THE KINGDOM WAKES
May 12, 1990 — Aelin
The island had not slept.
Not truly. Not as it slept on ordinary nights, when the Veil settled like a second sky over the counties and the castle lights dimmed one by one and the only sounds were the Atlantic breathing against the western cliffs and the great cats moving through the Ainmhithe preserve in the dark. Tonight the island had been awake in the way of a place that understood what morning was bringing and had decided that sleep was a poor use of the hours before it arrived.
By three o'clock in the morning, the bakers of Harmonytis were already at their ovens. By four, the flower stalls in the market square had been stripped of every Guardian Rose and Night Blooming Lily in stock, the vendors loading their carts under strings of electric lights that cast warm gold pools across the cobblestones. By five, the castle staff had begun the work of dressing the streets that ran from the main gate to the Great Chapel, banners unfurling from iron brackets along the old stone walls, the iridescent fabric catching even the pre-dawn dark and throwing back faint color. Green for Léirstinach. Blue for Neart. Black for Ainmhithe. Red for Draíocht. Each one bordered in Wallace tartan, the pattern that had no Aelinian precedent and therefore meant exactly what it was meant to mean: that today, the kingdom was also claiming something from the world beyond the Veil, and was proud to do it.
The televisions came on at five-thirty.
In Harmonytis, in the farmhouses of Neart, in the artists' quarters of Léirstinach, in the stable yards of Ainmhithe and the university halls of Draíocht, screens flickered to life with the soft chime of the Aelinian Broadcasting Network's morning signal. The anchor, a composed woman named Síle who had covered the coronation and Nathan and Galena's state wedding and who understood that some mornings required a different register than ordinary news, smiled at the camera and said simply: "Good morning, Aelin. Today is the day."
In the market square of Harmonytis, a woman hanging a banner of Wallace tartan from a second-floor bracket paused to look down at the street below her, where a small girl in her nightgown was standing on the cobblestones looking up at all of it with enormous eyes.
"Why are there so many flowers?" the girl asked.
"Because the Guardian is getting married today," the woman said.
The girl considered this. "Is that good?"
"It's the best thing," the woman said. "Go wake your mother."
The girl ran.
By six o'clock, the street-dressing crews had reached the chapel road, and the Great Chapel of the Castle of Elders was receiving its flowers.
Indira Saatva had been awake since four.
She moved through the chapel with the focused authority of the Master Gardener of Léirstinach, directing the placement of each arrangement with the precision of someone who understood that flowers in a space were not decoration but language, and that today's language needed to be exactly right. The Guardian Roses, cream-white with their faint iridescent shimmer, exclusive to Aelin, grown in the gardens of Léirstinach under Indira's own supervision, went at the ends of every pew. The Night Blooming Lilies, deep amethyst, nearly black in the chapel's early morning shadows but alive with color when the light found them, flanked the altar and the processional aisle in tall arrangements that carried the gravity of something ancient and deliberate.
She had been planning this for eight months.
She stepped back and looked at the chapel in the growing light, the stained glass windows beginning to catch the first pale suggestion of the morning outside, the colored light moving across stone floors that had held every Guardian wedding since Gaelen. The Guardian Roses and Night Blooming Lilies, the Wallace tartan ribbons wound through the altar rail, the banners of all five counties hanging from the vaulted ceiling alongside the silver and white of the Guardian's own colors. The chapel seated nine hundred between the pews and the balcony above, and it was going to need every seat.
"Good," she said quietly, to no one in particular.
Then her comm chimed. Someone at the flower delivery entrance needed her signature for the final arrangement. She went, moving quickly, because she also needed to be in Samantha's suite by eight and there were still three arrangements in the nave that needed adjusting and the chapel coordinator was asking about the window flowers and she had not yet had coffee.
Indira Saatva was, this morning, a woman in two places simultaneously, and managing both with the competence of someone who had been doing impossible things quietly for years.
Yara arrived at the royal residence at half past five.
She was twenty-six, precise, and had been the Guardian's primary castle aide for three years. She had seen Jace Elias in most of his registers, formal and informal, exhausted and electric, furious and grieving and laughing. She had seen him after the Dragon emergence, pale and seawater-cold in Erik's arms on the cliff above Gaelen Bay. She had seen him the morning after Dave Gipsen died, sitting in the dark of the hospital wing at Oksana Plantation with Samantha's hand in both of his.
She knocked on the royal residence door at five thirty-two.
"Your Majesty? Are you..."
"Come in, Yara."
She opened the door.
Jace was standing at the window that faced east, the one that looked out over the castle grounds toward the chapel road and the first pale line of the sunrise above the Harmonytis rooftops. He was barefoot. Gray sweatpants. No shirt. His dark hair loose, slightly disheveled. The Guardian Amulet rested against his bare chest, its opal surface catching the window light with the quiet luminescence it had when he was calm.
He was holding a coffee mug in both hands, and he was smiling at the sunrise.
Not the public smile. Not the Guardian smile used for state functions and press. Just a smile, easy and private and aimed at no one, the expression of a man who had woken up on the best morning of his life and was allowing himself to know it.
Yara stopped in the doorway for half a second. In three years, she had never seen Jace Elias smile at a sunrise before the day had even started.
"You're already up," she said.
"Since four," he said, without turning from the window. "Coffee's on the counter. Help yourself."
She poured herself a cup and came to stand beside him, and they looked out at the morning together in the easy silence of two people who did not need to fill space with each other.
"How are you feeling, Your Majesty?"
He turned from the window and looked at her, and the smile widened, equal parts joy and the amusement of a man finding his own happiness genuinely funny.
"Like things are coming to completion," he said.
Yara held his gaze. She knew about the vision, he had told her a year ago, the morning he walked in late to a management meeting in Atlanta in 1984 and looked up from the doorway and saw Samantha Wallace across the room for the first time, the empathic shockwave hitting him so hard and so suddenly that it knocked her clean off her feet before he even knew her name.
He had spent the next three weeks trying to apologize for it.
He had spent the next six years trying to deserve her.
"The vision," Yara said.
"Yes." His smile had not moved. It had just settled in, the way things settled when they were exactly where they were supposed to be. "It's today."
"It's today," she agreed.
