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“I was not!” Vipha whined, high and irritating. “He burst into my home and threatened my servants. I know nothing of Crux’s whereabouts.”
I turned to Beau, tapping the right side of my neck. “This is my Mark of Sight. You may use it to force him to speak the truth.”
Beau’s eyes went round, and he stared at it for a second before reaching.
Before he even grazed my skin, Vipha broke down in tears. “He forced me to help him! I didn’t want to! I never—” The rest of what he said was muffled by his own hands covering his face.
Beau paused, looking up at the king. “I can still do it, if you want.” He smiled his bright smile, eyes shining with pride. “I am his mage.”
I beamed down at him, cupping his face in my palm and turning him away from Xyren, toward me. “That you are.” I pressed my lips to his for a moment, and pulled back to look into his eyes. “But this changes nothing. You were my mate without this. You will always be my mate. As I belong to you.”
He wrapped his hands tight around my wrists, nodding. “I know. You showed me. You have nothing to prove to me, Vorian. You’re my—my mate.”
He said the last words with pride. Claiming me, Vorian, son of Crux, with pride. I wrapped my arms around him, sweeping him tight against me and burying my face in his golden star-blessed hair.
“It seems to me that means Vorian has earned his own house,” a voice asked from the throne room doors behind me. “Doesn’t it, Father?”
I turned to find Kaelum standing in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest, staring at his father with what could only be called challenge.
On my behalf?
I could only stare at him for a second, before once again, behind me, someone spoke.
“Kaelum is right, Xyren. Vorian has earned his place.”
My mother.
I could barely draw a breath. My mother said that I had earned my place. My brother said it.
Kaelum came up beside me, wrapping an arm around my shoulders in a gesture so familiar that it made my heart squeeze in my chest. I could barely keep from recoiling in shock, so I held very, very still instead, my eyes no doubt comically wide.
“My brother, and the elder son of our people’s queen, and one of the first mages in a generation, should be offered no less than his own place here at the palace, don’t you think?” Kaelum asked with a bright smile, pulling me in tight against him.
Instead of redoubling his hatred, glaring daggers at me, and demanding that I take my prize—my reputation—and be gone from his sight, Xyren slumped in defeat, with a deep sigh. “Very well. He may stay in the rooms given his mate.”
Kaelum lifted a brow at his father in an incredibly human gesture, questioning, and opened his mouth as though to argue, but I nodded quickly. “To be with Beau is all that I want. And he wishes to be the tailor’s apprentice.”
Xyren gave Beau another grudging nod. “A good, useful choice.”
And that was it. Everything I had ever dreamed, and at the same time never dared to hope for, all in one afternoon. A brother, a mother, and most important... Beau.
CHAPTER33
BEAU
It hadn’t taken much to convince Vorian to take me back to Earth, even though we had tested his phasing mark with my powers, and Earth was too far for such a portal. But he agreed to travel with me nonetheless. The other humans had had the opportunity to say goodbye to our home. Me? I had almost all I needed back on Thorzan, but there was one person I wasn’t ready to let go of—someone who’d always been good to me, that I wanted to do more for if I could.
“Hey, have you seen Petey around?” A sharp edge of ice lanced through my chest when I asked one of the guys around the burn barrel. Winters were rough when you didn’t have a place to stay, even this far south. And the guy was giving me the strangest look, his brow furrowed and his lips set in a firm, full pout.
“Is he—” I looked up at Vorian, and even though his expression didn’t change, his broad hand settled on my shoulder. He squeezed gently, but that barely kept my heart from breaking before I’d even heard what happened.
But then the guy, still staring, silent and wide eyed, lifted a hand and pointed to the shadows below the nearby bridge. His eyes flicked up to Vorian, and okay. Maybe that was fair. Seeing a real life alien was enough to steal the words from anybody.
“Thank you,” I muttered. And then, I was walking fast. Jogging. Desperate to see if he was really alive or I’d just find the next person there to give me bad news.
But when I looked up into the shadows of the bridge, there he was, huddled on his side in the nook between the cover above and the angled concrete.
“Petey?” I called up to him as Vorian caught up.
