Page 17 of Crowned By the Fae King

I reached out and brushed my fingers against a low-hanging branch. The leaves curled up into small knots in a heartbeat, retreating from my touch as if I'd burned them.

I yanked my hand away, and didn't try again.

We broke into the dawn sunlight after the first hundred stairs or so, the dense trees giving way to low brush and meadow, and then to naked stone. The stone speared up into the sky, growing narrower and narrower until it was no more than forty feet across, with the stair zig-zagging up its back. The stark beauty of it all made me want to stop and enjoy the scenery, but Cass didn't pause, so I didn't, either.

The stone steps led up to a flat span of bedrock, with the sky on all sides. It wasn't the highest spire of the mountains, not by a longshot, but that didn't detract from the three-hundred-sixty-degree view. It felt like I could look in any direction and see the entire Court sprawled out beneath me like a lover.

Two thrones sat on the top of the spire, all one piece with the bedrock. The heavy arms and straight sides were carved with twisting, naturalistic thorned vines, with stylized rosettes on the front of the arms and at the very top of the back of the throne, almost like a sun. The backs themselves weren't wide planes of stone, but shaped like swords, with the tips pointed up. The side bars of the hilt arced up from the seat into sharp-pointed crescent moons, and the foot-wide back was enough to lean on while still making room for wings.

Both sat on a platform of stone that had three natural ledges leading up to it, like a fancy stage, and their seats were at the same height. They were the thrones of equals, meant for a King and a Queen.

One was sized for Cass, and the other, for me.

"Wow," I whispered, struck by the absolute strangeness of the world I'd been thrown into. Danica had said I was the Merciful Queen, but I hadn't really believed it. Standing there, looking at a throne made for me, it was inescapable.

A fae woman clad only in a corset of woven willow branches and a drifting skirt of gauzy dark green cloth got up gracefully from her cross-legged position in front of the thrones. The green willow-leaves shrouded her breasts and fuzzed the outline of her body, so fresh I knew she must have been woven into it this morning. Her long hair was bound back in a heavy braid that coiled on the ground, and she had narrow braids of it woven into a net on her arms.

She had silver tears painted onto her face and dotted on her chest, a more intense version of the decorations the first woman had worn. This, then, was the high priestess.

She lifted one hand and looked up.

The Archangels dropped out of the sky.

Crowns

Ifelt them come—a sudden sense of presence, like anticipating a bolt of lightning before the strike. Vaduin plummeted from the sky in a gold-and-white blur. His wide wings clawed at the sky. When he set his foot on the ground, it was with no more force than if he'd been stepping down from a stair.

He set Danica down. The two exchanged a look of sheer delight and stepped to either side of the thrones, each holding a crown.

The one in Vaduin's hands was made of heavy silver, a thick band with sharp points and a single upside-down teardrop cabochon-cut stone, the ruddy kind of black that marked it as a black garnet. It looked like the crown of a conqueror, or a tyrant.

If anything, the crown Danica held was even more evil-looking. It was clearly made out of iron, not expensive metal, and the tines were sharp blades. Smaller black garnets encircled the band, each set beneath the knife-like points. It practically screamed "evil fairytale Queen."

The high priestess started chanting in a sing-song voice. The words curled, familiar and yet alien, like hearing a song in a half-remembered language. Underneath me, the world roused. For one terrifying, elating moment, I felt like I was standing on a fantasy island as the great sea turtle beneath woke, everything shifting with ancient focus, the head of an unknowable beast lifting and its world-weary eyes opening to take in the sun.

Cass let out a panting breath. His hands closed into fists, then flexed open. The strain of his tendons transferred to me, a pleasant tension that made me want to grab onto a ledge and haul myself up, feeling all my weight on my arms.

He stepped forward.

I stepped with him.

As if we'd done this a thousand times – as if the land itself knew where we should go, our feet falling in the same places as those who'd come before – we walked to the high priestess, and in silent unison, we knelt.

The high priestess looked down at us, her dark eyes holding mysteries, and set her fingertips on our heads. She went still, connecting the two of us, Cass' magic flashing through her to pour into me.

In an instant, I knew his body as well as my own, the focus of the Court and the first physical contact between us conspiring to flare my sense of him into full wakefulness. He held the weight of his body on his knees and the balls of his feet; had balance to rival any dancer or tightrope-walker. His bronze feathers were resting on the ground, the angle putting strain on his wings. The tension in his shoulders and ribs was for me and from me, his focus not on the priestess or the Court but on me: face turning to look at me, ear cocked towards me, his power singing in my blood.

I could feel his beating heart in my chest. I'd followed that heartbeat to him, and now here we were.

I tilted my head back, hair brushing against the nape of my neck, and made myself breathe.

"Xarcassah Marys," the high priestess intoned, her voice level and melodious. "You have been chosen by the Court of Mercy, and thus by its goddess, Ithronel. Until your death, you are the Merciful King."

She lifted her hands off of us. The intensity of connection between me and Cass cut like someone flipping a switch, leaving me only with the same physical sensations from him that I'd grown used to: the placement of his body and the commands he gave it.

It wasn't a relief. It was like getting a blanket snatched off of me, leaving all my skin bare and cold.

Vaduin stepped forward and got down onto one knee, proffering the crown. The high priestess took it in silence, turning to Cass with the mountain breeze rustling the leaves of her corset.

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