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“Forgive me, but I was told the king and queen had arranged for a morning ceremony. This may be your palace, but I expect the both of you by the next toll, or chime, or whatever they call it here.Fully clothed.” In the next breath, the door slammed shut again, and silence coated the room.
It couldn’t be helped, I laughed. A sound from deep in my chest vibrated through my ribs until it broke free and could not be reined back.
Livia poked her beautifully heated face over the edge of the bed. “It is not funny, Bloodsinger.”
That only made me laugh again.
Livia fell back onto the pillows, a palm on her forehead. “I’m never going to leave this room again.”
I crept back onto our bed. “Best plan you’ve had.” I kissed one of her breasts. “In fact, I’ll make it a proclamation this very morning.”
She laughed when I kissed the other swell. Lazy strokes of her fingers smoothed across the scars on my back. “Are you ready for this?”
“Ready?” My face nuzzled into her throat. “Yes. No question.”
Livia sighed. “Then, I have terrible news.”
“What is that?”
“We need to leave our bed.”
My mother’sgardens were in full bloom, filled with sea folk and the whole of House Ferus. Only a week had gone by since we’d sailed through the sea barrier (I could not very well call it the Chasm) and returned to the Ever.
Four days since missives across the Ever gave up that over half the isles and noble houses were, at long last, free of the darkening. Even the Daire from Skondell returned with her folk to their sanctuaries and culture on the small isle.
Even with all the people around us, it was strange not to see any of the other royals besides Aleksi. Mira had been reluctant to remain in the earth realms, but one glance at her mother’s face had her reconsidering.
They would be back soon. Or it would be us who went to them.
It wasn’t difficult to sail to the Ever for earth fae, not now. We’d ferried one of their longships behind us on our journey home. Their oars, their sails, nothing snapped. Tait and Gavyn offered to sail on their odd serpent-like ships when Livia’s family returned, to ensure it was safe for any vessel to cross into new seas.
The trouble was the dive beneath the surface. Avaline had already arranged some of her more curious people from the House of Tides to take up posts on the earth fae side of the barrier. They would summon the tides to open for trade and council in turns to come.
Joron had a proclivity to shelter his people, cutting them off from the vastness of the world. It was now more of a challenge to keep people from the House of Tides to remain in the Ever. So many wished to explore and learn and see a land they did not know.
In truth, we already knew Mira and Sander would return for no other purpose than the royals insisted. Different kingdoms, yet we were more like a fifth land of the earth realms, simply with more seas.
Jonas was another matter.
Alistair delivered a missive from the prince only a day before, stating Jonas knew what had been troubling him, and he had his solution. He would not tell us yet, merely stated we’d know soon.
Ominous, and the worry he’d lined on Livia’s face promptly reminded me I’d never gotten the prince back for all his battering when we first met.
“Ah, you chose to join us finally.” Aleksi pinched Livia’s ear as we stepped through a vine-wrapped archway. “Rorik is getting rather impatient.”
When wasn’t the boy impatient? Livia’s brother had taken to the ships of the Ever. Every waking moment he would plead with me, with Tait, Celine, anyone, to let him step aboard and take to the seas.
Sewell was the only one who’d yet to tell the boy no and spent endless chimes each day sailing on sloops in the coves with Rorik at the helm in an oversized tricorn.
Narza stood near a wooden table lined in herbs and dried blossoms. Clay bowls were arranged near a circle of candles.
On one side, Tavish and his family stood by with Maelstrom and Tait. They were to stand for the blood of the king. But I could not, in good conscience, exclude the others. Celine, Gavyn, Sewell, and a freshly groomed Stormbringer joined.
Blood-related or not, they were the ones who’d raised me.
“Step forward.”
Once Narza was confident this was possible, we’d planned this privately, thinking it would be small and intimate. Livia’s family, as it turned out, was rather expansive when all placed together. They took up a great deal of room.
