Page 98 of A Court of Sugar and Spice
“I think,” Clara says, “you should keep our inheritance, Godfather. After all, Louisa and I won’t need it. We’re both marrying rich, beautiful Fae men.”
“Who says I’m rich?” Fin cocks an eyebrow.
Clara flushes. “Oh, it doesn’t matter if you aren’t! I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking—I just assumed—”
“You assumed someone as powerful and gorgeous as I am must have found a way to amass a significant amount of wealth.” Fin winks. “And you’d be right.”
“I agree with my sister,” I tell Drosselmeyer. “We have no use for our father’s fortune anymore. Take the money, hire some human servants, and create everything you’ve wanted to make. Except weapons. No more weapons.”
“No weapons,” he agrees.
“CanImake weapons?” Fin asks. “Because it seems I have a talent for it. That whip I conjured for Clara is the first weapon I’ve ever made, infused with love, passion, and rage. I’d like to see what else I can do.”
“In the interest of defending our lands, perhaps,” says Lir, striding up. He gives Drosselmeyer a stiff nod. “You’ve freed everyone.”
It’s both a statement and a question. Drosselmeyer bows his head briefly, respectfully. “All your subjects have been returned, and all the Unseelie I trapped as well. Those whom I turned to stone during my first years of hunting could not be restored, but everyone else has passed through.”
“Then you may go,” Lir answers coldly. “I don’t expect we’ll see you again.”
“No,” says Drosselmeyer. “You won’t. As we agreed, I will shatter the portal upon my return, and close this chapter of my life.”
He steps up to the circle, one foot propped on its edge as he turns back for a final wave. He’s wearing a suit with many buttons and collars, like the day we first met him.
“I’m going to paint him like that,” Clara whispers. She waves to him.
With a nod, Drosselmeyer steps through the portal.
And vanishes from our lives.
Moments later, the vines that make up the portal ring shudder, then disintegrate into brittle fragments of root and twig.
Turning away from the debris, I slip my arms around Lir’s waist. “It’s over,” I tell him. “You did it. You freed your people.”
“I did none of it alone,” he says with a sigh, rubbing his hands along my upper arms. “And the work is not yet done. Now you and I must stabilize our kingdom.”
Lir is crowned the next day, in a hall of white marble and gold columns and shimmering light. Chills race over my skin multiple times during the ceremony, especially when he seats himself on the throne and a shudder of glorious power runs through the entire realm of Faerie.
At the end of the ceremony, Lir announces that I’m to be his queen, once the land is settled and purged of the final remnants of the Unseelie forces. The few dozen weary, hollow-eyed Fae who are present at the ceremony somehow muster the enthusiasm to cheer for me as I step onto the dais beside Lir. There’s no throne for me yet, but there will be soon.
Lir doesn’t imprison or kill the cursed Unseelie from the Rat King’s lair. He loads the cursed toys into carts and sends them across the border, into the Unseelie kingdom.
“The Rat King is gone, and his armies are decimated,” he says. “Let the Unseelie deal with their own as they see fit. Finias tells me not everyone in the Court of Dread wanted this war. Most are pleased with their own land and don’t care to conquer others. We should not punish them for the deeds of their ruler and his followers.”
It’s a new attitude for him—less prejudiced, more accepting. Even though I voiced those same thoughts to him days ago, I find myself not entirely pleased to see his new-found mercy in practice. I can’t help thinking of what the Rat King and his Court did to Clara and Finias—and what theyalmostdid, before Drosselmeyer showed up. If it were solely up to me, I would not have been so kind.
But the decision is Lir’s, and I yield to it. In the future we’ll share such choices—he’ll push and I’ll pull, or the other way around, until we reach a compromise. When I’m impulsive or uncaring, he can be the voice of reason and compassion; when he’s anxious, angry, or indignant, I can point out the humor in the situation, ease his tension, and help him focus on our true goals.
And through all of it, we get to have sex. Sex whenever we want, in any place we like, as many times as we want, in any form he chooses to take. I can’t imagine ever wanting or needing anyone besides him.
All those others I seduced and kissed and fucked—they each had a taste of what I wanted—freedom, pleasure, love, and power. But if they were a taste, Lir is the meal—satisfying all by himself. Exactly the person I need.
29
It’s been weeks since Lir’s coronation as King of the Court of Delight. Weeks during which Lir and Fin have been gone more often than not, clearing out the monsters that invaded because of the Rat King. The noxious magic the rat-soldiers leaked into the land has cleared, too, and the Seelie kingdom, so quiet and perilous during our travels, have come alive with Fae of all kinds. They crept out of hiding—tall Fae and pixies half my height, hairy fenodyree and mossy gnomes, delicate Racers and fluttering sprites, white deer and flocks of golden birds.
Louisa and I have been staying in the royal city—the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen. Colonnades draped with winter roses, mirrorlike pools in groves of ice-glazed trees, houses decorated with intricate engravings and exquisite molding, shops covered in ivy, frosted by the breath of winter. There are quaint markets and elegant halls, graceful architecture and cottages so cozy I want to curl up in them and never come out.
Lir gave me a whole hallway in the palace and asked me to paint the history of what happened with Drosselmeyer, himself, and the Rat King; so whenever I’m not wandering the streets with Louisa, exclaiming over everything we see, I’m perched on a stool in the gallery, with my paints laid out around me. The servants have standing orders from Fin to disturb me every two hours so I drink something, and they’re also mandated to put me to bed if I’m still working at midnight.