They stood with that, the morning moving outside the window, the island dressing itself below them.
"Are you nervous?" she asked.
Jace considered it. "Not really," he said. "Not the way Nathan was nervous." He chuckled at the memory. "I've known this was coming since I walked through that door and knocked her unconscious. Six years of knowing tends to settle a person down."
"She still looks at you like you're just some guy sometimes," Yara said.
"I know." His voice was warm and entirely certain. "That's one of my favorite things about her."
"So you've been standing here since four in the morning in your sweatpants, barefoot, no shirt, smiling at a sunrise."
"That's an accurate summary," he said pleasantly.
"Very kingly."
"I'll put the crown on later."
"I'd genuinely hope so." She drained the last of her coffee and picked up the mug. "Any messages before I go check on Samantha?"
"One," he said, looking back out at the sunrise. "Tell her I love her. That's all."
Yara tucked her mug under her arm.
"I'm taking this cup with me," she said. "I'll return it in about a week."
Jace looked at her.
"I am not," she said, "coming anywhere near this residence before then. I want that noted."
Jace laughed, a real, full laugh, the laugh of a man who was entirely happy and not trying to contain any of it. "Noted," he said.
"Leo has the family arrivals," Yara said, already heading for the door, mug in hand. "Elias and Wallace portals consolidated at nine. I'll check in before the ceremony. Don't let Ricky touch your cuffs before the Brotherhood dresses you properly."
"Too late," Jace said, still grinning.
"Of course it is," Yara said, and left.
Samantha's Suite — Eastern Residence
Samantha's suite was in the eastern residence of the castle, a separate wing from the royal quarters, connected by a long corridor of old stone and tall windows that looked out over the castle gardens. The decision to put her there for the night before the wedding had been Galena's, stated in the tone Galena used when she was not making a suggestion.
"It is tradition," Galena had said. "The Guardian does not see his bride on the morning of the wedding until she walks toward him. This is how it has always been done. Nathan did not see me. You will not see Samantha."
"Galena..."
"This is not a discussion, Jace."
It had not been a discussion.
Yara knocked softly at the suite door.
"Come in."
Samantha was sitting cross-legged on the bed, still in her pajamas, an oversized shirt and flannel pants, her auburn hair loose around her shoulders, slightly wavy from sleep. She was holding a mug of tea in both hands and looking out the window at the same sunrise Jace had been watching from the other side of the castle.
She looked up when Yara entered, and her expression was different from Jace's. Not the deep settled certainty of the Guardian. Something warmer and more open, more visibly moved, the look of someone standing at the edge of something enormous and beautiful and feeling every inch of the enormity.
"He's up," Samantha said. It was not a question.
"Since four," Yara said. "Barefoot. No shirt. Gray sweatpants. Coffee. Smiling at the sunrise."
Samantha let out a soft laugh that was also a breath of relief. "Of course he was." She looked back out the window. "I've been up since four-thirty. I tried to go back to sleep. Couldn't."
"How are you feeling?"
Samantha laughed again, softer. "Like my whole chest is full of something that won't sit still." She pressed her free hand flat against her sternum. "Not scared. Just... full. Is that right?"
"It's exactly right," Yara said.
"Are the flowers..."
"Indira has been in the chapel since before dawn," Yara said. "The flowers are perfect. The banners are up. I could see them from the corridor windows on the way here. The whole street is dressed."
Samantha closed her eyes, taking that in. When she opened them again there was something steadier in her face.
"He sent a message," Yara said.
Samantha looked at her.
"He said to tell you he loves you. That's all."
The smile that crossed Samantha's face was quiet and complete and entirely private, the smile of a woman receiving something she already knew but that landed differently every time it arrived.
"That's all he needed to say," she said softly.
Outside the window, the Aelinian morning was fully awake, the lavender sky bright above the castle grounds, the chapel road below alive with color. Somewhere in the distance, the morning bells of the chapel tower began to ring, not the wedding bells, those would come at two, but the morning bells, the ones that rang every day on Aelin regardless of what the day held, that rang today the same as any other and somehow, because of what this day was, sounded entirely different.
Samantha listened to them with her tea going cold in her hands and the pleasant butterflies moving through her chest and the knowledge, certain as the lavender sky, that in a few hours she was going to walk toward Jace Elias in the Great Chapel of the Castle of Elders, and that everything that came after that walk was going to be the rest of her life.
She was ready.
She had been ready for a long time.
The morning moved the way mornings moved on Aelin when the island had something to celebrate, which was with the organized chaos of a people who understood that joy required infrastructure.
Galena appeared in Samantha's suite at seven-fifteen with the expression of a woman who had already been awake for three hours and had the energy of someone who had been awake for thirty minutes.
"The chapel coordinator needs Indira at the north transept," Galena announced, stepping through the door with her comm device in one hand and a list in the other. "The Night Blooming Lilies in the third window arrangement are half an inch too low and she is the only one who is allowed to adjust them. Also, the simulcast crew needs access to the balcony by eight-thirty at the latest. Also..." She looked at Samantha. "Good morning. How did you sleep?"
"I didn't," Samantha said.
"Good. Neither did I." Galena sat down in the chair by the window, set her comm on the side table, and looked at Samantha with the expression she reserved for moments when the Prime Minister stepped aside and left only Galena. "You look beautiful. Even in those pajamas. He is going to lose his composure entirely when he sees you."
"Jace doesn't lose his composure," Samantha said.
"He does for you," Galena said simply. "He always has. He is simply better at hiding it than Nathan was." Her mouth curved. "Nathan wept before I reached the altar. I could see it from the entrance of the chapel."
"I know. I was standing ten feet away from him."
"He is still embarrassed about this."
"He shouldn't be. It was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen."
Galena's expression softened. "Yes," she said quietly. "It was." She picked up her comm as it chimed. "The Wallace family portal has been consolidated to nine o'clock, same as the Elias arrival. They will come through together. Christopher specifically requested this." She squinted at the message. "He said, and I am quoting directly, 'I want to be there when they open that portal and I want to be standing next to someone who looks as confused as I did the first time.'"
Samantha burst out laughing.
"Your brother," Galena said, "is going to be an excellent addition to this family."
