Justifar eased back, letting her gaze sweep over us as the wind whispered through the open windows, lifting my veil with gentle fingers.
“Then let this ceremony seal what your hearts already knew. Not with flame, nor blade, but with threads that bind theunseen.”
She opened her hands, and between them, a flicker of starlight spun itself into a single silver thread. She passed it first to me.
“Reyla, weave your vow.”
I held the thread carefully and turned to Lore. My hands trembled as I looped it around his mating mark on his wrist, the magic warming beneath my fingertips.
“I promise to always see you as you are,” I said, each word carved from the ache in my chest. “To hold the man behind the mask, the boy who was left behind, the king who bears more than his share. I promise to speak truth even when it hurts, to fight beside you, to fall with you, but never to leave. Evermore.”
His eyes glistened.
Justifar passed him the other end. “Lorick, weave your vow.”
After gently sliding up the bracelet I still wore all the time, he looped the thread around my wrist over my mating mark, binding our hands with the single, glowing filament.
“I promise to always choose you,” he said, his voice raw with emotion. “In darkness and daylight, in silence and in storm. I promise to protect the joy in your heart, the fury in your soul, and the wonder that made me believe true, undying love existed. I swear to be yours, not as king, but as Lore, with every scar, every shadow, every spark.”
The thread pulsed with light and melted into our skin, leaving no mark, only the weight of our promises.
Justifar glanced between us. “Then by the power vested in me by the realms of sea and sky,” she said with a flourish, her voice ringing in the room, “I hereby pronounce you, Reyla Jarrn Weldsbane Evergorne, and you, His Majesty, Lorick Thorne Damaris Shadowhart Evergorne wedded. May your bond be forged with unyielding strength and majestic grace. Step forward together as one, onto a path where hope and love may thrive.”
The air held still. Lore turned to me and offered his hand.
And I took it.
Justifar smiled at us with something close to pride, then bowed low. “I’ll leave you to your tower and your stars.” She turned to Lore. “Soon, my king, I’ll expect to hear more about that spell you promised.”
“You’ll have it,” he said, though his eyes never left mine.
With a final, joyful look, Justifar swept toward the open door, only to pause in the threshold and turn back. Her eyes went cloudy, and her voice wavered, singsong. “A long and prosperous life awaits you, Queen Reyla, and the child you now carry.”
I sucked in a breath. “Girl or boy?”
Lore’s arm tightened around my waist.
“That is yet to be seen. Remain strong.” The wind caught her hair, swirling it around her face, and when she spoke, her voice no longer belonged entirely to the present. “Three fragments, scattered like moonstones, await their reckoning.”
I stepped closer, my heart racing. This wasn't just ceremony anymore. The elder was seeing something vital about our future.
Her gaze remained locked on the floor. “None will yield to force. None will answer a hand that doubts. You seek a forge, but what you need is a mirror.”
She turned slightly, her gaze distant, as though watching something ripple through time. “It was never meant to be used as a weapon. Only when touched by what first broke it—grief, yes, but also love—will they remember what they were.”
Her soft gaze found mine. “What you need does not begin with fire. It begins with the wound. Pour yourself into it. Bind not them, but what they represent.”
As if the moment had never happened, she stepped into the dark corridor and was gone, leaving only the memory of the swish of her robe and the moonlight behind.
The door boomed closed behind her.
Silence stretched between us, but beneath the fear, beneath the uncertainty about curses and fragments, something else pulsed. Life. New life.
Her words echoed through the stone walls and into the hollow of my chest.The child you now carry.
Lore’s arm slid from my waist. His eyes, those wondrous green eyes, searched mine as if he needed to see the truth there. I gave a trembling nod. I hadn’t been sure, but now I was.
The words hung between us, transforming everything. Our future, our fight, our desperate race against time. I was carrying his child, and he might not live to see them born.
