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“And as soon as there were women on Earth?” I ask archly, my grin teasing.
Luke gives me a small, answering smile as he holds the crown between his large palms. “They had their sights set on the one with the crown, for he was the manliest and most generous of all.”
I roll my eyes. And perhaps this one gesture is what changes Luke’s mind. Maybe he can sense my thoughts — that he doesn’t need a crown to be manly and generous. That he doesn’t need the crown to be himself. After all, we’ve just cracked the ritual of Lochkelvin together without it.
With little in the way of ceremony except a small exhale of breath, Luke turns serious as he places the crown on his head for what seems to be the final time. He suits it — there’s no question about that. And he would have made the most wonderful king, had he been allowed. But as he steps across to me, over the carpet of ordinary stones, his expression is one of deep resolve. He stops in front of me, and we gaze into each other’s eyes.
Pinning me with his dark eyes, Luke sinks to the stones until he’s kneeling in front of me, the bright blue of the loch causing his crown to shimmer before me.
“Remove it,” Luke quietly instructs, his head bowing.
My mouth goes dry and for a moment I do nothing but take in the sight of him. It’s like the reverse of a knighting, as Luke remains bowed and graceful by my feet, and the bitter wind that lifts itself from the current of the loch seems imbued with strange magic. Slowly, I reach out, my fingers grazing the sides of the cold metal and, in a gesture that feels at once important and necessary, lift it from Luke’s head. He remains immobile at my feet, as though not wanting to witness the loss of his crown in real time.
I can’t deny it: at that moment, I feel power unlike any I’ve known. Although I carry a mere facsimile of the royal crown, it’s the same as if I were holding the real thing. I swallow, treating the Hallowe’en crown as though it were inset with diamonds and had survived centuries through bloodlines and warfare.
I gaze down at it, and then at the loch, which seems to be growing louder the longer I hold the band of metal. Luke finally raises his eyes, watching me with an unreadable gaze.
“For our safety,” I murmur, and the crown winks in the moonlight. “For our protection. For Lochkelvin.”
And with a slide of my arm that feels as though it’s someone else making it happen, I cast the gold crown far across the winding loch. The weighty band of metal falls into the water in complete silence, and steadily the loch fades to an ordinary midnight blue.
