Page 82 of Dead Crown
Lumi quirked his mouth. “If you expect me to be coronated with the Crown, what are you going to tell the Mages? What will we say when we get married too? ‘This is my brother, but don’t worry about that.’”
“You deserve to be at the top while Tivar rots in a ditch. You deserve to wear the Crown he wanted so fucking badly.”
Lumi thought. “Take it, and we won’t say anything about who I really am. We won’t have to admit we’re brothers. I want to be Lumi who loves his husband and their daughter. Not Edur, the dead Prince who came back, fucked his half-brother and uncle, and had a child with half-brother. If you want to marry me, Jaki, then let me have this as my wedding present. If people talk about us behind our backs and notice how much we look alike since I’m not dying my hair and fur-” He cocked an ear. “We don’t have to confirm their suspicions.”
Jaki leaned against the column as he looked at Lumi. “This is what you really want? To keep your real identity a secret?”
“Yes. You have the proper blood, so it won’t hurt Iceland.”
“We’ll do it your way.” Jaki put an arm around him. “Whatever you want. I should have waited to ask if you’d marry me.”
“Why?”
“I wasn’t very romantic about it.”
Lumi let out a quick laugh. “I don’t care. Come on.”
They started walking to the wall where the poem was. Jaki’s eyes wandered to the frame of roses carved in the stone. It was hard to imagine a stone worker etching in the deep lines. Whoever it was, they’d been dead for centuries.
It was also hard to imagine the Temple had once been a simpler structure.
After Elira had gifted King Rinder the Crown, and Iceland became a real Kingdom, he’d left his original settlement. Havaska had been started, although it had been so small, one couldn’t even call it a village. The Temple had been the biggest thing, and Rinder had ordered the wall to be carved with the words of the Goddess. Things had been changed a little and added over the centuries, but it was still the same place Rinder had once stood in. Every King had been crowned in the same Temple.
“This poem is wrong,” said Lumi.
“Hm?”
“It’s wrong or…I mean…” Lumi paused. “This doesn’t sound right.”
“What are you talking about?”
“If Jacqueline makes the Crown shine, then Elira didn’t intend for only men to take the throne. Aren’t those supposed to beherwords?”
Jaki squeezed him. “The one-man part are what she supposedly said, and I don’t think Rinder would have lied. Bud must mean the heir, and Rinder only had one son. I think this specifically refers to him and his son. No one else. Later, the story must have been changed a bit since the line kept birthing sons, so we ended up believing only a true son of the line could be crowned. I’m assuming it was passed down orally at first, so I can see little things being altered, and people started to think this poem referred to everyone.”
“I don’t know…”
“Why was the word mankind often used to represent all fairies a while back instead of fairykind? Not everyone is a man. It’s just one of those things they used to do.”
“One man, one crown, one bud, one clan,” Lumi muttered. “It’s still wrong.”
Jaki peeked in the sling where Jacqueline was dozing. “How? There’s one ruler, one living Crown, the single rosebud that was on the tree to represent the birth of the heir, and all of Iceland is supposed to be united.” Clan was an older word used to represent a Kingdom, a particular group, or a family.
Lumi tilted his head. “One Crown? That’s it?”
“Er, yes?”
“So we’re not permitted a copy? Mother had a smaller and slightly different version of the Crown. Every Queen or King married to the heir had it. If any King had ever been in a poly relationship here, they would have had a third made.”
“I think one Crown means it’s only the one she made that will live,” said Jaki. “If it was lost or something, we couldn’t make a copy and expect it to work properly. The copies are just so the spouse has something to wear for the image when they’re coronated.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Lumi insisted as he stepped and pointed at the wall. “I never questioned it before. I didn’t eventhink about the wall itself. Jacqueline proved we were wrong about only males taking the line. Even the Valentine line never had such a rule, and they’re all born with scar markings. There’s no fairy type like that. They’vealwaysbirthed a male first too.”
“But it’s likely a coincidence, and maybe the markings are just a thing as a sign of a blessing or…”
“Maybe there is a particular reason for them only having males, but it’s not because Elira didn’t value women. She was a woman, but saying only men can have the Crown here isn’t like her. You said that too.”
“Yes, and our line never had a Princess of Cleel blood touch the Crown while it was dead. Jacqueline is proof that Elira didn’t expect the women in our Royal Family to be less important. We’ve always had a boy to take over, and that’s the way it worked out.” Jaki shrugged.
