The success of the princess test earned Luce both respect and fear within the courts, as the coup showcased his dark talents as well as his loyalty to Eldoria’s true heir.
Before Luce had left with Vesper to the Rigamort, he had shifted to his ethereal form and siphoned into Griselda’s chamber. Drawing on his ability to influence the desires of another, he put a thought in the regent’s mind that there might be something in the shrine to give her the upper hand. When Sir Bartley found the box, she recognized it as the one Queen Nova had mentioned in her missive, and her confidence was bolstered. For who but Crony could be behind everything?
Griselda was too distracted by the witch’s rivalry, and too sure of her own prowess with potions and poisons, to suspect Lyra might actually have lived. Thus, she allowed Lustacia to endure a test she could never win. Griselda’s cry of foul play—however hypocritical—had opened up the opportunity to show both kingdoms what she herself had done, as opposed to Vesper having to convince them. It was a much more effective way to consolidate Nerezeth and Eldoria behind their one queen and win fealty, by letting them hear the confession unfold for themselves—on the very birdsong voice in which they had put all their faith.
Once Prince Vesper’s royal guard rounded up the other four accomplices, the crowds buzzed with eagerness for the ceremonies that would bring the two lights of the sky together at last. However, Vesper proclaimed that their princess was exhausted after proving herself and should be allowed to retire to her tower chamber for the remainder of the cessation course, where she could have a hot bath—then rest her head on a pillow and her body on an eiderdown mattress for the first time in five years.
At that, a hush fell over the castle as serene as the snow falling outside the windows, and occupants found their ways to their own beds.
When the cessation course ended, the most important of diurnals began beneath Nerezeth’s night sky. Three things of import were to take place: the joint coronation, the public sentencing of the prisoners responsible for Lady Lyra’s attempted murder, and of course the wedding. Madame Dyadia had deigned the upcoming blink of dawn the ideal juncture at which to have the ceremony that everyone hoped would invoke a heavenly phenomenon. It stood to reason, being the precise moment when both Eldoria and Nerezeth shared a glimpse of one another’s skies.
Within four hours of waking, and having dressed and eaten, the castle’s occupants filled the halls and corridors, eager for the joint coronation to get underway. The ceremony took place in the throne room—a cavernous space defined by walls, ceiling, and floor of black marble flecked with silver. Sconces cast a soft, flickering glow, and crickets chirped. Moths puttered about the vaulted ceiling, some dipping down where partitioned balconies lined the walls from corner to corner, forming a second story for extra viewing spaces. Silver and sky-blue valances hung in entwined curves from the railings. Flush against the farthest wall sat a large dais. Gold and red ribbons hung around the edges, interlaced with a variety of flowers from Nerezeth’s arboretum. The ribbons, in Eldoria’s colors, were Griselda’s contribution to honor the princess finally gaining her crown. Ironic, that the beautiful decor placed by the regent’s own hands for her daughter would now pay tribute to the niece she despised instead. In the center of the platform, two silver thrones sat against the wall between opposing pillars carved of dark, sparkling crystal in the form of thorny vines. These provided a vertical perch for the royal salamanders which hung from their suctioned toes like brightly colored fruits. Their pearlescent and bejeweled stripes, blotches, and dots stood out against the black background, catching the eye.
True to Nerezethite tradition, the thrones doubled as coronation chairs for the incoming monarchs. Lyra and Vesper were seated beside one another, holding hands. On Lyra’s left, Prime Minister Albous balanced Queen Arael’s white-gold crown—encrusted with diamonds upon a frame as delicate as lace and ivy—atop her daughter’s head. Following his lead, Queen Nova set King Orion’s amethyst-studded crown—forged of black iron that resembled jagged spikes tipped in silver—upon her son’s head.
Applause and shouts of joy resonated across the vastness and sent the moths and salamanders scrambling to new hiding places. The subjects of both kingdoms formed long, winding lines to pay homage to the new king and queen. Afterward, a luncheon feast was held in the great hall.
Some three hours later, the crowds disbursed into the corridors to seek naps in their chambers or guided tours of the arboretum where the wedding festivities would later be held.
Lyra and Vesper planned an appearance at the castle infirmary for those too ill to attend the coronation or nuptials. But first they took a detour to the Star Turret within the highest tower to retrieve her long-lost memories, the box containing them having released its lock the moment Lyra’s head received its crown.
Luce accompanied their ascension up the wide, winding staircase.
Lyra vied for a glimpse around her chaperone. Vesper met her gaze and nodded.
Luce looked from one to the other and lowered a red feathery wing to cut off their visual. “Having a crown upon your noggins doesn’t make your silent lovelorn declarations any less inappropriate and rude when in my company, Majesties.”
