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Caldren met Jaik’s gaze over my head, which seemed a little rude when they were talking about me as queen. But queen or not, I was still almost a foot shorter.
“It’s time Honor took the throne,” Caldren said. “I’ll kneel to her. Will you?”
“Of course.”
Caldren gave Jaik a somewhat doubtful look.
But he and Jaik both summoned their respective people to the largest auditorium at the city center that evening. It wouldn’t hold everyone who wanted to attend, but word should spread.
That evening as dusk fell, I was exhausted and nervous. I dressed in a long purple gown, leaving my hair loose. Arren perched in one of the enormous arched windows of Jaik’s room in the palace, watching the city below.
“You look beautiful,” he told me.
“Do I look ready to command a kingdom?”
His lips quirked. “Well, you command the Royals just fine—so I imagine you can handle a kingdom.”
He unfurled from the window and offered me his arm. But I paused, stopping to kiss him. Arren’s kisses always had the sweetest urgency, as if he needed me. But he pulled away after a minute.
“I can’t muss you,” he said, then gave me a wolfish grin. “Yet.”
Talisyn met us outside. Zehr had disappeared into the shadows once again; I worried about him, but he was who he was, and he was never going to be easy to hold.
Once we reached the bottom of those endless stone stairs that led to the academy, Branok and Lynx fell in, flanking us. Together, we went to the auditorium. Crowds jostled to watch us, but I couldn’t fully parse if they were hostile or admiring or a mix of both.
When we entered the auditorium, a throne waited on the dais. Caldren and Jaik, both wearing their swords and crowns, waited on the dais. They looked so similar with their dark hair and powerful physiques and the easy, intimidating way they carried themselves. But the audience was full of shifters who followed either Jaik or Caldren, who thought their factions were as deeply opposite as these two brothers.
I exhaled softly.
“This will work,” Talisyn said confidently on my side, and I glanced at him, realizing he’d read all my doubts and fears. “We’re overdue for a break.”
Arren snorted. “Because that’s how the world works.”
With my optimism on one side and my cynicism on the other, I started down the long, purple velvet aisle to my kings.
Caldren greeted me with a smile and a kiss on the cheek, and his shifters cheered. They were eager for the rebellion. Jaik did the same, and was met with a few scattered cheers and sullen silence. His face gave nothing away, but I knew him well enough to read the tension in the lines of his body.
Caldren stepped to the edge of the dais to address the crowd.
“We’ve all lost our magic,” Caldren said. “None of us are above anyone else on the basis of who we used to be. We never really were. But what matters is who you aretoday.”
I could feel how those words impacted him, how he still struggled to believe it forhimselfeven though he knew the words were true.
Jaik clapped his brother’s shoulder as he came to his side. “A long time ago, the rules of magic changed. Those rules made us into a caste, and we bought into it. The same rules cursed us with the Scourge.”
“But the worst part of the curse was that caste system,” Caldren added. “As terrible as the Scourge has been, even worse is the divisions we’ve raised between ourselves.”
Jaik nodded. “Only the true ruler of the kingdom could alter those rules again and free us from the Scourge.”
The words washed over me, carrying heavy weight. The shifters who had been powerful before would hate me for changing things. I’d thought Jaik and my men might hate me a little for changing things, but that wasn’t what I saw in Jaik’s gaze when he looked at me.
“I swear my allegiance to the true queen of the isle, and to fight for our freedom,” Jaik said. He lifted the crown from his head and tossed it to my feet before kneeling in front of me.
I could feel Jaik’s tension. The crowd might not appreciate this, and if Caldren didn’t kneel too…
“I swear my allegiance to the true queen of the isle,” Caldren said. “And to keep fighting for our freedom.”
He winked at his brother. He laid his crown and sword at my feet and knelt in front of me too.
