The Water king was slower to do so, but he gruffly expressed an identical sentiment.
Malachi nodded and reached into a pocket of the black pants he’d paired with a tunic of the same color. He produced a black card with a silver rune in its center. “Use this once the sun sets next,” he said as he held the card out. “A drop of each of your blood upon it will transport you to the location you need to be at to witness Kadeesha and I marry and legitimize the impending fulfillment of the great Celestials’ will.”
It was Sedrin who chanced stepping close enough to Malachi to reach out and take the card. In the next instant, the monarchs vanished. Kadeesha stared at the space they’d occupied, wondering if this would all actually work—the plans she and Malachi had laid together and her own plans that Malachi would remain in the dark about until the time came for Kadeesha to turn on him as he intended to do with the vassal kings.
Chapter Thirty-Five
THE NEXT NIGHT, KADEESHA FOUND HERSELF BACKatop the Yunna Mountains. This time she was inside an enormous cavern that enclosed them entirely on three sides while the fourth side had a massive opening that allowed the silvery moonlight to stream in. Hundreds of stalactites protruded down from the ceiling and a small stream of water cut through the center of the cave. According to Malachi, since the Apollyon Court’s inception, it was where the land’s kings and queens had always been crowned and where the ruling monarch had always exchanged sacred marriage vows with the individual they’d elected to rule beside them. During her ceremony with Rishaud, they’d each worn the colors of his court, but Kadeesha didn’t wear obsidian black during this second ceremony, nor did Malachi. Rather, they were both clothed in silver garb that shone the same prepossessing hue as the nearly full moon above, a symbol of Nyaxia, the great Celestial that the Apollyon Court had once worshipped more actively, before the monarchy could no longer trust the court’s clerics.
Kadeesha’s gown was a metallic silver that clung to her body so snugly it looked as if the fabric had been painted on her.Thousands of tiny glittering diamonds ran the length of the bodice, made of a whalebone corset in the fashion of a bygone era. Scores more diamonds adorned the lower half of the dress, save for the high slit that traveled up her right thigh, shimmering under the moonlight too. Yashira, who’d sent her dressmaids away and insisted on dressing Kadeesha herself for this wedding, had left Kadeesha’s hair partially unbound. While the top portion bore several small fishtail braids, they stopped in line with the pointed tips of Kadeesha’s ears, giving way to wild, loose curls that tumbled down her back. Symbolically, she bore no crown for now. Malachi’s garments were just as resplendent. He wore a formal brocade vest and pants sewn from glimmering silver cloth and the mantle draped across his powerful shoulders was from an animal Kadeesha—and most other fae—had never beheld in the flesh before. It was made of fur like his usual black pelt, but this one was a metallic silver that had made Kadeesha’s eyes widen when she first saw it. There was only one creature across the entire continent of Nimani with a pelt of such a hue—the night panthera that dwelled in the Yunna Mountains. It was so savage and cunning a beast that not many who hunted it for the prize of its pelt lived beyond the attempt.
“Did you acquire such a mantle yourself or is it a family heirloom?” Kadeesha had curiously asked Malachi when he’d turned up at her room to escort her to their wedding.
The smug bastard had grinned in a manner that had nearly blinded her. “It is a rite of passage that every heir to the Apollyon throne must undergo to prove they are worthy to bear the crown,” he had replied, zero modesty in his voice.
Adding to his splendor, Malachi wore his crown of silver and obsidian and his dazzling grille. Since he’d darkened her doorway, Kadeesha had been working very hard not to stareat him for an obscene amount of time. It’d only fuel his ego. But now, as an Apollyon Court cleric—one of the vetted few Malachi had kept around for affairs that necessitated a cleric’s presence—stood before them singing a hymn about faekind’s reverence for the great Celestials and obedience to their will, Kadeesha was directly facing Malachi and had nowhere else to look except straight into his harshly beautiful face. To steel her mind against dwelling on precisely how alluring Malachi was, she allowed a small, private smirk to play about her lips while the cleric sang on about studiously obeying the all-seeing designs of the Celestials and faekind serving as stewards that adhered to their venerated wisdom. With good reason, Malachi was no more devout than Kadeesha. So he certainly was no zealot. However, he’d chosen a hymn for the cleric to sing in honor of their impending union that wove that exact illusion. As Kadeesha gazed at him, Malachi’s lips twitched in a tiny smirk of his own while amusement danced in his dark gaze. Both tells silently projected to Kadeesha that he knew what she was thinking. The way he was able to do that so routinely, detect her musings without her voicing them, had rattled Kadeesha from the very start of their interactions with one another. But now that she was carrying his child and they were standing toe to toe about to be wed, it seemed like an act far greater than a source of aggravation. It was far more intense. More intimate. Exceedingly more unnerving.