The door opened and Indira came through it backward, pulling a large arrangement of Night Blooming Lilies on a cart, her hair coming loose from its knot, her Léirstinach gardener's apron still on over her dress clothes.
"The north transept is fixed," she announced. "Three more arrangements in the nave and then I am here and I am not leaving until after the ceremony." She looked at Samantha. "Your bouquet is in the cold room. It is perfect. I grew those roses myself and I will be deeply offended if anyone finds fault with them."
"No one will find fault with them," Samantha said.
"No," Indira agreed, already moving back toward the door. "They won't. Because they are perfect." She paused with her hand on the door. "Also Connor asked me to tell you he is very happy today. He wanted you to know that specifically."
Samantha's throat tightened briefly. "Tell him I know. And tell him I'm happy he's happy."
Indira's expression shifted for just a moment into something that was not the efficient Master Gardener but the woman underneath her, the one who loved Connor Braydee with the depth of someone who had seen what he carried and chosen to stand beside it anyway. Then it was gone, replaced by purpose.
"Back in an hour," she said, and left.
Galena watched the door close. "She has been managing those flowers since four this morning," she said. "And she will be here for the rest of the day and she will not complain once."
"I know," Samantha said.
"She loves you," Galena said. "They all do. This whole island does." She stood, smoothing her jacket. "Now. Families arrive at nine. Eat something before then. I am going to go check that the third banner from the gate on the chapel road is no longer crooked, because it was crooked at six this morning and if it is still crooked there will be words."
She was out the door before Samantha could respond.
Samantha looked at Yara.
"Is she always like this?" Samantha asked.
"Only on days she cares deeply about," Yara said. "So, frequently."
The Elias and Wallace families came through the portal together at nine o'clock on the nose.
Tobin Elias stepped through first, with Christina beside him. He had made this crossing before and carried himself accordingly, no hesitation, no pause for the sky, just the easy familiarity of a man who had been here and knew what it felt like underfoot. Marcus and Maeva came through right behind them, equally steady, Marcus already scanning the castle grounds with the proprietary appreciation of someone who had visited before and found the place worthy.
Then came Ira and Lila.
Ira Elias stepped through the portal and stopped.
The lavender sky spread over Harmonytis in the full brightness of a May morning, the castle rising against it, the streets below the gate already dressed in banners and flowers, the distant chapel bell tower visible above the rooftops.
Ira stood very still. Beside him, Lila made a small sound that was not a word.
Marcus looked back at his brother with the patient expression of a man who remembered his own first crossing. "Give it a minute," he said.
"The sky," Ira said.
"Yes," Marcus said.
"It's purple."
"Lavender," Maeva said. "You get used to it."
"I don't think I'm going to get used to it," Ira said.
"You will," Marcus said. "Give it an hour."
Lila was still looking straight up. "Thomas would have loved this," she said quietly, to no one in particular.
The group went still, not with grief, but with something more complicated than that. The acknowledgment of absence on a morning built entirely for celebration. Marcus nodded once. Maeva took Lila's hand.
"Yes," Marcus said. "He would have."
The Wallace family came through thirty seconds later. Diana stepped through with the settled ease of a woman who had made this crossing before, and turned immediately to watch her children arrive.
Christopher Wallace appeared first, and the lavender sky hit him like a wall.
He stopped. He tipped his head back. He turned in a slow circle, taking in the castle and the banners and the sky and the smell of the island morning, and his expression was the expression of a man who had been told about this place in exact detail by his sister and his mother and had decided on some level that it was probably an exaggeration.
It was not an exaggeration.
"Sam wasn't kidding," he said.
"No," Diana said, smiling. "She was not."
Susan Wallace came through last, stopped, looked at the sky, and then looked at her mother. "You could have warned us better," she said.
"I did warn you," Diana said.
"You said the sky was a different color. You did not say it was..." Susan gestured broadly at the full sweep of the Aelinian morning "...this."
"Would you have believed me?"
Susan considered this. "No," she admitted.
Leo, the castle aide who had been coordinating arrivals since seven, was there to meet them all, young, efficient, warm in the way of someone who genuinely liked people and had found the right job. He welcomed the Elias family by name, which made Lila press her hand to her heart. He welcomed the Wallace family with the same warmth, watched Christopher and Susan recover from the sky with the patient amusement of someone who had seen this exact reaction many times and found it freshly delightful every time.
"If you'll follow me," Leo said, "we'll get everyone settled. Refreshments in the family reception room, and..."
"Where's Jace?" Tobin asked.
Not rude. Just direct, the directness of an older brother who had crossed an ocean and a dimensional barrier and was not interested in refreshments before he had seen his brother.
Leo smiled. "The Guardian is expecting you, Mr. Elias. This way."
Jace heard them coming down the corridor and was already grinning by the time the door opened.
He had showered and dressed, not the formal wedding attire yet, that would come later, but in clean dark pants and a white shirt, his hair damp and pulled back, the Guardian Amulet at his throat. He was standing in the main room of the royal residence when Tobin walked in, and both of them simply stood there in the silence of two brothers who had not seen each other in months and were seeing each other now on the most significant morning of Jace's adult life.
Tobin was three years older than Jace and it showed as it shows in men who had lived outdoors and worked with their hands, weathered in a good way, the lines of his face earned. He had their father's jaw and their mother's eyes, and he was carrying in his expression this morning something that made Jace's chest tighten before a word was spoken.
Tobin crossed to him and pulled his brother into a hug that said everything that needed saying and took its time saying it.
"Wanga'a," Tobin said quietly, against his shoulder. "Dad would have loved this."
"I know," Jace said.
They held on longer. Then Tobin stepped back and looked at him with the assessing look of an older brother who had spent a lifetime reading this face.
"You're calm," Tobin said, with mild surprise.
Jace laughed, unguarded, a man who found this observation genuinely funny. "I am," he said.
"Nathan was a complete wreck before his wedding."
"I know. I was standing right next to him. He was green."
"That's what Connor told me."
"He was absolutely green."
"You're not even a little nervous."
"No," Jace said, still smiling. "Not really. I've known this was coming since the day I walked into that management meeting in Atlanta and knocked her off her feet before I even knew her name. Six years of knowing tends to settle a person down."
