The sight, when we reach the bottom and cut through a narrow copse of trees, leaves me awestruck. I’ve definitely heard the gathering, but I haven’t seen it until now: a sea of people, stretching from one side of a massive clearing to the other. I begin to feel a little dizzy again. “I didn’t realize there were going to be so many.”
“Nearly ten thousand,” Shireen says. Ten thousand pairs of expectant eyes, that follow us with laser beam intensity as we make my way through the crowd toward the raised wooden platform that Archie and Leo constructed earlier in the week. I pinch myself, trying to remember to keep on inhaling, exhaling, inhaling, exhaling, but it’s not fucking easy. Cleo’s already standing up there on the platform, but today her back is straight, and her staff is nowhere to be seen.
She’s wearing a dress much like the one Shireen is wearing, except hers is decorated with tiny golden medallions. I’ve never known her to wear anything but overalls, so to see her like this now is something of a shock. She smiles at me as I climb up onto the dais, holding out her hand to me. When I look back over my shoulder, Shireen’s disappeared into thin fucking air.
“Don’t worry about her,” Cleo says. “She needs to be with her family. You need to be right up here with yours.” She points over my shoulder, and there he is: Pasha, the only family I care about, or that truly means anything to me. He’s dressed in a loose-fitting shirt, completely different to his usual t-shirts, and his pants are suspiciously un-torn. As he makes his way through the clearing, heading toward the dais, people separate ahead of him, clearing a path.
Men and women alike touch their foreheads in a show of deference to him, and Pasha does the same back. From a distance, he looks calm. Serious. Confident. I know him better than I know myself, though. He’s as far from calm as it gets, and he’s tensed, just waiting for something to go wrong.
It doesn’t, though. Every single face in the crowd is a happy one. The people closest to him reach out and touch his arm or his back, nodding their support as he moves past them. Then, he’s standing at the foot of the dais, and Patrin appears out of nowhere next to me, offering him a helping hand up onto the platform. Pasha grins childishly, pulling a face at the man as he accepts his hand.
It’s been interesting, watching them form their awkward friendship over the past few months; they still rile the shit out of each other, but more often than not I see them laughing rather than fighting. The smell of wood smoke and fresh citrus floods my nose as Pasha wraps his arms around me, kissing me on the forehead. “Talk about fucking overkill,” he murmurs. I laugh, squeezing him tight, Shireen’s words on the hill bouncing around inside of my head, and I realize, out of nowhere, that I’mnotafraid of what the future might hold. If I’m honest with myself, I’ve known all along what I’m getting myself into, and I’ve run toward it, head on, with my arms open wide.
“All right, you two. Let’s get this show on the road. If we don’t bring the whiskey out soon, there’s going to be a riot,” Cleo hisses.
Pasha doesn’t release me, so I squeeze him even tighter. “You’re going to be fine,” I whisper into his ear. “Actually, you’re going to be more than fine. You’re going to be fucking phenomenal. Best king ever.”
He laughs as he lets me go. “If you say so, Firefly. If you say so.”
The ceremony itself is short and sweet. A lot of it I don’t understand, since it’s in a language I’m yet to master, but I do catch the odd phrase every now and then.
Cleo asks Pasha if he’s going to serve his people, and he swears that he will.
She asks him if he will always work in their best interests, and not his own fame, glory or riches. He promises that he will.
She asks him if he will sacrifice all for the people he loves. He swears that he will.
Soon, Cleo is turning to face the crowd, and she’s calling out across the clearing a loud, clear voice.“Here stands your king! Do you kneel?”
A roaring response echoes of the mountains as ten thousand people answer with cheers, and shouts, and applause. Every single member of the crowd sinks down onto their knees, and my heart soars at the sight. Pasha’s hands are shaking as Cleo stands firm on her tiptoes, trying to reach up to place a verdant, woven laurel crown on top of his head. In the end, he has to stoop down a little, bowing his head, so she can place it properly.
Another loud, wild storm of sound goes up when Pasha straightens, and Cleo sinks to her knees in front of him. To my horror, I see that even Patrin is on his knees next to me, and that, other than Pasha, I’m the only other person in the clearing not fucking kneeling.
I rectify the matter in a heartbeat. I might not be considered Roma. Not yet… But, in loving their king, I’ve already sworn to honor and respect them. And I have absolutely no problem honoring Pasha and giving him the respect he deserves right now.
I’d told him back in his Mustang, when he tried to tell me what to do, that he might have been a king to his people, but I wasn’t looking for him to bemyking. Truthfully, he already was my king, just as he is my sun, and my moon, and my heart, and my soul.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Patrin looking at me, and he groans under his breath. “He’s going to besuchan asshole now,” he grouses. “I’m probably gonna try and suffocate him in his sleep.”
“Not if I get there first,” I counter.
“I can hear you two, y’know. Can one of you please stand up? I think they’re all waiting for a cue or something.Fuck.”
Patrin howls with laughter as he gets to his feet. He hugs his cousin, now his king, and the two of them look out over their people with pride in their eyes. As one, the rest of the Roma stand, brushing themselves off, and a burst of music cuts above the instant sound of chatter and cheering—a band at the far end of the hidden valley, starting up, their music carrying across the clearing with ease.
“Get off me, you shite,” Pasha grumbles, jokingly shoving Patrin away, and then he’s in front of me, wrapping his arms around me, bringing his lips down to meet mine as he kisses me softly. Within the circle of his arms, it’s as though we’re suddenly safe inside our own little bubble. “This is a bit much, huh?” he whispers. “Not really what most girls expect at the start of a relationship.”
I can’t contain the grin I have plastered across my face. I bump the end of his nose with mine, shaking my head just a little. “Does this feel like the start of our relationship to you?” I whisper.
His eyes, so vibrant and green next to the laurel crown he’s wearing, become serious. “No. It feels like a song. A song I’ve always known the melody to, but am only just now remembering the words to…”
He kisses me again, and this time it feels as if the entire clearing has disappeared. I feel like I’m floating off the ground, walking on air, so swept away in him that we could both so easily be blown away on the breeze. When he surrenders me from the kiss, I find that my feet actuallyareoff the ground, and Pasha’s holding me in the air, cradling me to his chest.
The man with starlight in his eyes and raven’s wing hair smiles a secret smile as he plants me back onto the ground. “You know, it’ll be ten times worse than this when we get married, right?”
My cheeks ache as my grin grows even wider. “Yeah, I know.”
An incredibly pleased, fleeting flash of surprise transforms him. “Oh, you do, do you?”
Shyly, I nod my assent, and Pasha places a gentle kiss against my lips. “My Firefly. God, you fucking amaze me.”
Patrin’s voice dispels our little bubble rather rudely. “Hey, asshole. You got ten thousand people waiting on you over here. There’ll be time for that later.”
Pasha rolls his eyes, takes a step back, a deep breath…and then he’s thumping Patrin in the arm. “All right,” he says, winking at me over the other man’s shoulder. “This whole crowning thing is seriously fucking stressful. Who could use a drink?”
