Page 171 of Autumn Queens & Shadows

What?

Chapter forty

Violet Alliums

Thora

Snow greeted my smile with a sad one of her own. “Did you banish him?”

I hugged her, holding her tightly like I’d done when I was little and afraid. “I did. But I want him back.” I wanted the other half of him, too. “I just wish that was a choice he didn’t make out of force or necessity. I wanted him to do it because it was what he wanted.”

Kilian was looking down and frowning at me. “So, it is like that.”

“It is,” I agreed, and then his brows almost met his hairline.

I pulled away from Snow and hugged my nephew and my little niece hanging to my sister’s skirts. “Go rest. All of you. It has been a long day.”

Kilian looked behind me, at where my new court was gathering around the rose gardens, right over where I’d taken my father’s life. Isjord was going to take a new life right there, where my own had started ten years ago. “It looks like it is going to be a lot longer for you.”

“Nothing I cannot deal with.”

He patted my head like I was still nineteen and clinging to him to teach me to be capable. “Nothing you cannot deal with.”

Once everyone was there, men and women from the new and the old Isjord, I joined Elias at the centre of it. “Welcome back to those who have stood by my side for the last ten years,” I said, greeting my old members, and then turning to the new. “And welcome inside my court to those that have just now joined us.”

All bowed their heads and Karl Modr took a step forward. “What now, my queen?”

“Union,” I said. “We join the old and the new. As by the blessing of the gods above and their gifted below, we shall be one again. One Isjord.”

It had been a long, tiring day filled with much discussion and decision making. Just not long enough it seemed, because even beyond midnight, I couldn’t make myself lay down or even stop thinking about him.

“I’m going to be so gentle to you,” I whispered to the necklace in my hand, smoothing a finger over the amber stone. “I shouldn’t have thrown you back at him ten years ago, I’m sorry.”

I smiled when the stone faintly glowed in the surrounding darkness.

A loud knock at my door almost made my soul jump out of my tired bones, and I clutched Mal’s necklace to my erratic heart.

Sam came marching in. “It’s mother.”

He didn’t even finish his sentence before I jumped out of bed and let him fade us to Adriata.

Snow’s angry groans reverberated along her room. She laid on her bed, sweating and clutching her belly. Though she should be screaming in pain, she was moaning and groaning from anger. “I’m going to kill him!” she shouted, pushing the midwife and the healers off her.

Him.

As in her husband.

The man she loved.

Where was he, actually?

I paused. He’d left her side at night?

The doors slammed open, and Kilian strode in, panting and covered in a sheen of sweat and fear. He kneeled on the bed beside her, cupping her face and kissing her all over.

Her chest rose faster and faster, and she kept slapping him off her violently even though she’d asked for him up until now. “This is all your fault! You did this to me!”

“I’m sorry,” Kilian said without an ounce of apology, not budging at all despite how hard she was still trying to push him away. In fact, he was grinning so brightly he was about to blind someone. “I’m so sorry. I will not do it again.”