She broke the disturbing connection forged by their silent communication and shifted her focus to the gathered enemy-turned-ally monarchs who stood in a line to her right. Each vassal king had dressed in the respective color of their court—gray for stone, blue for water, crimson for fire, and white for wind. There was both an eagerness and lingering reticence about themonarchs who’d verbally agreed to pledge future oaths of fealty to Malachi and Kadeesha. The monarchs clearly yearned for the greater autonomy she and Malachi had promised, but an undercurrent of deep mistrust and hostility toward the Apollyon crown that southern fae had warred with for centuries remained.
As it should, a perhaps guilty voice sounded within Kadeesha. Malachi didn’t intend to allow them to live very long under their newly granted autonomy. She shoved the thought aside lest her face give something away; lest it give away her hypocrisy, considering Malachi himself wouldn’t continue living very long after Rishaud was dealt with if she had anything to say about it. She’d weighed Yashira’s counsel at length and had decided to hold steadfast to that aim. It had nothing to do with sparing the other monarchs; she pitied them, but they’d chosen to be embroiled in the games of power and crowns and bloodshed that had always been played among the fae courts. No, Malachi had to die because he’d always hold enmity toward her folk and seek ways to make them pay for the crimes of a dead king. Then there was the personal reason that was as significant to her: Kadeesha refused to live out any future other than one where her path would always be hers and hers alone. She had let Sylas dictate so much about her life. Then she’d been ready to turn over power to Rishaud to do the same. Now that she’d tasted what it truly meant to be free, to truly govern herself outside of the stifling influence or stubborn desires of any male, she refused to go back. And although Malachi wasn’t actually a one-to-one comparison with Rishaud at the moment, she couldn’t be certain of what he’d evolve into. Like herself, he’d only lived for around two and a half decades. That was a fraction of time within an immortal lifespan. After holding absolute power forcenturies, she had no idea who Malachi would become as an Elder or even an Ancient. If he was an arrogant, brutal, high-handed male now, who would he become in the future?
You think on him too much, Zahzah huffed into her mind. The vassal monarchs were positioned to the right of her and Malachi, and Zahzah, along with the full thunder of the squadron’s kongamatos and Nkita flyers, stood behind the monarchs. Kadeesha had positioned her squadron there to ensure the good behavior of the vassal kings when a later part of the ceremony would leave her and Malachi vulnerable. Kadeesha would trust no other with her life. Malachi had expressed a similar sentiment about his Cadre, which was why they stood behind him.
You’re right, she told Zahzah, annoyed with herself.I’ll have to rectify the nuisance.
When you do, may I eat his bones?
Something within Kadeesha recoiled at Zahzah’s request, though it had no business doing so. What did she care what became of Malachi’s corpse after she killed him?
You cannot, she said to Zahzah and told herself the denial was only because she couldn’t explain allowing such an act to her future child.
As the cleric finished her hymn, Kadeesha glanced to the individuals gathered on Malachi’s left side. Yashira and Nychelle stood beside each other. It struck Kadeesha that Yashira appeared as much a queen mother attending her child’s wedding as Nychelle did. Nychelle was dressed in an opulent black gown, and Yashira wore a dark purple one that was just as lavish. The lord primes of Malachi’s court that were not his Cadre stood in a line to the left of Nychelle. A sudden wave of vertigo washed over Kadeesha and for an extended moment it was as if she wasyanked out of her own body and was gazing upon howrightshe and Malachi looked standing before the cleric about to exchange marriage vows. The surreal experience lasted only a flicker of a breath. Then, the disorienting sensation vanished and she was deposited back within her own skin … skin that held her Marking, which currently burned, hinting to Kadeesha what she’d experienced had been perhaps more than a moment born of brief insanity or panic or maybe even guilt.
She shook what she concluded to be an annoying effect of their shared Markings off as Malachi produced a pair of jewel-handled daggers, whose onyx gems and flat silver blades gleamed under the moonlight. Malachi had told her the blades were a customary part of Apollyon royal weddings. However, he hadn’t shown them to her beforehand and she hadn’t been prepared for how stunning the weapons were. Their blades were double-edged and the phases of Nyaxia’s moon—from crescent to full orb and back to crescent—were etched into the silver with delicate swirls surrounding them. The daggers were a hauntingly beautiful display of bladesmithing, and Kadeesha couldn’t sever the thought that they had much in common with the male who held them—they were deadly, pitiless things that she was certain could carve an individual to pieces with only the slightest force applied, yet alongside the violence they could deliver, the weapons were breathtaking, almost too extraordinary for this world and all the more dangerous for it.
The cleric launched into another hymn. This one wasn’t a carefully crafted homage to the Celestials and their whims. Instead, it was about entwined fates and soul-deep tethers between a wedded pair. Kadeesha bit the inside of her cheek. The hymn’s focus made her wholly uncomfortable, especially giventhe vision her Marking had dumped on her. She bit her cheek harder, using the swift sting to chase away recalling the sense ofrightnessthat had stolen over her during the vision.