Tobin looked at him. Then he nodded slowly, the nod of a man who had been waiting a long time to see his brother at peace and had finally arrived at the moment of seeing it.
"Good," Tobin said. "That's good, Wanga'a."
Marcus and Maeva came in behind him, and then Ira and Lila, and the room filled with the warm noise of the Elias family gathering, the deep voices of the uncles, Maeva's laugh, the undertone of Paiute words mixed with English as they always mixed in Elias family conversation. Christina came in with Tobin, finding her footing in the royal residence with the ease of a woman who had been here before and knew what it was.
Jace received his family the way he always received them, with his whole self, the formality of the kingdom entirely absent, just Jace Elias genuinely glad to see his people. He was smiling through all of it, a brightness in him that was new and visible and that each of them noticed in their own way.
Marcus stopped when he saw Jace's wrist.
The bracelet. Hemp fiber, turquoise and clear quartz and red carnelian, worn smooth by years of wear. Their grandfather Randall's work, given to Thomas at his high school graduation, worn by Thomas Elias until the morning of the construction accident in 1976, and since then on Jace's wrist, where it had been for fourteen years.
Marcus's face did something complicated and complete.
"You're wearing it," Marcus said.
"Always," Jace said.
Marcus looked at Ira. Ira looked back at him. Something passed between them that did not require words because it had been building for fourteen years and had arrived now at a morning that Thomas Elias should have been alive to see and was not, and the bracelet on his youngest son's wrist was the closest thing to Thomas being in the room.
Maeva reached into her bag and withdrew a small velvet pouch. She held it out to Jace.
"Your mother's ring," she said. "I've been keeping it for you. She always said it would go to the one who needed it most." Her eyes were bright. "She meant you. She knew it before you did."
Jace took the pouch and opened it carefully. The yellow gold band caught the morning light, Katherine Elias's ring, engraved on the outside with the names of her sons: Tobin, then Jason. He looked at it, his thumb moving across the engraved letters, and his expression went quiet and full.
He slid it onto his right pinky finger, where it settled as if it had always been there.
Ira made a sound that was not quite a word. Marcus pressed his fist briefly to his mouth.
"She'd be so proud of you," Maeva said. "Both of them would."
Tobin put his hand briefly on the back of Jace's neck, the Elias family gesture that meant I am here and I see you and I am not going anywhere, and Jace received it and held it and did not look away from Maeva's face.
"Thank you," he said. "For keeping it. For bringing it."
"Where else would it be?" Maeva said.
Marcus and Ira straightened slightly, their builder's shoulders squaring, the posture of men who were proud of something and were not trying to hide it. Both of Thomas Elias's brothers, watching both of Thomas Elias's sons in this room on this morning, one of them about to be crowned and one of them about to be married, with Thomas's bracelet on Jace's wrist and Katherine's ring on Jace's finger, and both of them entirely present in the room despite being years gone.
Jace looked around at all of them, his family in this room that was also his kingdom, and the smile that crossed his face was so uncomplicated and so full that even Marcus, who was not generally given to sentiment, had to look at the window.
The Wallace family was brought to Samantha's suite at nine-thirty.
Diana Wallace walked through the door, took one look at her daughter sitting at the vanity in her pajamas with her hair loose and the pleasant nerves visible in the set of her shoulders, and crossed to him without a word and held her.
Samantha held on.
"Your father would be so proud of you," Diana said quietly. "You have his spirit in you. He always knew you would be more than just some girl from Oregon. He was right."
Susan Wallace, who had come in behind their mother and was already assessing the lighting situation in the suite with the professional eye of a makeup artist, made a sound that was mostly composed and not entirely so.
Christopher stood in the doorway with his hands in his pockets, watching.
"Okay," Susan said, composing herself with the brisk efficiency of a woman who had a job to do. "Okay. We have time. Leilani, tell me you're doing her hair."
Leilani Oksana, who had arrived through the Oksana family portal an hour earlier and had already made herself entirely at home in the suite, looked up from the dressing table. "Her hair is mine," she confirmed. "You do the face. I do the hair. We don't interfere with each other."
"Agreed," Susan said. "Mom, sit down before you cry again and I have to redo your mascara."
Diana sat down, still holding Samantha's hand. "I'm not crying," she said.
"You're about to," Susan said, with the authority of someone who had been reading their mother's face for thirty years.
Diana looked at Samantha. "I'm not," she said, to Samantha.
Samantha squeezed her hand. "It's okay if you are, Mom."
Diana's eyes filled immediately.
"There it is," Susan said, reaching for the tissue box.
Christopher, still in the doorway, took one look at the scene, quietly stepped backward into the corridor, and pulled the door most of the way closed behind him. He had sisters. He understood when his presence was not the point.
The Brotherhood arrived at the royal residence at ten o'clock.
The room had been warm and full already, the Elias family, the Wallace family members who had migrated over, the castle aides moving in and out, but it shifted registers entirely the moment Ricky came through the door.
"TODAY IS THE DAY!" Ricky announced, to the room at large, to the family members, to the castle aides, to no one in particular and everyone simultaneously. "The Guardian is GETTING MARRIED and I have been waiting for this since 1984 and it is HAPPENING!"
Jace, across the room, laughed out loud. Not a polite laugh. A real one, full and unguarded, the laugh of a man who was genuinely delighted by his Sentinel on his wedding morning, which was very Jace and very Ricky simultaneously.
"Ricky," Connor said, behind him.
"I am emotionally prepared," Ricky continued, entirely undeterred. "I have been emotionally preparing for six years. I am READY."
"Ready for what, exactly?" Erik asked, coming in after him.
"For ALL OF IT."
Erik looked at Jace with the expression he had when Ricky was being Ricky, which was the expression of a man who had resigned himself to something a very long time ago and was at peace with that resignation. Then his expression shifted into something genuinely warm. "You look good," he said. "Better than Nathan looked."
"Nathan was fine," Connor said, shutting the door.
"Nathan was green," Erik said. "I was standing right next to him."
"I wasn't green," Nathan said, coming in last with the mild dignity of a man who had disputed this claim several times and would dispute it several more. He looked at Jace and his expression shifted into something quieter and more real. He crossed to him and pulled him into a brief, firm hug.
