Page 148 of A Reign of Roses
Hart swallowed, misery cresting over his face for the first time since he’d arrived. “I’d love nothing more than to soak my hands with the blood of Lazarus’s men. But getting us here…Some of the witches in the coven didn’t survive. Briar needs to send me back. The channel will take me too long.”
“She’ll do so after we slaughter Lazarus,” Eardley said. “You have to stay and fight—we need all the manpower we can get.”
Hart’s brows knit. “Who are you?”
I sighed. Too many egos in one study—mine included. “Hart, this is my lieutenant, Eardley. Eardley, Hart is the rebel king. He’s the only man I trust to rule over Lumera when my father falls. We can’t risk losing him.”
And Beth’s vision…Gods forbid we succeeded in slaughtering Lazarus and found even Briar couldn’t get us back to Lumera to begin extraditing civilians…The realm couldn’t be left without a leader. Now, while Lazarus was here, was the best opportunity for Hart and his battalions to successfully lay siege to Solaris and take power.
“We will free the Lumerians,” Briar swore to me, as if reading my thoughts, “once we’ve secured the stronghold. But if I go now, the ward I’ve cast will dissolve. It’s a constant enchantment I’m maintaining over the keep, not a completed spell.”
“Then just send Hart back,” I said. “But first—”
I crossed the room to the spelled door and the glass display case in the candlelit hallway on the other side. Next to King Oberon’s prized harpy talon and my favorite treasure—a piece of the original map of Willowridge drawn by Evendell’s founders—was the first king of Onyx’s diamond-and-amethyst armor. And atop it, his cherished battle crown. Leather for comfort in wartime but artfully crafted with jewels that still sparkled a millennium later.
I jammed my elbow into the case, shattering the glass, and fished the piece out before stalking back into the study.
Arwen and Griffin shot me equally questioning looks, but I only moved for Hart.
“Kneel,” I instructed when I’d come to stand before him.
Hart, a man with a thousand witty one-liners and very little dignity, knelt immediately to the ground, eyes grave on mine.
“Hart Renwick, will you solemnly promise to govern the peoples of Lumera, both Fae and mortal alike, with justice, mercy, and ferocity; to protect them as if each were your own blood; to guide the realm to peace and prosperity as long as you shall live?”
Hart’s eyes never left my own, even as Mari inhaled sharply. “I solemnly promise to do so.”
“Hold this throne with honor,” I said after placing the ancient crown upon his unkempt head. “It is yours by the authority of the heir to the Lumerian throne, Prince Kane Ravenwood. May your righteousness and just rule endure forevermore. Gods save King Renwick.”
Though quiet and embattled, bruised and broken, the entire study murmured back in perfect clarity, “Gods save King Renwick.”
And I’d hoped that they would.
Before he or I could utter a word to each other, a spell-cast wind and the smell of sorcery filled the room, sending pillow tassels whirring and a wicked chill through my bones. Briar and Mari hummed in unison as the undulating, gaping maw of a pitch-black portal ringed in softly glowing violet bloomed open, separating our world from whatever magic lay beyond.
“Rule well, Hart,” Briar urged her old friend. “We’ll celebrate when this nightmare has ended.”
“Good luck to you all.” Hart nodded once. “I’ll take care of your people, Kane. I swear it.”
“They’re your people. They always have been.”
He grinned that half smile once more, then stepped through before the portal slammed shut. Like an eye, winking closed.
For a moment, my ornate study was silent.
“I almost forgot,” Amelia said to me, pulling something from her skirts. My black signet ring glinted in the stained-glass-filtered afternoon light. “I thought you might want this back.”
“It’s hers now.” I gestured at Arwen, my entire body tense. Now that Hart was gone and the people of Lumera accounted for, I knew what would need to come next.
Arwen’s eyes widened a bit, but she opened her palm, allowing Amelia’s small, moonstone-adorned fingers to place the ring at the center of her hand.
Her olive eyes on mine, my wife placed the signet onto her left ring finger. My heart swelled sorrowfully.
Wyn was the one to narrow his gaze at her. “Arwen, you cannot offer yourself up to Lazarus like a prize. Not after everything he’s done to you.”
“I agree,” Briar said, deep in thought.
“No,” I interjected, the plan finally forming itself in my mind.
