“Oh! Let me fix one thing...” Meredy murmurs, stepping forward to adjust a pin in my hair.
I grab her around the waist as she does so, stealing a kiss. Several, in fact. Not just on her lips, but down the side of her neck, too.
Someone clears their throat in the doorway.
Turning, I meet Valoria’s gaze as she smiles at us. Beside her, Jax has a hand over his eyes. “Are you two decent?” he grumbles.
Valoria rolls her eyes and pulls his hand away from his face. She’s wearing a new crown, I realize. It’s the first time she’s put one on since the old five-jeweled one fell into the sea with Karston’s body. At first, I think tonight’s crown might be a relic from before King Wylding’s time, but the metal looks too shiny-new for that.
Following my gaze, she smiles and pats the crown. “What do you think?”
It’s simpler than her old one. Instead of five gems set into the silver filigree, one for each of Vaia’s faces, there’s only one enormous stone. At first glance, it appears to be milky-white, but as she tilts her head, hundreds of flecks of every color imaginable dazzle my eyes where the stone catches the lantern light from our room.
“I thought this was more fitting,” Valoria says uncertainly, reaching up to run a finger over the smooth stone, “seeing as the old one didn’t really representeveryeye color.” Sure enough, as she turns, I catch a flash of violet and think of Karston. I see amber, too, and remember Bryn. Light reddish-brown reminds me of Noranna, and the swirls of color bring to mind Sarika’s ever-changing eyes. There’seven a blue so dark, it makes me think of Evander. The members of our wolf pack may be scattered now, and in some cases gone altogether, but every mage is represented forever in this new crown.
“I love it,” I say truthfully.
Valoria beams as Meredy and I join her and Jax in the hallway, beginning the walk to the palace courtyard. “Don’t want to be late for my own party,” she says lightly, though there’s a quiver in her voice. “Though I wonder if anyone will bother showing up besides us.”
I arch a brow. She invited not just the denizens of the palace, but the whole city and then some—even sending ravens to the nobles from other provinces who ignored her requests for meetings, who never bothered to send aid when she needed to start building an army. Surely some of them are bound to come, whether she’s well-liked among her subjects or not, given the number of wine barrels she’s emptied from her ancestors’ generous cellar.
Today is the Festival of Grapes, a perfect time to celebrate with friends and enemies alike.
Of course, Simeon, Jax, and I can only stay until midnight, when we’ll need to slip away with our new trainees and Nipper to have a quick peek around the Deadlands. Simeon and Jax spent the entire week leading up to Azelie’s departure begging and bribing her to bring them back dragons of their own.
We enter a courtyard resplendent with all the usual party fare. Strings of sparkling lights—one of Valoria’s inventions, surely—try their best to outshine the torches and bonfires spewing clouds of multicolored smoke into the starry sky. But more shocking than the dragon-shaped fireworks that greet us outside and make Nipper bark—more shocking, too, than the ten-tier white cake whose every layer is adorned with grapes and flowers—is the crowd that welcomes us to the party.
There are people everywhere. So many, in fact, that the courtyard can’t contain them all, and several have taken the festivities to the garden as a result. Orsa’s wife and commander, Ilyra, and a group of Ezoran warriors stand near the wine barrels closest to us. Some have kept their furs, while others have donned gowns or robes. I’m sure Orsa would have enjoyed the party, too, but she needed to accompany the first boat of settlers to Karthia from Ezora in person.
The more we learn about them, the more I realize the importance of never judging by rumor alone.
Sweeping my gaze past the Ezorans, I spot Simeon and Danial near the musicians, spinning each other around in a fast-paced and impressively complicated dance. Danial lifts a laughing Simeon over his head, then lowers him for a kiss as a group of onlookers, mostly children, whistle and applaud. The show-offs. They’ll have to teach me the steps so I can try that one with Meredy at next week’s Festival of String Instruments.
Near Si and Danial, fishermen dance with nobles I only vaguely recognize from portraits in the palace gallery. Barmen dance with other barmen, with apple-sellers, with barons and baronesses, with liars and lovers and overly perfumed people from all over Karthia.
“I can’t believe it,” Valoria whispers, drawing my gaze back to her. As she surveys the crowd, she grabs my hand. “There’s the new Duchess Aventine! And there’s the latest Countess Rykiel! And isn’t that the young Duke Bevan?” She glances from me to Jax to Meredy, as if hopeful one of us can confirm her guess.
We all shrug. She gives a quick, nervous laugh in response.
“Oh, I don’t know! I’ve never evenseenhalf these people!” Valoria bites the nails of her free hand, something I don’t think she’s ever done. “These nobles... they wouldn’t even answer my letters, and now they’re here? Drinking my wine and eating my—oh, stars!”She squeezes my hand in alarm. “I don’t think there’s enough food! It looks like half the city is here! And Iknowthat duke over there came all the way from the Idrany Islands.”
“Breathe,” Meredy advises her gently. “I don’t think they came for the food.”
She barely gets the words out before a young woman with her auburn hair in a braided crown calls, “Time for a toast!” She’s the new Duchess Aventine Valoria pointed out earlier, taking the place of her aunt who died at Simeon and Danial’s wedding. She raises her glass of elderflower wine toward the sky. “To Her Majesty, Queen Valoria!”
A blond man in a handsome set of red robes raises his tankard—Devran, rebel leader turned ambassador to the people of Grenwyr, and Valoria’s critic turned friend. “To the queen who made our enemies into allies! The queen who saved us from war!”
“To Queen Valoria!” everyone echoes—Jax’s shout the loudest of all.
He hooks an arm around Valoria’s waist and kisses her in front of the crowd. As they draw apart, he flashes her his wolfish grin, and her face glows like embers in the torchlight. I have a feeling they’ll be leaving the party together tonight, just like they leave all our gatherings a few minutes early, hand in hand.
After that, Jax is in such high spirits that he demonstrates his uncanny ability to procure drinks in the blink of an eye, pressing a glass into Meredy’s hand, then mine. We join in the toasting, and I’m about to drink my first sip of honeysuckle wine when a voice beside me shouts to the night, “To our Sparrow, who twice defeated the mad king!”
Valoria winks at me as she finishes her toast.
“To Queen Valoria and her Sparrow!”
“To Meredy Crowther, who fired the shot that finished him!” I raise my glass.
