizing the servants to bring drink and refreshment.
At first, everyone simply stared in awe and shock, for the last time the wraith fae had entered was to demand their war prize and take me away as their prisoner. However, it didn’t take long before the servants quickly set about doing her bidding.
I felt the eyes of the Issosian guards and servants as we passed, all of them stopping where they were, staring in wonder, and dipping their heads in respect. I knew what they were thinking. Why would the Wraith King of Northgall let his concubine return to her former home to visit her brother? Why wasn’t she bound in chains, high in the palace of black glass?
They did not know him. They did not know me either. Not anymore. But soon, the world would hear of us, the King and Queen of Northgall and Lumeria. Our union would change everything. I felt it in my soul. Just as I sensed this new magick coursing through my blood.
I’d been able to sense the black essence in Ferryn because the gods had been feeding me the opposite through the two god-touched texts I’d ingested. They’d given me a different kind of sight, one that now, with the power of all three inside me, allowed me to easily weigh what and who was good and evil.
