“The prince is desperate and will say and do anything to get his way!” The former queen looked as if she were about to go mad. I’d never seen her so disheveled before.
“Erisa is right. I am desperate,” Xander said. “Because war is here. We have to stop behaving as if everything is fine when it’s not. We can no longer pretend it away with parties and bribes or hide it behind assassination attempts. It all needs to stop. Now is the time to decide. Be people of action. Who do you want leading you? Choose me as king and let’s save our city.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
My husband was magnificent. I felt actual chills as he spoke. If I hadn’t wanted him before, this would have changed everything for me. I felt proud to stand next to him.
“Tonight the citizens were calling for him to be their king,” Heliodora said. “I move that we make our official vote now, and my vote is for Prince Alexandros.”
“I second the motion,” Themis said.
Pelias, who looked extremely uncomfortable, took over the vote. “Erisa?”
Defiant, she said, “I vote for Prince Kyros. I will be his regent until he comes of age.”
Stolos and Themis both voted for Xander.
“Zethus?”
“I vote for Prince Alexandros.” While it surprised me, it seemed that Zethus didn’t want to die. He was probably worried it would disrupt his drinking and harassing hetaerae.
That was it. Those were all the votes Xander needed. Four council members had voted for him, and there were only two votes left, one of them being his.
And he voted for himself.
Pelias still had his vote, but it was too late. This was happening and couldn’t be undone. Something he seemed to realize. “My vote is for Prince Alexandros.”
Erisa was so stunned she couldn’t speak.
“I am grateful for your votes, and I accept,” Xander said. “Guards, take Erisa. She and Kyros are to be confined to their rooms and not let out without my permission.”
His stepmother screamed and protested, but the guards did as their king commanded and dragged her out.
“You did it,” I said to Xander, putting my arms around his neck so that I could hug him.
“We did it,” he said, gripping me tightly.
“Let’s go to the throne room and officially crown you,” Themis said, which caused him to take a step back from me. She walked over to a locked cabinet and put in a key, opening it. She pulled out a gold-plated crown of laurel leaves.
I briefly wondered why it was not down in the vault. I supposed that when Erisa had organized her secret meeting to take over, she had brought it upstairs to the council’s chambers.
We went as a group to the throne room. I’d never been in here before. I supposed it made sense—there wasn’t a king, so there wasn’t any reason to enter. It was a smaller room, a fraction of the size of the dining hall.
A throne sat at the top of a dais, with multiple steps leading up to it.
“The high priestess usually crowns the new king,” Heliodora said worriedly to Themis. I wondered how many new kings of Ilion Lysimache had crowned.
“My wife can do it,” Xander said. He walked up the steps and sat on his throne. Looking regal and deadly and dashing and a thousand other things that made my stomach flutter.
Themis handed me the crown and gestured toward the dais. I walked up the stairs, aware that everyone was watching. “I’m not a high priestess,” I told him. “Io should do it. She’s an Ilionian princess.”
“So are you.”
Oh. I supposed in a way that was true.
My father had told me once that, in other lands, coronations were elaborate affairs, with flowery speeches and long rituals. But in Locris, as in Ilion, it was as simple as placing the crown on the person’s head.
Which I did carefully, trying to act with grace. The same crown his father and grandfather had worn. This was a monumental moment, and I wanted it to have the gravitas it deserved.
