Page 201 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

We spent the whole afternoon just chatting and walking the grounds of Taren. He’d changed a lot. But so had I. Yet nothing felt odd about it. And all worry melted off my shoulders before it was noon.

As much as Eren had made it my decision, I was smart enough to know that it wasn’t mine alone to make. So I gathered a meeting with the tribe leaders.

Cai arrived first. His grey leathers rugged and worn. When he dropped to the chair next to mine, he let out a long, tired sigh. I had not seen him in weeks.

“You look…tired?”

He slowly turned to me. “Your compliments always flatter me. Apologies even more.”

“Cai—”

“How many times do we have to go through this, Cakes? How many times do I have to go through this?”

“Not for long. Bear with me till then. I will try and stay alive until then.”

He frowned at me. “And after. Will you try and stay alive after?”

“Depends. Will I be getting my salted caramel candy?”

He reached into his pocket and threw me one. How in the hells did he have them at ready? “Say stupid things like that again and I’ll make sure to grow a pepper bed over your grave.”

“That is terrifying.”

He threw me another candy. “Shut up.”

Oh, damned hells. I almost forgot. “Cai,” I said, munching on the sweet. “Don’t flirt with my brother.”

My friend cocked up an amused brow. “Why would I flirt—” His words got cut in the middle when Eren strutted in the meeting room and sat across from him.

I rolled my eyes when Cai’s smile grew serpentine. “The brother, I presume.”

“Eren,” I said. “This is Cai, my best friend, my general and someone I’ve had the honour of calling my brother for the past thirteen years.”

Eren bowed his head. “Pleasure, Cai.”

My friend’s grin was wide. “Pleasure is all mine.”

Oh gods.

The meeting had fallen silent after my words. They looked mad at what I had proposed.

“With all respect to you, my queen, and His Highness,” Gilmor, the Lanner tribe leader, spoke first. “But we chose you not because you were heir, not because of the bloodline you carried or the power that you channel—we chose you because of the sacrifice, tears and blood you poured onto this kingdom since you were no more than a child. You wore the obsidian crown and took the reins of trouble without being asked, without doubting, without faltering. Not once.”

Grunts and nods of approval followed. It left me a bit astounded.

Had it been what they had thought then? When I wore that crown, all I remember seeing was fear. A Krigborn queen on an Olympian throne. An Ybris with powers she could not comprehend herself.

“We saw it in you the day you lost your team in the mountains. You wore no grief, no pain, only the pride and the hard work of the soldiers you had lost. You stood the day we buried them—that very difficult day for only a sixteen-year-old girl who had faced and battled the guardian of death—solemn, like a queen,” Darron, the eldest of us and leader of Alder, said. “Then we heard your pain and grief in the troubled skies, echoed in your cries at night as you counted name by name every soldier you had lost every night in your nightmares for months. When you make the trip to their graves every year though you knew them for barely days. We knew then what we had in front of us. A warrior strong enough to battle the storm, compassionate to soothe the wind, with knowledge that paved rocks and the confidence of a lightning strike. All qualities of an Olympian ruler. The same we saw in your uncle, your grandfather and your every ancestor before. We saw it then and we have kept seeing it every day since. You are queen. Have you ever questioned why we crowned a child to take the throne?”

“The Olympian throne was empty.”

“The Olympian throne needed a leader,” he said. “It needed you. Your Krigborn wits and your Skygard heart.”

I looked over at Alaric and saw pride in his smile. “We are people of the skies, kid, we all see despite what you know how to hide well.”

Eren nodded at their words and turned to me. “It appears we all agree. What do we say, little sister, shall we put this to rest?”

I nodded.