Music. Strings and something deeper, a low harmonic that resonates in the stone itself, as if the instruments and the mountain are playing together.
The rite is held in a natural cavern that the Lithenmere has lit from within. Columns of living rock rise from the floor and branch at the ceiling like stone trees. Between them, the gold veins have been coaxed to the surface and they pulse in slow patterns that follow the music. Light falls from crevices in the ceiling where crystal formations catch and scatter it into shards of amber and white.
The four courts are here. Stone to the left, gathered near the walls. Ember across the far side, the air around them shimmering. Tides near a flowing water feature, mist pooling at their feet. Gales elevated on a natural ledge, Ithara perched at its edge.
Hundreds of Fae. All of them in formal dress. The cavern smells like crushed minerals and night-blooming flowers.
At the center of the cavern, a cleared floor of smooth stone.
Lanthar stands at its edge. Silver formal robes. The High King in full authority, but tonight it looks different. Tonight he’s not adjudicating. He’s welcoming.
His eyes find Seraphina.
Something passes between them that I’m not part of and don’t try to read.
Then Mira steps forward.
The cavern goes quiet. The music dims. Every court turns.
Mira walks across the cleared floor. The green dress moves with her. The gold thread in her hair catches the light. The burn scar on her wrist is visible to every being in the room.
She stops before Lanthar. The same ten feet she held in the garden. Her distance.
Lanthar inclines his head.
“Blood of my blood,” he says. His voice carries through the cavern without effort. “Returned to the realm that has waited for you.”
Mira inclines her head in return. Once. Precise. She doesn’t speak.
She doesn’t need to. The cavern responds. The gold veins in every wall brighten simultaneously. The crystal formations in the ceiling flare. The mountain recognizing what Lanthar just declared.
Gasps sound from around the room, and for a moment, there is total silence.
King Lanthar gives a nod.
The music resumes. The rite has begun.
Two attendants emerge from the edge of the cleared floor. Each carrying a goblet which appears to be carved from stone with gold veins running through it. The liquid inside catches the light with a depth that stops me from looking away.
One stops before me and inclines his head. "Fae blood," he says, quietly.
The scent reaches me the moment the vessel is in my hands. It's nothing like human blood. It smells like the forest outside the Lithenmere and the mineral springs beneath it and something electric, something that makes the back of my throat ache.
I look up for Maximus and my brain stops working. He's in black. Fae-cut, close-fitting, the fabric the same liquid material as mine. The collar sits high, and the lines run clean down his frame, and his shoulders fill the structure the way they fill everything he wears. His hair is pushed back from his face, and the gold light from the walls is doing something to his jaw and his eyes that should be illegal.
He's holding a vessel of Fae blood and looking at me across a cavern full of ancient beings. The expression on his face makes me wish we were alone.
The room could be empty.
He crosses over to me.
"You look..." he starts.
"I know."
"You don't. Because I can't find the word."
I raise my vessel to him, and he raises his. Our eyes hold over the rims.
