Page 64

He tightened his hand around mine which rested on his forearm. “All in good time.”

My heart skipped. “You’re very sure I’m not going anywhere, aren’t you?”

“Let’s just say,” he murmured, that knowing smile playing at his mouth, “I think you’d fit in rather well around here.”

I rolled my eyes, but the warmth in his voice made it impossible not to smile back, and for a few blessed steps, the dread loosened its grip on my throat. Then the great doors rose up before us, the noise of the banquet swelling behind them, and Lazaros stopped, giving my hand another gentle squeeze.

“Ready?”

I dragged in a breath, nerves and something dangerously close to full on panic tangling together in my chest.

“As I’ll ever be, I guess.”

He winked. “That’s the spirit! And did I tell you how beautiful you look?”

I smirked, tapping him on the arm. “You did thank you. But I’ll warn you now, if you say it one more time, I might have to marry you instead of your brother.”

He blew out a low whistle. “You seem lovely, but not worth my head if you know what I mean, and he already came close once.” He said, rubbing at his neck and making me feel guilty, that was until he saw my face, and his laughter rolled like warmth over the music. Then he nodded to the guards flanking the doors, and in perfect unison, they swung them open.

And the whole world spilled out in front of me.

Every dignitary in the kingdom seemed to be crammed into that hall. The long tables crowded with chatting, laughing, jewel-bright faces. It was almost obscene how completely the room had been scrubbed of the war that I had seen hints of earlier. Although most had been cleaned away, even then, I could very much imagine how it would have looked in the aftermath.

There was no smoke staining the soaring ceiling. No blood ground into the marble. Nothing waiting in the shadows. Just the gleam of polished silver and the warm gold of a thousand candles burning in chandeliers strung high overhead. A soft glow and music playing over the easy roar of people who had survived.

And at the far end of it all, raised above the rest on a wide stone dais, was a long table.

Behind it sat a throne.

Not the same as the one in the throne room. This one was carved and gilded, warmer somehow, and the man seated upon it made every other soul in that hall look small.

Atlas.

I had thought I knew what he looked like. I had seen him in armor, in battle, black tunics… in nothing at all. But I had never once seen him crowned, and the sight of it stole the air straight from my lungs.

He wore a high-collared coat of deepest midnight blue. Its surface embroidered with shimmering silver thread that traced whole constellations across his chest and shoulders, so that he seemed to be wearing a piece of the night sky itself.

A heavy velvet cloak fell from his shoulders, fastened at the throat with a great silver clasp bearing the crest of his house. And there, resting against his dark hair, was his crown. Dark silver spires curving upward, threaded metal twisted into impossible patterns, and at its very center a single brilliant emerald ringed in silver, with smaller stones scattered like seeds across its base.

He looked like something out of one of Thalia’s stories she had told me about the world when doing my hair.

Distant. Magnificent. Untouchably and terrifyingly, a king.

And beside his throne sat a second one. An identical seat to his right. Utterly, pointedly empty.

Waiting.

I knew, with a horrible certainty, exactly who it was waiting for.

That was the moment the hall noticed me.

In one breath, the room was a wall of warm noise, and the next it came to a stop, all at once. It was as though some unseen hand had reached out and pinched the flame of every conversation between two fingers. Heads turned. Chairs scraped. And then, in a great rustling wave that started near the doors and rolled all the way to the dais, every single person in that hall rose to their feet.

For me.

“Oh, shit,” I whispered.

My feet stopped working. Just like that, somewhere between one step and the next, my body refused to carry me another inch into that sea of staring faces. My heart slammed so hard against my ribs, I genuinely thought it might tear straight through the silver and emerald and out into the open for everyone to see.