Page 129 of Season Warriors & Wolves

“It does.”

“I don’t think I can change, Eren. It will also be unfair to expect you to change for me because you are the person with the purest heart that I know. But I got my brother back and I don’t want to lose him again, so maybe we can fall to some agreement?”

He held me even tighter, resting his cheek on my head while he swayed the two of us back and forth, how he used to lull me back then. “Whatever you do, I might be the other voice, but I will always be on your side, no matter what.”

Chapter twenty-seven

White Queen takes F3

Kilian

It was no longer about metal. No longer about trades and new alliances made out of pettiness and whose coin weighed the most. Stepping in unblessed soil today meant that negotiations of war had begun and the worst was upon us. We had yet to prepare for the worst.

Snow wore the Adriatian crown today, dressed in the Adriatian garments too—navy silks and gold threads. Her obsidian hair spilled loosely down her back, shimmering despite the faint gloomy sun gracing Vrammetheni shores. She looked nothing but godly, nothing human, nothing touchable. And if you were caught by her gaze, locked into the abyss of gold, one would go down to their knees and heed to her order without a single word being spoken.

She glanced at me from the corner of her eye and gave me a taste of her power. “What’s with the ogling?”

“My right.”

Her cheeks stained a rosy pink. “Do a little less of it. The king will think I might have put some sort of spell on you.”

“He’d be right. Free me, woman, I’m going insane,” I said, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her to my chest, kissing her neck till she was kicking and writhing.

“If you two are quite done,” her brother said, side eyeing me as he passed us to enter the castle. “Let’s meet this king and be done with it.”

“Drystan is a rather patient man,” I said, letting go of my wife. “He will understand.”

She huffed. “Charming another’s pants off?”

“He kept them on at all times.”

“He better have.”

“Now, now, love.”

We had left the docking site accompanied by a horde of Olympian and Adriatian guards, but it was her people that had caused the unblessed soldiers to all gape and stare at our entirely unnecessary entourage. They murmured some sort of prayer to their saints and human deities as they studied their wings. Just as Snow had said before we’d left: shock value.

Eren took position by the doors and stopped his sister. “They have fickle egos. Be polite.”

“Most men do, brother, I’ve learned to work around them,” she said, flicking her eyelashes all innocence at him. “Then crush it ever so slowly until I can see every crack of it.”

King Drystan was a lanky, fragile man who by human years was past looking as young as he did. Though the unblessed were barred from any blessings, nothing had stopped them from profiting from magic, despite its costly nature. Costly, because the Dark Crafter who had stood beside him at each of my visits was rather powerful considering that Vrammethen was not only far from the gates where the Celesteel blessed drew their power, but also a land where false prayers and belief were a conduit of godly anger. Each craft here had a ninety nine percent chance of being cast wrong.

The king grunted when he stood from his bronze dais, leaning on his cane and walking toward us. “Welcome,” he greeted in a perfectly polished common tongue. As always, the royal families of the unblessed used education to their benefit. For what they lacked in power, they attempted to compensate in knowledge.

His eyes landed behind Snow, at her soldiers, and fascination gleamed on his rather lifeless eyes. “Incredible.” He cleared his throat and pointed at the settees. “Please, sit. It must have been quite the journey because of the darkening weather.”

“Quite the contrary,” Snow said, sitting beside me. “It was rather pleasant.”

“How odd.”

“Not odd at all. My people control the skies, the wind, the weather.”

Drystan looked again rather fascinated. “I’ve heard. I’ve heard. Fascinating that your kind survived. Now that is what I'd count as a blessing,” he said, blasting in boisterous laughter.

“A jest of ours,” I explained to my frowning wife. “He couldn’t quite grasp my powers. Or consider them entirely useful.”

“Besides war,” Drystan said, opening a glass jar to take some sort of candy out of it.