"How are you?" Nathan asked quietly.
"Complete," Jace said. "That's the word. I feel complete."
Nathan stepped back and looked at him with the assessing look of the man who knew Jace perhaps better than anyone alive. Then he smiled, not the polished Conjurer smile, just Nathan's own, genuine and warm. "Good," he said. "That's exactly right."
Connor came to him last. The Visionary stood in front of Jace, his green eyes very clear and very steady.
"I can feel how happy you are," Connor said quietly. "Right now, in this room, it's..." He paused, finding the word. "It's the cleanest thing I've felt in years, Jace. Just joy. Pure and clean and real."
Jace looked at his Visionary, his brother, the man who had carried more than any of them and was still standing, and felt the gratitude of someone who understood what that assessment cost and what it was worth.
"Good," Jace said. "Hold onto it today."
"I intend to," Connor said.
Leilani had come in with Ricky, which was where Leilani generally was, and she greeted Jace with the warmth of a woman who had held him and his drum tech both on a tarmac in Hawaii and considered them both hers. She kissed his cheek and told him he looked like a man who had finally gotten his head sorted out.
"Only took six years," she said.
"Thank you, Leilani," Jace said, grinning.
"You're very welcome. She's going to cry when she sees you."
"Sam doesn't cry," Ricky said.
"Everyone cries today," Leilani said, with the authority of someone who knew precisely what she was talking about. "Even you."
Ricky pointed at her. "I am not going to cry."
"You're already doing the face," Connor said.
"I am NOT doing..."
"Ricky," Erik said, patiently.
"WHAT."
"The face."
Ricky turned to the window and became very interested in the chapel road below. "I'm looking at the banners," he said. "They look great."
Jace laughed again, helpless and genuine, and the room laughed with him, the Brotherhood's laugh, built over twelve years of shared history, full and unguarded and entirely itself.
Sidney Greene arrived at the residence at half past ten.
He came in the way Sidney always came in, quietly, without announcement, with the quality of a man who had learned long ago that his presence was always noted and had stopped needing to announce it. He was not in his training gear today. He was dressed for a wedding, which gave him a slightly unfamiliar quality, the way a man looked when you had only ever seen him in one context and were now seeing him in another. The formality suited him without softening him. He was still Sidney.
The room made space for him the way the Brotherhood always made space for Sidney, which was instinctively and without thinking about it, because their bodies had been trained to orient toward him the same way a compass oriented toward north.
He found Jace and looked at him, fully, without hurry.
Then he crossed to him.
"You look well," Sidney said.
"I feel well," Jace said.
"Good." Sidney held his gaze. "I want to say something to you before today gets moving any further. If that's all right."
"Of course," Jace said.
The room had not gone entirely quiet, the family was still talking, the Brothers still moving around each other, but a small quiet had opened up around the two of them, the bubble of privacy that sometimes formed in crowded rooms when two people were saying something that needed to be said.
Sidney looked at him with an expression that Jace had not seen on him before. Not the trainer. Not the tactician. Not the man who ran formations on cliffs before dawn and documented recovery timelines and said things like the objective is the Sacrifice with the calm certainty of someone who had been working toward a single point for decades.
Something older than all of that. Something that had been there the whole time underneath it.
"I never married," Sidney said. "You know this. And I cannot have children, an injury, years ago, when your predecessor was still Guardian and I was younger and not as careful as I should have been." He said it without self-pity, because Sidney did not deal in self-pity. Simply as fact. "There are things in a man's life that close certain doors. That was one of mine."
Jace was very still.
"But I want you to know," Sidney said, "that I have never once felt that I was without sons."
The words landed.
"You and Connor. Nathan, Erik, Ricky." Sidney's voice was steady, but only just. "Every one of you. From the moment I understood what this Brotherhood was going to become, what each of you was going to become, you have been mine. In every way that counts. In every way that matters."
Jace's jaw was tight. He did not look away.
"I know you've wondered how your father would feel today," Sidney said. "I cannot tell you that with any certainty. I didn't know Thomas Elias. But I can tell you how I feel." His eyes were not quite steady, bright with the look of a man who was feeling something very large and holding it with both hands. "I am so proud of my Guardian son that I could rocket straight into that lavender sky and burst."
Jace made a sound that was not a word and did not need to be.
He stepped forward and put his arms around Sidney, and Sidney received it and held it and held him the way a father held a son, fully, without reservation, the arms of a man who had been waiting for years to say what he had just said and was glad, finally, that it was said.
They stood like that.
When Jace pulled back his eyes were bright and he was not apologizing for it. Sidney's composure had returned to its usual precise state, but his eyes were still carrying what they had been carrying, and Jace looked at him and saw it clearly and nodded once.
"Thank you," Jace said. His voice was not entirely steady and he did not try to make it so.
"Thank you," Sidney said, "for being worth saying it to."
Ricky, across the room, had his back turned firmly to the window again. The banners apparently required extended observation.
"Still look great," Ricky said, to the window. His voice was slightly rougher than usual.
Nathan did not even pretend. He was looking at the ceiling with the expression of a man applying significant intellectual resources to the task of not crying at his brother's wedding before the ceremony had started.
Connor put his hand on Ricky's shoulder.
Neither of them said anything. Neither of them needed to.
REO Speedwagon came through the Aelin portal at eleven o'clock.
Bryan Hitt stepped through first, with the ease of a man who had made this crossing before and knew what to expect, and moved immediately to the side to make room for the others.
Kevin Cronin came through next, and stopped.
The lavender sky opened above Harmonytis in the full brightness of a May morning, the castle rising against it, the streets dressed in banners and flowers, the distant chapel bell tower visible above the rooftops, the Atlantic a silver line at the edge of the horizon. The smell of the island morning, salt and green and Guardian Rose, came in with the air itself.
Kevin Cronin stood still, his head coming up, taking in all of it at once.
"That's..." He stopped. "That's something else."
Neal Doughty, who had come through right behind him, said nothing at all. He just stood and looked at the sky with the expression of a man who wrote music for a living and had just encountered something that made language feel inadequate.
Bruce Hall came through and stopped beside Kevin. Dave Amato last, and he too stopped, and the four of them stood together in the lavender morning for a long, quiet moment.
