Since there was no need to cut their hands, they’d decided that they would steal from other ceremonies to seal their union. Vows done, Alex delicately lifted the front of Alashiya’s veil and draped it over her crown of laurels before stepping back once more.
“I Choose you,” Taevas announced, his grin wild and triumphant.
Laughing with that same reckless feeling, she answered, “I Choose you.”
She expected to be swooped down on with a passionate kiss as they’d agreed, but her husband had one last surprise in store for her.
His massive wings, which had been through countless rounds of painful physical therapy and healing sessions with Margot, mantled high and wide around his shoulders. Before she could begin to processthat,they snapped forward. The world became muted and dark as they closed around her. The pale light from the fire and the glow of the candles filtered in through the thin, delicate membrane of his wings, making them glow. His tail snaked around her waist, and his big, clawed hands cupped her jaw as his mouth descended on hers — all fierce, hungry lips and seeking tongue.
Somewhere outside the safety of his closed wings, a cheer erupted. She didn’t hear it. Alashiya slung her arms around his neck and allowed him to lift her off her feet. “Your wings,” she sobbed between kisses. “Taevas, yourwings!”
“Flying is a ways off,” he breathed, “but I refused to go another day without embracing my wife.”
She’d noticed he removed his splints, but she assumed it was for the ceremony. Taevas hated them. She couldn’t blame him, but they were necessary to wear outside of healing sessions and physical therapy to avoid severe bouts of nerve pain. Sometimes she wondered if he’d wear them at all if she didn’t insist on it — as if muscling through agony would somehow make it better. But that was her stubborn, hard-headed dragon, who’d put his discomfort aside at every opportunity if it meant serving his people and his clan.
He’d given her no indication at all that he’d made so much progress with his recovery. Relief, happiness, and a little exasperation bubbled in her veins as she pressed kiss after kiss to his lips within the safety of his wings.
It was a long while before he reluctantly retracted them. Theguests erupted into knowing laughter as he cast them a look of playful annoyance, as if it wastheirfault he was forced to release her. Laughing, Hele and Alex unbound their hands and took the sash away. It would be tucked safely in Alashiya’s cedar chest.
The matching robe, however, would return to its place: hung on the wall above their nest in place of the tapestry depicting their courtship, which was traditional to her husband’s people. Taevas had insisted it was better than anything that could be made by another artisan, so why replace it?
Alashiya’s face heated as several dragons, mainly members of the Wing, whooped and hollered. A child’s gleeful scream preceded a violet blur erupting out of the crowd. She stooped just in time to catch Emilia, who’d escaped from her parents at great speed. Propping the little girl on her hip, Alashiya asked, “Did you want a kiss, too?”
Emilia looked up at her with big, candy apple red eyes — a gift from her father, Artem. Being the only Aždaja child at the moment, and a deeply precocious one to boot, Emilia had learned the fine art of getting exactly what she wanted whenever she wanted it.
It was lucky for all of them that she generally only wanted as much love from her clan as possible.
Little claws, surprisingly gentle, stroked Alashiya’s veil when she answered, “Yes!”
The crowd laughed as the couple squeezed the little girl between them, each delivering a smacking kiss to her grinning cheeks. Taevas plucked her from Alashiya’s arms to throw her high in the air, eliciting another scream as her little wings flapped.
“If no one else wants a kiss, it’s time we feast!” he announced, swinging Emilia around in a wide circle.
Putting the giggling toddler under one arm and slinging the other around Alashiya’s waist, he tossed his horned head back toward the barn. A grand array of tables, fairy lights, candles, flowers, a band, and a truly astonishing amount of food had been set up inside and outside the renovated barn.
When they led the guests down the slope, Alashiya’s eyes stung at the sight. Once, entering the barn had been exercised in grief and the echo of dashed hopes. But now the hyphae sang with joy as she stepped up to her new cedar throne, carved by her husband to match his own, behind their overflowing table. Music and laughter filled the air with life. Little Emilia’s clawed feet clicked on the new concrete floor as she scampered off to find her parents — and sweets — fulfilling a dream her grove had so earnestly believed in.
Her land, her forest, had been renewed. Its heartbeat was fierce and joyful as a new sort of grove danced, ate, and celebrated together. It was perhaps not exactly the kind of grove her grandparents had in mind when they set their sights on it, but she didn’t feel any complaints in the hyphae. Only a deep relief.
And when the other queens approached the table to exchange a single drop of blood with her, that feeling bloomed into something infinitely larger and more complex. It no longer belonged to just her own family, but to all of them. Their networks, too long apart, reunited.
It wasn’t the same as everyone existing in one hyphae, which would get rather loud and crowded, but more like building a bridge over a stretch of water. At any time, they could cross it and know that they weren’t alone.
Not that being alone wasn’t nicesometimes.Like when Taevas dragged her onto the dancefloor, something she’d been dreading since he brought up the idea of having one in the first place, only to snap his wings around her once again.
They swayed to a slow song, her cheek resting on his powerful heart, within the privacy of his wings.
“This is a good place to hide,” she whispered, bare feet hardly touching the floor as he swept her gently around.
A deep rumble tickled her cheek. Pressing her closer, he promised, “We can hide here together,metsalill,for the rest of our lives.”
Epilogue
Alashiya didn’tlike New York. Taevas hadn’t exactly thought she would. He couldn’t blame her. He was used to the constant movement, the vast swaths of concrete and towering buildings that seemed to cling together in strange clumps. People living on top of each other, everyone moving in step and yet to their own rhythm, was simply another part of life.
But to his mate, it was almost incomprehensible.
The air smelled wrong, she said. The lack of greenery appalled her. Even the feeling of the sidewalk under her feet made her uncomfortable, like a cat walking on plastic wrap.