No, we weren’t mentally chatting . . . about anything. Lyra’s wide orchid-lace cuffs rubbed against one another as she answered. The movement reminded her of the crickets in the throne room earlier, filling her with contentment. She belonged. She belonged here, and she belonged in Eldoria. Now, if only she could master looking regal while walking in a gown and royal robes.
She concentrated on taking the stairs in the sage-colored, velvet gown without stepping on the orchid ruffles of lace peering out from beneath the ankle-high hem.
Vesper tilted his head to get her attention once more, and she was the one who nodded this time.
The king and I . . . her signing to Luce stalled in midair as she shared a smile with Vesper, seeing him beam at the title. Her wild Pegasus, ruling a kingdom. She never would’ve thought it.
Luce rustled his illusory feathers behind him and sighed. “The king and you . . . what? Can’t keep your eyes off one another? I’ve noticed. So long as it’s not your hands or lips, I’ll overlook it.”
Lyra misjudged a step and her lacy hem caught beneath her toe. She ducked her head while retaining balance. Her crown slid askew, but Luce righted it atop her hair before it could crash to the floor.
There, that. Lyra gesticulated, using his swift reaction as her segue. That’s precisely what I was trying to say. The king and I have noticed how you’re always there to salvage my crown.
Luce smirked. “A necessary task, seeing as you’ve no horns to hold it on as the other princess did.”
The jibe wasn’t in the best taste, but both Lyra and Vesper smiled, mainly because it felt so good to have the violence and deceptions almost behind them. Vesper’s stags would never be harmed in secret again, now that his mental communications with them had been restored.
Luce, I’m being serious. You’ve proven your loyalty to me a thousand times over. The fact that her fingers moved so stiffly was surprising. She never imagined feeling nervous in this moment. Earlier, when Cyprian was organizing the subjects to greet Vesper and me on our thrones, I realized I should have a first knight of my own. And I would like it to be you.
Luce stepped down from the stair they’d just taken, his backward retreat so swift it caused Lyra and Vesper to rise a step above before they noticed.
His orange gaze centered on Lyra alone. “I’m not sure someone of my . . . nature . . . is cut for such an honor.”
Of course you are. You’d make a wonderful first knight. She looked to Vesper, begging his help with her eyes.
“I agree wholeheartedly. Can’t think of anyone I’d trust more to guard my queen when I can’t be there. Your part in the princess test alone earned you the position.”
Even more, Lyra reclaimed the conversation, my trust and faith in you demands that no other man could rival you for the position.
Luce mussed his hair while rubbing the side of his head in thought. The gesture exposed one of his fuzzy, pointed ears and reminded Lyra of all the times he’d run alongside her as the fox, and how much she would miss that.
Taking a deep breath, he stepped up between them and they resumed climbing the stairs. A wreath of tension wrapped around them.
“If you need training with a sword”—Vesper broke the silence—“Cyprian and my guard would be glad to assist.”
“A sylph’s weapon is his tongue,” Luce groused. “And I’ve more than proven my proficiency in wielding whispers.” He turned to Lyra, an uncharacteristically repentant look upon his face. “I’m not the right man, little one.”
Her eyes stung, but she refused to cry. Having been without tears for so long, she was stingy with them. To weep at each little disappointment in life was a waste. Thus, she had decided never to break down except in extreme moments of bliss or woe.
As it stood, Vesper had prepared her for this response. He himself understood how wind and weightlessness could bind a soul in a way few other things could.
It was selfish, she knew, to want the sylph to stay in her life. Too much to ask from an air elemental who’d only recently won his wings back, when all he wanted for the rest of his ageless years was to fly across endless skies.
Luce caught her elbow as they ascended. “It might serve you not to have a man as your protector at all. Have you considered asking Lady Selena?”
Vesper’s attention perked. “She is an excellent swordsman.”
Lyra shook her head. But she’s a princess. She’s royalty. She shouldn’t serve me.
Vesper furrowed his eyebrows. “She would consider it an ennoblement, not a demotion. With her not being the crown heir, there’s a lack of responsibilities that often bores her,” he assured. “However, tradition dictates we devise a new title for any new position. And princess-knight isn’t quite stately or unique enough.”
“First Knightress has a nice ring,” Luce offered. They all grinned at that, then fell into silent contemplation.
When they arrived at the Star Turret, the door stood ajar and the three seated themselves at a round table. A lone candle flickered in the center, warm wax scenting the air as it melted into a small dish.
The domed room had once been the solar. It was humble in size with a welcoming fireplace. Tapestries, hung upon half of the circular wall, depicted sun-swept fields in summer and snowy mountain peaks beneath starry skies. Shelves curved around the other half in rows of six, holding a variety of jars, vials, boxes, and crockeries with ingredients varying between the commonplace, the gruesome, and the mystical—reminding Lyra of the dirt room in Eldoria’s castle.
