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When she didn’t say anything else, I asked, “The other ones, they were like this one, of that night?”

“N-no. They were… I wasn’t a little kid in them.” She twisted until her nose pressed into the curve of my shoulder. “I think you were in one of them,” she whispered. “The first one I had, when we touched the mirror and I’d been knocked unconscious from falling on the rocks.” There was a pause. “I’m sure it was you. Someone called you Callum. It was you but different. You had a tattoo on your throat, like Reuben’s, and another on your forehead. Almost like a permanent circlet, the lotus centered between your eyes and the vines tracing across your temples and down onto your jaw.”

Now I truly wanted to be sick.

There was no reason why I should have had the Mark of the King in a true dream. Just thinking of the level of tragedy that would require stole my breath and made my entire being ache.

“There were Alholím.” Her voice was so quiet, I almost didn’t hear the words. “Flying. I thought they were dragons, but someone yelled what they were and then lots of people were running around this ship, loading bolts into crossbows bigger than me. And… and you were there, pulling me to a staircase and deeper into the boat.”

The Alholím had been killed, wiped out entirely during the Great War. There had not been a single sign since that there might be a small faction that had survived. None of our navy carried the mounted mechanisms for the cross bolts and hadn’t for a long, long time. Only our elders remembered that time, shortly after the gods intervened in the Great War and peace took root between the continents. While many of the races with inherent magic had long lifespans, the time before the Great War ended did not create an environment where many could grow old. It was only since the treaty that our people were able to grow into elders and see beyond a century or two of time.

It was all I could do to keep my voice level. “Did I say anything to you?”

“I feel like you did.” Her nails bit into my skin. “But I don’t remember.”

She breathed deeply again, and then she pulled away. She wiped the tears from her face and then pressed the backs of her hands to her cheeks. A flush trailed down her throat a minute later.

“Fuck, this is embarrassing,” she muttered.

“No, it’s not,” I assured her. She pinned me with a sardonic look.

“I’m crying about weird dreams that are probably just the result of stress while wanting to do nothing but crawl inside your shirt while you’re still wearing it because—for some asinine reason—I feel better when all I can smell is your pine and wisteria scent when we haven’t even kissed. Yes, it is embarrassing.”

I shook my head and then circled her wrist, barely resisting a smile. “That’s normal. Remember what I said about omegas needing an alpha’s touch and smell? This is part of it.”

She huffed. Then, quietly, like she couldn’t help herself, she asked, “What does that tattoo mean?”

I tried to wet my suddenly dry throat. “Which one?”

She pursed her lips and messed with the lapis pendant nestled into the hollow of her throat. “Well, both, I suppose. I’ve seen the one on your throat. Reuben has it, and several of the men at Arden and Monique’s celebration did, too. But the one that framed your temples I’ve not seen on anyone.”

“The throat tattoo is a symbol of marriage,” I explained easily enough, though my voice was a bit more gruff than I’d like.

“But Simeon doesn’t have it,” she pointed out.

“No,” I agreed, “he doesn’t. The tattoo is given when the marriage is anointed in Persynthia’s temples by her acolytes. It’s a small ceremony, similar to the Freia rites, though there’s no soul bond. Simeon is… much more of a skeptic when it comes to the gods and their cultural significance. He would never choose to have a personal choice like a marriage given up to the gods for approval, no matter what his partner desired.”

She grunted, a sound I couldn’t decipher.

“I imagine you’ll want yours to be anointed, right?” she asked. When I nodded, she made another of those grunting sounds, though this one was softer.

“You’ll be given one, too, at the bottom of her sternum, like Kalise has.”

She hummed, her eyes a bit unfocused for several heartbeats. She thumbed the sleeve of the shirt, pulling it down until it sat in the middle of her palm even as she continued messing with her pendant.

“So two weddings, then?” she asked. “Or… or three, I suppose, since there’ll be a celebration, too, like Arden and Monique’s. Larger, I imagine, right?”

“Yes, our celebration here will be larger.” Then I admitted, “We’ll have four events, actually.”

Her eyes widened, and the lapis pendant dropped back against her skin with a soft ‘thud’.

“Four?” The word was practically squealed.

I blushed, nearly as dark as she often did, but I’d rather discuss this than the Mark of the King and how I had come to wear it.

“Yes, four. Both temple ceremonies, the celebration here, and then your coronation in Embercrest this summer.”

She looked like she’d just taken a bite from a lemon.