Bryan stood slightly apart, watching them, with the patient expression of a man who had stood in this exact position on this exact ground and understood precisely what they were experiencing.
"All right?" Bryan asked.
"Yeah," Kevin said. He exhaled. "Yeah. Just... give me a second."
"Take your time," Bryan said.
They composed themselves with the speed of men who had learned to move through the unexpected, and then they were moving, through the castle gate, down the corridor, toward the warm noise of family and laughter already present in the royal residence.
Kevin Cronin came through the door and saw Jace standing in the middle of the room, and crossed to him directly with the uncomplicated warmth of a man who was genuinely glad to be here.
"There he is," Kevin said, and pulled him into a hug that was firm and brief and entirely sincere. "How are you doing, man? You doing all right?"
"Really good," Jace said, and he was still smiling, still wearing that ease that had been on him since before dawn. "Really, genuinely good."
Kevin stepped back and looked at him with the appraising eye of someone who had known him for five years. "You look different," he said. "Good different. Like something finally put itself down."
"Something did," Jace said.
"Well," Kevin said. "Good. She's a good woman, Jace. She's exactly right for you."
"I know," Jace said.
Neal found him next, and then Bruce, and Dave. Bryan had already found a quiet spot near the window, easy and present, having already made his greeting and settled into the room in the way Bryan settled into rooms, without ceremony and with complete attention.
It was Neal who noticed the crown sitting on the table near the window, set out on its velvet cloth, a full circlet, lighter than Jace's but made in the same tradition, an oval moonstone at the center surrounded by white opals, the silver metalwork catching the morning light.
"What is that?" Neal asked quietly.
"That's Tobin's crown," Nathan said, turning from where he had been standing nearby. "I made it."
"You made it," Dave said, looking closer. "Yourself."
"Three months," Nathan said. "The moonstone is from the Neart coast. The opals are Guardian stones, they needed to be present because Tobin is the Guardian's brother and will hold that role for the length of his brother's reign. The silver is the same I used for the High Votaress amulet setting. It felt right. The same metal for both of them, on the same day."
The room had gone quiet as it did when something significant was about to happen.
Jace looked at his brother.
Tobin stood very still.
Nathan lifted the crown from its velvet cloth and held it out to Jace.
Jace took it. He looked at it, the oval moonstone at the center, the opals surrounding it, the full circlet of silver in his hands, lighter than his own crown but unmistakably from the same tradition, and then he looked up at Tobin, and the smile on his face was different from the one he had been wearing all morning. Not less joyful. Just more precise. The smile of a man doing something he has been wanting to do for a long time.
"You've been holding me up since Dad died," Jace said quietly. "Longer than that, probably. This is yours."
He raised the crown and placed it carefully on Tobin's head, settling it with the precision of someone who had been thinking about this exact moment.
The crown settled.
Tobin straightened.
Marcus made a sound that was not a word and did not need to be. Ira pressed his hand flat against his chest. Maeva was crying openly and not apologizing for it. Lila had her hand in Ira's and was not doing much better.
Ricky, from across the room, made a strangled sound of pure feeling.
"The banners," he said immediately, turning to the window. "Still great."
Kevin Cronin stood with the other REO members and watched, and his expression was the expression of a man who had walked into a room expecting a pre-wedding gathering and had found himself witnessing something considerably more significant. He looked at Neal. Neal looked back. Neither of them said anything.
Bryan Hitt watched Jace place the crown on his brother's head and thought about what his grandmother had said about the things that carried forward through families regardless of what the world did to them. He thought about Brannach on the Ainmhithe ground. He thought about the Dragon above Gaelen Bay.
He thought: Thomas Elias would have loved to see this.
He held the thought quietly, the way it deserved to be held, and did not say it aloud because it was not his to say. He witnessed it. The way it deserved to be witnessed.
Mötley Crüe came through the portal at eleven-fifteen.
Tommy Lee came through first, and the sky did not stop him, because Tommy had been to Aelin before and knew exactly what it looked like. He stepped through with the ease of a man returning somewhere he had already been and moved directly down the corridor toward the royal residence without breaking stride.
Behind him, Vince, Nikki, and Mick faced the portal.
Nikki Sixx had his arms folded. He was looking at the shimmer in the air as he looked at most things that had not yet proven themselves, with the skepticism of a man who had survived approximately everything and did not intend to stop now by walking into a hole in reality because his drummer told him it was fine.
"It's a hole," he said. "In the air."
"It's a door," Tommy called back from the other side, his voice carrying through with the cheerful ease of someone entirely unbothered by the physics of it. "Come on."
"That is not a door," Nikki said. "A door has edges. Hinges. A door is attached to something."
Vince was a step behind him, glancing between Nikki and the portal with the expression of a man who was not going first and was comfortable with that decision. Mick Mars had said nothing. He was studying the shimmer as he studied a questionable amplifier, head slightly tilted, eyes narrowed, already resigned to the probability that he was going through it regardless.
Nikki, still objecting, made the tactical error of gesturing at the portal with his arm.
Tommy's hand burst through from the Aelinian side, grabbed his wrist, and pulled.
Nikki vanished mid-objection.
Silence.
Vince stared at the portal. Then at the empty space beside it.
From the other side, Nikki's voice came back, indignant and slightly breathless: "I did not agree to that!"
Tommy laughed.
Mick looked at the portal. Sighed through his nose. Shook his head once with the expression of a man accepting an inevitable outcome, and stepped through without another word.
Vince was alone. He stood very still, listening to Nikki's continued objections echoing from the other side. Then he closed his eyes, said something under his breath, and stepped forward.
The lavender sky of Aelin in full May morning opened over all three of them at once, deep and present and entirely real, the Atlantic below the cliffs fracturing light in every direction, the castle rising white against it, the county banners stirring in the salt breeze, the whole island carrying the quality of a place that had decided something worth celebrating was happening within its borders.
Nikki had stopped objecting.
He was standing with his head back and his arms no longer folded, looking up at the sky with the expression of a man whose skepticism had met something it could not hold against. He stood like that.
"Okay," he said finally. Quieter than usual. "Okay. I get it now."