As Malachi held the daggers in one hand, his right hand reached out and closed around her left. He lifted it in the air, his fingers strong and calloused and warm and unrelenting. Every spot where their skin made contact thrummed, and it made it impossible for her to clear her mind of confusing thoughts. Impossible to recall that she and Malachi weren’t truly anything meaningful to one another, that there were no real bonds between them. Malachi turned her hand so her palm faced the cavern’s ceiling and the moonlit sky that shimmered with billions of stars beyond it. He held out the daggers and told her, “Take one.”
She did, clutching it so tightly that pain shot through her fingers. Suddenly she was nervous,anxious, even though she had no reason for such undiluted terror to flood her.This isn’t a real marriage. It holds no meaning. It is only a political ploy.Despite the reminder, her hands still trembled as she held the ceremonial blade. His forehead creased, because this male missed nothing. “Are you all right?” he murmured in a velvety voice that shouldn’t have slid along every inch of her skin the way it did.
“Yes,” she assured Malachi. Next, she dragged in a breath and pushed the odd nerves aside so she didn’t make a fool of herself or betray any weakness. The other monarchs and Malachi needed to perceive her as their equal—in some cases, their better—someone who’d seized her own fate, who was taking advantage of this marriage as a shrewd political move, and who stood squarely rooted in her own autonomy and power throughout the ceremony. And she’d undermine that aim if shedisplayed even a fraction of the powerless woman who’d stood beside Rishaud during her first wedding ceremony.
Great Celestials, that seems like eons ago. I was nothing beyond a princess and pawn then, letting males be the puppeteers of my life. Now, I hold and weave and manipulate the tapestry of not just my fate, but that of others.
A heady buzz washed over her as a result of that truth. She supposed that she’d suffer a crisis of conscience over feeling so empowered by this new reality of hers later. Right now, she used it to smother any nervousness for good. Malachi had already informed her of the purpose of the blades. Acting before he did, she slipped her hand that was holding the dagger out of his grip, seized his free hand, and sliced across his palm, spilling his blood generously. Something as dark and eternal and voracious as the black Void itself yawned awake in his eyes as she did it, and it only deepened as he grabbed her hand and dragged his blade across her palm. The cuts done, Trystin silently stepped forward. He collected their blades and handed Malachi a silver-and-obsidian crown that was the perfect mirror to his. Trystin passed his cousin a sly look and then retreated to where he’d stood beside Nychelle. Never taking his intense, darkened gaze from hers, Malachi placed the crown that every queen of the Apollyon Court had worn atop Kadeesha’s head. Then, his bleeding hand closed around her hand that spilled forth her life force too.
Technically, they’d exchanged blood twice before. Once, when they’d given each other the Markings and when they’d bitten each other again during the throes of sex. Each of those former times, it was an affair awash in mind-shattering, blinding lust and possessive need. But their blood mingling togetherin an ancient binding ceremony as old as the faefolk themselves was an altogether different experience. A jolt rocked through Kadeesha that had nothing to do with desire. It was born of something more momentous.Primitive. Primordial.She couldn’t quite identify its precise nature because it was an entirely foreign sensation—one that her very soul, the essence of who she was and all she’d become, and the deepest pools of her magic reacted to. The world and everyone around them fell away. It was only her and Malachi and the storm of aether and void magic that had detonated from each of them. A hurricane of violet flames and writhing shadows raged around them, encircling them in the eye of a howling purple-and-black storm.
“Do you feel it as intensely too?” she asked Malachi, barely able to catch her breath. The stiletto points of her nails dug into the back of his hand.
“Yes.” He rasped the single word, as if even uttering that much was an effort.
“What is it? Should this be happening?” she frantically asked. A blood exchange hadn’t been a part of Six Kingdom weddings for centuries. Malachi had warned her that both of their senses would be overwhelmed when they performed one, but she hadn’t fully understood what that meant and she had no frame of reference for normalcy now that it was happening.
Malachi laced his fingers through hers keeping their bleeding palms smashed together. His other hand moved to cup her hip, his fingers splayed along its length, a possessive brand that wassearing. He stepped closer to her, crushing her chest against his. “I have no idea; I’ve never married before.” His eyes …Great Celestials, his eyes no longer held a trace of brown or gold. They had turned a luminescent black, and he looked at her like he meant to devourherwhole. She swallowed, though not fromfear. Seeing him gaze upon her in such a manner made a similar response erupt from her. Liquid heat burgeoned in her core and she threatened to combust with the raw, raging need to be closer to him. To crawl inside of his skin if she could manage. Her arm that had been loose at her side now cupped the nape of his neck. She somehow crammed them even closer together.
A growl was the only warning she got before his mouth crashed down on hers. She moaned, the sensation of his tongue plunging inside her mouth and his hard length pressing against her becoming too much. She wasn’t sure who broke the kiss or which of them initiated what came next—they may have acted at the same time, moving in perfect unity. Regardless, her incisors sank into his neck where his Marking rested as his incisors shredded the skin covering her Marking and plunged deep into the vein beneath. She clung to him for dear life and he did the same, banding his arm around her in an iron hold.
