Page 104 of The Kingdom's Crown

"You should rest," Sam urged her.

"Fine," Griffin bit out. "Carriages and manor houses, sure." She pushed past the men, and I stepped back out of her way until she caught my hand. "Thank you."

She looked up at me, a brief flinch in her scarred right eye quickly covered with a soft smirk.

"Good luck, Your Majesty," I said, squeezing her fingers.

Griffin huffed a laugh. "What an awful mess you've left me with," she murmured, but she squeezed back. "Come and see me when you're in the north."

A sudden pang struck me. I didn't know Griffin well, I knew significantly less of her than I wanted to, and now I wondered if it would ever really be possible to grow that friendship. I would be queen. She would be king, funny as it was to say it. Opposite sides of Kimmery, as Scrapper had put it.

"Oh dear, where's Scrapper?" I asked, looking suddenly around for the man.

"Drinking at the bar with the rest of his lot," Griffin said with a roll of her eyes. "S'pose we'll have to pick him up on our way out."

"We're certainly not keeping him," Aric answered wryly. "Come on, princess. Let's get back to the castle to hear the queen's announcement."

I jumped into Griffin's path before she could leave, wrapping my arms around her shoulders and squeezing tightly. "I'm sorry, and thank you, and—and…"

"Goodbye, Bryony," Griffin murmured, patting my back gently.

26

Bryony

“You seem awfully solemn," Cresswell murmured.

We were in the crush of the crowd of two-natured, an odd sight and an even stranger feeling. Animals kept brushing up against my skirts, and I wasn't sure if it was because of the close quarters or if it was some strange acknowledgment of thanks or appreciation.

"I feel…it's as if the air is changed," I said, my voice barely audible over the sound of hooves and paws on gravel, of bird cries in the air. "I don't know how to explain it."

"There's this kind of flavor—no, energy, on the battlefield on the last day," Cresswell murmured. "It's the feeling of change, I think. One night, I would fall asleep with the sense that the fighting would never end, and the next morning, I'd wake knowing and not understanding how that it would be the last day. You don't know if you're about to win or lose, you just know it's the end."

"Is that what I'm afraid of? That I'm—that these people are about to lose?" I asked. Because no matter the fact that I could claim a second nature now, it would never change the fact that the moment I transformed back into a woman, I could immediately stop any injustice I might've suffered as a two-natured, and that these people around me lacked that power.

Cresswell stopped us, Aric, Thao, and Wendell butting up against us, letting the parade of creatures continue to pass by.

"Yes, Bryony, that's what you're afraid of," Cresswell said with a small smile, dipping down to kiss my brow.

"And the fear won't change the outcome," Aric said. "So we'd better keep moving."

We could've walked into the palace, gone to find my mother, to hear the words from her first. Instead, we followed the steady path of the two-natured around us through the main palace gates, up the path through the gardens, to stand on the yard beneath the balcony. We were near the back of the crowd, but it parted easily for me, letting me walk forward, my gaze fixed upon the figure at the balustrade.

My mother was so small. Soft and rounded and petite, surrounded by the taller figures of men. It was evening and the sun was setting, but there were lamps resting on the edge near her.

"Do you think the council talked her into stricter measures?" Thao whispered to Wendell, who hushed him in answer.

My mother was searching the faces of the animals and people, and it wasn't until we'd reached the front of the crowd that she found me. There was sorrow in her expression, pain and a little resentment, like how she'd looked at my grandmother when she'd asked why she'd been given the crown so young.

In truth, I didn't know if my mother would ever have been ready to rule. I wasn't even always certain that ruling was something oneshouldfeel prepared for.

Please, I thought up to her, my heart pounding, eyes burning.Please do the right thing. For me. For them.

My mother's hand lifted, and hush sank over the crowd like a blanket, her gaze still holding mine.

"My people, my beautiful Kimmerians," she said, pausing as she stared at me another moment, before lifting her gaze away. "Forgive me. I hear your voices now as if my ears are uncovered for the first time. I see your trials. You have been treated without care or justice.

"No citizen so exquisite should be forced to hide. From this moment forward, the classification of two-natured will be stricken from our legislature. The registries burnt. The laws abolished."

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