At one time, the solar’s many windows had allowed sun to shine in, aiding with tasks that required good lighting: reading, map-drawing, embroidery, or calligraphy. But the day Nerezeth fell into the earth and dragged the night sky with it, Madame Dyadia stepped up as the royal sorceress in the absence of her dead son and took the solar as her workspace.
Moonlight glimmered through the windows now, disrupted sporadically by thick swirls of snowflakes. Madame Dyadia riffled through a cabinet, only her backside visible behind the open door. She closed the door and carried over the box containing Lyra’s memories, the enchanted seashell that held her voice, and a vial filled with a dark, oily liquid. The sorceress set the items on the table, her black-and-white-striped flesh blending into her gown.
Her catlike gaze settled on Luce, and Lyra tried not to stare at the empty socket puckering her forehead. “Well done, sylph. Revealing the ‘princess - revolution’ box to Eldoria’s regent played out brilliantly. I apologize for doubting you when you first came to me.”
Luce tipped his head in acknowledgement, absently tugging at the talisman around his neck. “It was in fact our Queen Lyra who gave me the idea, when she shamed Sir Erwan into confessing everyone’s crimes in Eldoria. If only we’d had influential witnesses to overhear him, we could’ve forgone the princess test altogether.”
Vesper shrugged. “I rather like the way it played out. Watching my wily thief become the queen she was meant to be while bringing her cousin to her knees. It was a thing of beauty.” He grinned at Lyra and she smiled back, feeling a rush of pride. Vesper reached for the vial and held it up to a slant of moonlight. The contents illuminated, glittering like black diamonds. “So, this is what the regent used? For Lustacia’s fraudulent shadows?”
Dyadia nodded. “Though this one is less potent. Fool woman had no business dabbling in such things. All it takes is a drop of the moonlit essence for the apparitional effect. By using an excess, she damned those miserable goblins to a half-light state forever—bound to her daughter. Though they still have some of their innate characteristics, they must do whatever she demands. They’ve no choice . . . no freedom to think on their own.” She gestured toward the vial. “Whoever serves this will have the same power over their recipient. However, this diluted dose will last no more than two years, then the victim can return to their original form, while still remembering all they experienced as a half-light.”
It didn’t hurt the stags, did it? To make more? Lyra signed the question.
Dyadia, having lived as long as Crony, easily deciphered her gestures. “Not at all. Since such a small amount was required, I drained it from the edge of their antlers, still intact upon their head. No different than pricking a fingertip for a droplet of blood. And I awarded the donor stag with extra nutrients.” She held up her own finger, revealing a miniscule hole. “It is a tradeoff. One must always give back what they take, or both parties suffer.”
Lyra furrowed her brow. What is the trade-off for me to receive my voice again?
Vesper set the vial down, intent upon hearing Dyadia’s answer himself.
“There’s no trade-off for something that is rightfully yours. You shall have it back, but exactly as it was. You weren’t able to talk with your voice before, and you shan’t be able to now. It will be nothing more or less than it was in the beginning—a blessing for its beauty and the power to inspire peace and happiness in others. But also a curse, for it will never inure itself to words. Do you still desire it?”
Yes, Lyra answered. A part of her had hoped that since Lustacia had managed to mold her voice into speech, there might be some residual effect to help Lyra talk. But it didn’t matter. Being able to emote through sound . . . to laugh aloud or yelp in surprise . . . to sing with a jubilation and joy that would make others happy upon hearing it—that was enough.
“Then you shall have it. First, I must make a trip to Eldoria for Crony’s grimoire. It contains the transference recipe I’ll need.”
As if on cue, Luce lifted the talisman from around his neck. He pulled a few strands of hair free from the braided pendant. “So you can find her quickly.”
Lyra now understood why the determinate elixir had carried Dregs to the Rigamort. Apparently, Dregs had used an icicle growth his cousin once lost in a game of cards for his elixir’s personal ingredient. Since Slush had already become a half-light apparition when Dregs went looking for him, the magic carried him to the last place it remembered the icicle growth being.
As Luce handed over Crony’s hair, a look passed between him and Dyadia—something indecipherable, but decidedly somber.
You’ll be visiting Crony? Lyra asked. Please convince her to come to the nuptials. Tell her she has an honored place in both kingdoms, protected by myself and the king. I want her to see us wed, to be with us when the skies unite. Tell her I still need her . . . she’s the only mother I can remember.
Madame Dyadia studied her palm where the strands of hair trembled on her every breath. “Do not worry, Highness. I will speak to her. And she will bear witness to everything; I vow it.” She wrapped the hairs within a cloth, then pushed the memory box toward Lyra. “On the note of mothers, it is time you are reacquainted with Queen Arael and your place in Eldoria.”
