Page 47 of A Queen Of Broken Realms
I grimace and press my hand to my chest as worry flickers across Aglaope’s face. A pair of strong hands pulls me back and Ashen turns me into his embrace.
“All right, vampire,” he whispers, pulling us a few steps away as I try to catch the air with my lungs. Why is it so hard? It’s fuckingeverywherebut it won’t go in. “Listen to the music, vampire.Listen.”
A familiar song is playing. I hear Tessa’s voice and try to focus on her words. It takes a moment to realize she’s singing the lyrics toLet It All Go.
“You remember this?” Ashen asks, and I give a jerky nod. Smoke rises around us in inky black curls. “When we danced inBit Akalum, that was the moment I knew I could not stop myself from falling in love with you. It was the last battle lost. Even so, I still thought I could keep it to myself. I thought I could push you away if I needed to, but for me, there was no more denying what I had already started to feel.”
My chest finally starts to pull in air. The darkness that I now realize was creeping into my vision fades as I focus on the feeling of Ashen’s fingers drifting through my hair. The longer I listen to the music, or take in his comforting scent, or watch the scrolls of smoke swirl around us, the more the fist around my heart releases its grip. By the time the band has finished the next song, my pulse has slowed enough that it’s nearly back to normal.
“This is a lot to take in,” Ashen whispers, changing nothing about his embrace or the rhythm of his fingers as they pass through my hair.
“Does Aglaope know? About Ember? Everything else?”
“Not everything. But she knows the most important parts. I spoke with her this afternoon. She just wants you to be happy.” I close my eyes and press my ear to Ashen’s chest, relishing the steady sound of his breath. Blood fills and leaves the chambers of his heart, as it has for centuries past. I focus on the sounds and the smells, and slowly my own heart matches pace with his. “We do not need to be married tonight if it’s too much.”
“I want to.”
“No one will think badly of you if you don’t. And if they ever did, I would rip out their spines.”
I blow a laugh into Ashen’s chest.
“I’m being serious.”
“I know.”
“Through their throats.”
“I can imagine. Vividly.”
Ashen’s arms tighten around me before they release. His palms warm my shoulders as he scrutinizes my face. I must look like trash from all this crying, but it’s like he can’t see it. “Are you sure, vampire?”
I give him a wobbly smile as I nod and wipe my face with another black handkerchief that Ashen supplies. “Surer with every minute, Reaper.”
Ashen’s eyes sweep over my face, hunting for doubt. I already know there is none to find. When he seems satisfied, the smoke blows away in the breeze. His palm drops from my shoulder to wrap around my hand, warming the gold encircling my finger. When I glance over my shoulder at my sister, her smile is dimmer than it was before, her hand resting on her chest.
I turn ahead again and Ashen and I walk together toward the stage where Mr. Hassan, Cole, and Ediye have descended to stand in the orchestra. The cello and bass play a melody that’s both haunting and hopeful as Ediye’s eyes darken to space and stars, and she raises her palms like an offering as she creates an archway of light above us. Sparkling flowers in pastel shades of blues and pinks bloom and shed their glowing petals, raining down across our shoulders as we halt before them.
“When it comes to marriage, vampire customs adapt with the human rites that change around them,” Mr. Hassan says, his smile flickering like candlelight as he opens a heavy book to a marker saved with ribbon. “Reapers rarely wed, even within their realm. I don’t know of a vampire who has ever wedded a demon. So, we will use the ancient rites of the Guild of Gilgamesh, and your union will be written into the annals of the Apothecaries. Do you accept?”
“Yes,” I say, and Ashen gives a single nod in my periphery.
Mr. Hassan shuffles as he turns toward Ediye. “The diadems,sahira.”
Ediye smiles, her skin glowing in the light that brightens from her eyes, the tiny pinpricks of stars swirling in their galaxies. I feel something twining into my hair and reach up to touch a twisting crown of delicate stems and tiny crystals that feel like droplets of ice. Ediye shifts her attention to Ashen and I try to subdue my growing smile, biting down on my lip until I taste copper.
“She gave me horns, didn’t she,” the Reaper says with a flat glare.
A peal of laughter fills the amphitheater as two short, glittering horns sprout from his hair. But in just a moment they split and stretch and divide until they become a low crown of antlers and swirling black ivy.
“Rings,” the old man says, and Cole places the bands on the open book. I hand over my engagement ring too when the elderly apothecary gives me a pointed look. Mr. Hassan pulls a small ampule from his jacket and taps the dust within across the bands. “Beata sunt haec amoris signa, quae latorem in omnia regna sequuntur.”
The dust crackles and disappears as though absorbed by the rings. The old man then passes the first ring to me, a wide black band, the edges polished in the same shade of gold as my ring. I turn to Ashen, taking his hand as I hold the ring at his fingertip.
“Now repeat after me,azizati,” Mr. Hassan says, and I nod, watching as he casts his eyes down to the text of the old book. “Love that gives life to the dying, let your heart be reconciled.”
I look at Ashen and he back at me, surprise in both of our eyes. It’s so similar to my spell from the first night that Ashen and I met, the spell I cast to save his life. Mr. Hassan senses my hesitancy and looks between us.
“Something wrong?”