Vince turned slowly in a full circle, the cliffs, the castle, the sky, the sea, the banners, all of it in one long sweep. His mouth was open. He closed it. Opened it again. "Tommy said lavender. I thought he meant a little lavender. Not..." He gestured at everything. "This."
Mick Mars had not moved from where he arrived. His eyes were moving slowly and methodically across the skyline, the castle, the cliffs, the Atlantic, the sky, the banners carrying the county colors and the Wallace tartan border. The distant sound of the chapel bell came in on the breeze. He took it all in with the thorough patience of a man who intended to understand what he was looking at before he said anything about it.
He turned and found Tommy watching all three of them with the dry, warm satisfaction of a man whose investment had fully matured.
"You could have warned us," Mick said.
"I told you it was something," Tommy said.
"That is not the same as a warning."
"No," Tommy agreed pleasantly. "It isn't." He was still grinning. "Come on. He's waiting."
They were shown through to the royal residence, and Tommy came through the door first and found Jace in the middle of it and crossed to him without ceremony, the hug of a man who had known him since before any of this was what it was, arms locked, the kind that carried years in it.
When he stepped back his expression was not performance. It was the face of a man who had watched someone he had known since they were both young and unfinished arrive at something like completion.
"All these years," Tommy said. "Look at you." He made a gesture that took in the coat, the amulet, the crown on Tobin's head across the room, the castle visible through the window. "All of it."
"You made it," Jace said, still grinning.
"Did you think we wouldn't?" Tommy asked.
"With the Feelgood tour running..."
"Some things you make time for," Tommy said simply. "You know that."
Nikki Sixx came in still carrying the look of a man whose understanding of what the world contained had just been significantly revised. He shook Jace's hand. Looked at him. Took in the coat, the opal, the crown on Tobin's head, the whole assembled room.
"You've been keeping that sky to yourself for years," he said.
"Oath of secrecy," Jace said.
"I know. I'm not complaining," Nikki said. "I'm just saying. That sky."
Vince clapped Jace on the shoulder and told him he looked like a king, which made Jace laugh. Mick Mars came in last, unhurried as always, and shook Jace's hand with both of his and looked at him without speaking.
"Good day," Mick said.
"Best one," Jace said.
Mick nodded once, satisfied, and moved into the room to find a position from which to observe everything, which was what Mick Mars did at gatherings and had always done.
Tommy found Tobin within minutes. Took one look at the older brother in his Aelinian formal wear with the crown on his head, at the bracelet on Jace's wrist, at the whole family assembled, and something moved across his face that he did not comment on but that was entirely legible. He had known these two men since they were kids from Reno. He was watching them now in a castle on an island that barely existed on any map and both of them were wearing crowns.
He caught Jace's eye across the room.
Jace looked back at him.
No words. Just the look of two people who had known each other a long time and did not require everything to be said aloud.
Kevin DuBrow and Frankie Banali came through the portal at eleven-thirty.
Kevin took approximately four seconds to process the lavender sky and then moved on, because Kevin DuBrow's relationship with the unusual was one of immediate enthusiasm rather than prolonged adjustment. Frankie took slightly longer, standing in the gateway with his head tilted back and his expression thoughtful, before he too moved on.
"WHERE IS HE," Kevin announced, to the corridor, to the general direction of the royal residence, to the Aelinian morning at large.
He was shown in, found Jace, and descended on him with the uncomplicated affection of a man who was genuinely happy and intended everyone to know it.
"Look at this guy," Kevin said, grabbing Jace by both shoulders and looking at him with the inventory-taking expression of a man who needed to account for all the pieces. "Look at him. He's calm. How is he calm right now?"
"I've been asking that all morning," Kevin Cronin said, from across the room.
"I have it on good authority," Bryan said pleasantly, from near the window, "that he's been this way since four AM."
"FOUR AM," Kevin DuBrow said. "Doing what?"
"Standing at a window in sweatpants smiling at a sunrise," Bryan said.
Kevin DuBrow looked at Jace. "That's very weird, man."
"Thank you, Kevin," Jace said.
"I'm serious. That's not normal behavior before a wedding."
"Kevin," Frankie said.
"I'm just saying..."
"Kevin."
Kevin DuBrow looked at Frankie, received the recalibration expression, and turned back to Jace. "You look great," he said, more simply. "She's a lucky woman."
"I'm the lucky one," Jace said.
"You're both lucky," Frankie said, with the quiet certainty of a man who had arrived at a clear conclusion and was stating it. He shook Jace's hand warmly. "This is a good day."
"Yes," Jace said, still smiling. "It really is."
Alice Cooper arrived at a quarter to twelve.
He came through the portal the way he always did on Aelin, entirely himself, at peace with that. He looked at the lavender sky as he always looked at it, with the expression of someone who had seen it many times and still found it exactly right. He moved through the castle corridor with the unhurried certainty of a man who knew where he was going.
He came into the royal residence, and Jace crossed to him, and Alice pulled him into a hug that was firm and held and said things that did not require words between two men who had known each other since before any of this was what it was.
Since 1982. Before the amulets. Before the Brotherhood. Before the island was anything to Jace Elias except the strange and impossible inheritance that Seamus Greene had handed him behind a club in San Diego on May 22nd, 1983, and changed the entire course of his life.
Alice had known him when he was a twenty-three-year-old drummer who did not yet know what he was carrying.
He had watched him become this.
"Look at you," Alice said quietly, when he stepped back and looked at him. "I have known you for eight years. I have watched you carry things that would have broken most men. Look at where you are today."
"I had good people," Jace said.
"You were a good person," Alice said. "The good people helped. But you did the work, Jace. You always did the work." He held his gaze steadily. "She's the right one. I've thought so since the moment I met her."
"I know," Jace said.
"Good." Alice looked around the room, the Brotherhood and the family and the guests from across the world, all of them gathered in this room on this morning, and then he looked back at Jace. "Before this day gets moving any further," he said, "I think we should pray. If that's all right."
"Yes," Jace said immediately. "I'd like that very much."
They gathered.
The Brotherhood and the Elias family and the Wallace men who were in the room. Bryan and the REO members. Kevin DuBrow and Frankie Banali, who went quiet without being asked, because some things required it. The castle aides stepped back respectfully. The room settled into its stillness.
