Theodore Solbourne, on the other hand, was not so discreet.
Blue-skinned, with towering elvish height and radiating dominance, he swept his wife down the aisle at a swift, no nonsense clip. The sovereign’s dark gaze swept over Petra and around the altar, his expression openly scrutinizing. His shoulders, made wider by the layers of his elvish suit and formal cape, went tight when he passed Silas’s seat.
It was impossible for Theodore to recognize Silas’s face. Not even Kaz knew what he looked like, and he deeply enjoyed finding new and creative ways to foil facial recognition technology. He’d never been in the same room as the sovereign before, and even if he had, he wouldn’t have done so undisguised.
But for just a moment, the span of a heartbeat, when Theodore Solbourne locked eyes with Silas, it was like heknew.
Silas had never been to a solstice ceremony before, but he knew the basics of what was supposed to happen. There’d be talking, some offerings would be made, and songs sung as the sun rose. Then all the worshippers in the cathedral would stream toward the altar to give their own offerings in exchange for blessings. It was like any other dawn service, except everyone was dressed up in their best clothes, important people actually showed up, and there was a real possibility that someone would be assassinated.
When the sovereign couple walked up the short steps to the altar. They stood to one side but on equal footing as Petra. Justas the disk of the sun began to touch the stained glass window, she stepped forward and raised her hands in welcome.
Silas tensed. His skin felt too tight as he fought to restrain his shadows from bursting out and snatching her. Her magic buzzed like a livewire beneath his skin. Restless and paranoid, he swept his gaze from side to side, taking in all the adoring faces peering at her from the pews.
Her greeting carried through the cathedral without any assistance from microphones, amplified by the design of the building, but he barely heard it as his mind buzzed with worry.She’s too exposed,he thought, sweat gathering under the collar of his shirt. His claws dug into the pew, splintering the wood, and the person closest to him leaned away.
The cathedral was too big. He wondered if the Sovereign’s Guard took into account how many places there were to hide — from the columbarium across the main floor to the catwalks overhead and the numerous hideaways where shadows thrived.
Did they only see the crowd as a possible threat? With the way their heads slowly turned left and right but not up, he wouldn’t have been surprised. Elves had a way of becoming complacent with their sense of power over their world. They thought because they had diamond claws and sharp noses and all the money they could want that they were invulnerable.
They gotcomfortablewith the status quo, and even the best of them tended to think that they were the apex predators in the room. That was why Silas had always found it easy to get the upper hand on elvish targets. Maybe that was what Vanderpoel thought, too.
Or maybe it was because, for the first time in a very long time, the elves reallywerevulnerable.
Watching the way Theodore shifted slightly, putting Margot’s much smaller body just a little behind his own, hit Silas as eerily familiar. He recognized the stance, the tightnessaround the elf’s eyes, and the way his hand reached up almost unconsciously to brush the delicate fingers nestled in the curve of his elbow.
The elves had been a monolith for a long time, only making alliances and sharing power amongst themselves after their population nearly collapsed. Now they had prominent, visible weaknesses — the mates they’d begun to change all those rules for. They’d given the rest of the world a glimpse at their soft underbelly, and if Silas cared to take what the elves possessed, he wouldn’t have hesitated to go for it.
As the sun cast its rays through the colored glass behind his own mate, Silas didn’t breathe, didn’t blink. He only saw his own vulnerability standing up there without him, and he realized that whatever Vanderpoel had planned, Theodore Solbourne likely wasn’t his main target.
It was the exposed beating heart standing right beside him.
An elf didn’t go down easy. There was good reason for their arrogance, after all. A single bolt shot wouldn’t do it. One had to get in close and go for the throat or the belly to off them with any sort of efficiency.
Or, according to rapidly multiplying rumors, one simply had to take out their mates. He’d heard that an elf rarely lasted a few months without them, and some refused to wait even that long before joining their mates in the dirt.
And like demons and weres and dragons, an elf was rumored to do anything for their mate — even throw themselves into the line of fire.
Silas was so distracted by the revelation that he nearly missed it when Petra reached up to drape her veil over her crown, revealing her face to the eager crowd. His mind blanked. Silas wasn’t sure why he hadn’t thought she would show her face for the ceremony, other than perhaps to hide the fact that she hadn’t had time to do her hair or makeup like she normally did.
And, he’d supposed, that she’d planned to keep her connection to him a secret.
Not everyone would know what it meant that a band of slowly moving shadow circled her throat, but enough would, and he suspected Robert was right that there would be backlash for it. It only took one person to know the truth for it to ripple out through the assembled crowd, and there had to be far more people than that.
Petra didn’t flinch or try to adjust her veil to hide her neck. She didn’t bat an eyelash when bursts of murmurs and several gasps erupted from the crowd. With her veil draped behind her, the plunging neckline of her gown hid absolutely nothing. His claim was there for all to see.
A swell of pride made it hard for him to draw breath when she said with perfect calm, “My siblings, welcome to a new day bathed in Glory’s light. I’m so…happyto be here with you on this day when our goddess blesses us with so much warmth. Truly. I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”
She angled herself toward the sovereign couple. The elf’s eyebrows were nearly in his hairline, and even Margot’s serene expression had faltered with surprise. “And I am honored, as always, to be joined by our sovereigns. Their offering will be the first to light the fire as the sun rises.”
Going by the deepening crinkle in Margot’s brow and increasing volume of the crowd’s murmurs, Silas figured this wasn’t quite how things normally went. When Petra regally gestured for them to step with her up to the empty-eyed statue of the goddess, the couple did so with slight hesitation.
More whispers filled the air, and the mood shifted as heads came together, speculating about whatever it was she’d changed in the ceremony and the meaning of the thing around her throat. Someone nearby harshly whispered,“...a demon? You can’t be serious!”
Making a mental note to deal with that person later, Silas leaned forward, his eyes narrowed as he tried to understand what she was doing. As soon as the couple separated to stand on either side of her, their backs to the crowd, he thought,My clever witch.
They knelt together on the red brocade cushions laid out before the statue. Only a handful of inches separated their shoulders as Margot slipped her bundle of branches into the opening at Glory’s feet. A hush once more fell over the crowd as Petra reached inside. Flames erupted, filling the empty statue with heat and light. Those empty eyes began to glow, and the scent of the perfumed wood turning to sickly sweet smoke drifted over the heads of the worshippers.
Their heads bowed in what looked like prayer, but Silas was watching close enough to not be fooled. He didn’t need to hear what Petra was saying, nor feel the rapid fluttering of her pulse beneath his shadow to know exactly what was going on.