Lyra’s heartbeat skipped as she reached up to touch her crown, the weight of it foreign upon a mane of lustrous hair to which she had yet to acclimate. As foreign as the mother she would never know.
She brought her fingers down and signed: I don’t expect any memories of Queen Arael in that box. She died giving birth to me.
Luce, having had a pained expression on his face already, looked beyond miserable now. It was as if he wished to slip into his ethereal form and vanish altogether. Instead, he kept his lips clamped over pointed teeth and stared at the pendant between his fingers.
Vesper leaned around the sylph to catch Lyra’s gaze, his crown’s silver-tipped spikes warming to pinkish-orange in the candlelight, like black thorns dotted with morning dew. “There will be memories of your father telling you of your mother. I never met him, but I know how much he loved you. Enough to stop a war and sign a blood oath to win his daughter the nightsky she needed to be happy. Like my father, yours accepted you from the beginning as his own, even though you were different from him. A man like that would never let you forget where you came from. Who you came from.”
Thank you, Lyra mimed. She’d learned many things about her kingdom’s history from Prime Minister Albous at the luncheon feast, the most unsettling of which was that her father had a hand in King Orion’s death through the panacea roses, however unintentional. She loved Vesper even more for forgiving her father and offering such kind sentiments.
Dyadia opened the box’s lid and lifted out a stack of glass that jingled like chimes. Glowing magical threads bound the spine, forming a book of sorts. Lyra had watched Crony use the spinnerets in her horns to tie two or three memories together at a time. However, she’d never seen so many memories. And each one belonged to her . . . an entire past waiting dormant within these pages.
The sorceress turned her unnerving gaze to Lyra. “You said you wished me to animate it before the imprint, so our king can view the pages?”
Lyra nodded. She wanted to share her background with Vesper, just as he’d shared his in his notes. To intimately experience one another’s pasts would perhaps awaken the magic that could bring the moon and sun together. As it stood, she felt nothing inside of her powerful enough to enact such a monumental, earth-shattering feat.
Luce started to rise but Lyra caught his wrist, asking him to stay without speaking.
He nodded and sat again.
The sorceress sipped from a cup. Steam curled over the brim’s edge, smelling foul and putrid. When asked what it was, she replied, “Decomposing leaves gathered from a boneyard, a raven’s skull ground to powder, and a mourner’s tears.” Having drank it all, she fogged the pages with her breath of death, one after another, animating a multitude of colorful shapes across the enchanted tableaus—stained-glass images coming alive.
Lyra flipped through, choosing which scenes to share . . .
Together, the three of them watched blissful moments. She cried upon her first memory, of her father’s own tears upon her face as a newborn, giving her the taste of comfort. Then fury burned dark and deep upon remembering he’d died at the hand of his sister. While watching the scene when Lyra first met Crony in the dungeon, Luce’s hands tensed around the talisman that he’d returned to his neck.
At last came the final memory . . . being dropped within a coffin at Bartley’s and Erwan’s hands. Vesper twitched like a predator waiting to pounce, his fingers clawing the table, knuckles bulging beneath his rich, lovely skin. He sat there long enough to witness the two knights dropping in the cadaver brambles and scorpions, making her writhe and scream until her voice was gone.
Choking back a growl, he shoved out of his chair, knocking it over. He knelt in front of Lyra. “My queen, your family belongs to you alone.” His low rumbling voice, paired with flaring nostrils and embers in his eyes, was more unsettling than a roar. “But grant me one favor. Give me Bartley.”
Lyra stroked his hand and nodded.
Kissing her forehead, he turned to Luce. “After the memory weave is done, see that she gets back to her chambers. She’ll need to rest before we visit the infirmary.”
“Of course,” Luce answered.
Vesper left the chamber without another word.
Lyra’s hands shook as she asked Luce if she’d made a mistake.
The barely contained fury on his face mirrored Vesper’s. “No. He has been affected by this, too. And considering I got the pleasure of snapping Erwan’s neck, it’s only right your king has his turn. He grew up killing monsters. Let him put that talent to use.”
Lyra looked back to the glass book. She was done viewing her memories like a distant bystander. She wanted to experience them, wanted them ingrained—fused to her mind and body with every emotion and sensory element that made them distinctly her own—no matter how painful.
She asked the sorceress to explain the procedure.
“Your part is simple.” Madame Dyadia tugged at the glowing threads binding the book and drew them out into one long string that drifted in the air. Catching it, she spun and spun the strand until it frayed into pale, smoky mist. White sparks blinked within, like lightning trapped in a cloud. She guided the flashing mist to settle over Lyra’s head and face. “These are the breaths of your resurrection. Close your eyes, and inhale.”