“Congratulations, your majesty,” I said with a bow. “That was well done. A most impressive display of air-wielding.”
Mev glanced between us with my brother and Galfrid looking at her proudly.
“I had no idea I could do half of that,” she said, “but I just remembered what you told me when we first started training, Lyra. That the air was never mine to command but something to listen to. And today, it listened back.”
“It did.” Lyra beamed. “In a most spectacular way.”
We began to walk, collectively, away from the Pinnacle.
The crowd had moved on, chasing the ceremony, the promise of a queen crowned at the palace gates. Mev walked ahead with Kael and Galfrid, the new center of their world.
“You don’t have to play the brute all the time,” Lyra said softly. The wind tugged strands of hair across her cheek, and she didn’t bother brushing them away. “Sometimes, the warning matters more than the avalanche.”
I stepped closer, close enough that the sharpness in her eyes caught the last shreds of daylight. “And sometimes,” I murmured, “the avalanche is the warning.”
Her laugh was low, unguarded… and tempting.
“Do you know what I saw up there?” she asked.
“Mev nearly killing us all with air?”
Her head tilted upward, the corners of her mouth daring me. “I saw you watching her. I saw you see yourself in her.”
I should have denied it, but the words stuck. Elydor had chosen Mev, just as surely as it had cursed, and chosen, me. Power that came unasked, unwanted, reshaping everything it touched.
But Lyra… steadied it.
“I am nothing like her,” I said, though my voice lacked conviction.
“No,” Lyra agreed, brushing her fingers over mine, feather-light, as we wrapped them together. “You’re worse. And better. And far more infuriating.”
Suddenly the mountain, the trial, the crown… they were distant things.
“Lyra.” My voice was rough.
She didn’t wait for me to finish. She stopped and rose onto her toes as her mouth found mine. I caught her against me, one hand fisted in her hair, the other dragging her flush to my chest. The kiss was a clash, sharp edges and long-denied hunger, but beneath it thrummed something steadier.
When we finally tore apart, breathless, the world was no less dangerous, no less uncertain. But for the first time, I didn’t care.
Elydor had chosen its queen. And I had chosen mine.
“After the crowning,” I murmured, thumb at her throat where her pulse raced, “I collect what I’m owed.”
Her slow smile made my own pulse race.
“I’m yours to command… Your majesty.”
44
LYRA
The celebrations could wait.
With the door barely closed on my bedchamber, I was summarily lifted from my feet and tossed onto the bed.
“If you aren’t undressed before the last of my own garments fall away,” Terran said, beginning to unlace his boot, “I will make you plead for release.”
In the process of already unlacing my own, my fingers froze at his tone. It was more than simply commanding. Terran’s words were a definitive promise and part of me wanted to push back.