Alice Cooper stood in the center of it and prayed.
He thanked God for the day. For the morning itself, the lavender sky, the island dressed in flowers, the people gathered in this room. He thanked Him for the love that had been building for six years and was about to be made official and witnessed and complete. He prayed for Jace and Samantha, not formally, not with the language of ceremony, but with the warmth of someone who knew them both and was genuinely, wholeheartedly glad for them.
He prayed for the Brotherhood and for the island and for the years ahead.
And then his voice dropped slightly, and he paused, and he remembered.
Dave Gipsen. Thomas and Katherine Elias. Ryan Wallace.
He thanked God for them. For the love they had given and the people they had shaped and the gifts they had left behind in the people standing in this room.
He ended simply. Warmly. The way a man ended a prayer when he meant every single word of it and had nothing to add.
The room was very quiet.
Marcus Elias said Amen in a voice that did not require amplification. Ira said it after him. Kevin DuBrow, who had been entirely still through the whole of it, said it last, in a voice that was quieter than he usually used for anything.
Dolly Parton arrived at twelve-fifteen.
She came through the portal in a cloud of warmth and the perfume that was entirely her own, and she moved through the castle corridor toward the royal residence with the unhurried certainty of a woman who knew exactly where she was going. Leo took one look at her and stepped aside without a word. There were some people you did not redirect.
She knocked once on the royal residence door and opened it without waiting, because that was also Dolly.
The room received her the way rooms received Dolly Parton, which was with immediate and complete warmth. She looked at the Brotherhood and the family and the guests, and then she looked at Jace, and she simply looked at him, the way a woman looked at someone she had watched carry grief for years and was now watching stand on the other side of it.
"Come here, honey," she said.
Jace crossed to her, and she pulled him into a hug that was somehow both small and enormous, the way Dolly Parton managed to be simultaneously both of those things.
"Look at you," she said quietly, against his shoulder. "Look at what you've built. Look at who you've become."
He held on. When he pulled back his jaw was tight in as it got when he was managing something.
Dolly cupped his face in both hands and looked at him directly.
"Your mother," she said, "would be out of her mind with pride right now. You know that."
"I know," Jace said.
"And your daddy would be standing right over there with those uncles of yours trying not to let anybody see him cry." Her eyes were bright. "He would have loved her, Jason. The moment he saw how she looks at you, he would have loved her completely."
Jace's throat worked. "Thank you," he said. "For being here. For saying that."
"Where else would I be?" Dolly said simply. She patted his cheek once and released him. "Now. I'm going to go see your bride. Any messages?"
Jace smiled. "Tell her I love her."
"That's all?"
"That's everything," he said.
Dolly looked at him, equal parts affection and satisfaction.
"Good boy," she said, and left.
The knock at Samantha's suite door was lighter than expected for someone whose presence filled rooms.
Leilani, who was halfway through Samantha's hair, looked up. Yara opened the door.
Dolly Parton stood in the doorway in a dress the color of sunrise, her hair perfect, her smile the one she had for moments that mattered.
Diana Wallace made a sound. Susan Wallace, who had mascara on one brush and powder on another and had been conducting Samantha's face with the focused precision of a concert pianist, stopped completely.
"Hi, sugar," Dolly said to Samantha.
Samantha laughed, unguarded, someone who had not seen this coming. "Dolly."
"I'm not staying long. I just needed a minute with you before you go out there." She came into the room and sat on the edge of the bed with the ease of a woman who was at home everywhere, and she looked at Samantha in the mirror.
"How are you, honey?"
"Happy," Samantha said. "Really happy. And full of something that won't sit still."
"That's exactly how it's supposed to feel," Dolly said. She looked at Samantha in the mirror for a quiet moment. "You know what you're walking into today."
"I know," Samantha said.
"I mean all of it. The island. The amulet. The Brotherhood. The enemies. The history. All the things that have already happened and all the things that are still coming."
"I know," Samantha said again. "I've known for six years. I'm not afraid."
Dolly smiled. "No. You're not." She reached out and took Samantha's hand. "That man has been carrying this kingdom and his power and his grief and his whole enormous heart for a very long time. You're the only person he has ever let close enough to help carry it. Do you understand what that means?"
"I think so," Samantha said softly.
"It means he trusts you with everything," Dolly said. "Completely. That is not a small thing for a man like Jace Elias. It is the biggest thing he has in him to give."
Samantha's throat was tight. She nodded.
"Good." Dolly squeezed her hand once and released it. Then she looked at Diana. "You raised a remarkable woman," she said. "Your husband would be so proud of you both."
Diana pressed her hand to her mouth. Susan handed her a tissue without comment.
Dolly stood and looked at Samantha one more time. Then she tilted her head slightly, something shifting in her expression.
"You smell like summer in Nevada," she said, with a note of gentle surprise.
"The pouch," Yara said quietly from the corner. "Maeva Elias brought herbs. Pinned inside the bodice this morning."
Dolly's expression went quiet and warm. "He's going to know it the second you walk toward him," she said. "He's going to smell home."
Samantha looked at herself in the mirror, the cream and gold dress, the Wallace tartan at her wrists, the tiny opals on the veil, and something settled in her that had been moving all morning.
"Good," she said softly.
Dolly led a prayer in the suite, brief, genuine, the kind of prayer that was not performance but conversation. Diana and Susan bowed their heads. Leilani closed her eyes. Yara stood still near the door.
When it was done, Dolly kissed Samantha's forehead and left, the door closing softly behind her, and the room held what Dolly Parton left behind, the warmth of being seen and found worthy of the seeing.
Susan looked around at everyone's faces.
"Right," she said. "I need to fix at least three people's mascara and we have forty minutes. Everybody sit down."
The other guests arrived through the late morning into the early afternoon, Ozzy and Sharon around noon, Freddie Mercury and Brian May shortly after, Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley together, Kip Winger and Reb Beach, Mark Slaughter, Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith, Belinda Carlisle and Jane Wiedlin and Charlotte Caffey and Kathy Valentine, Susanna Hoffs and Debbi Peterson, each of them stepping through the Aelin portal and stopping for the sky, each of them recovering, each of them finding their way through the castle to the people they had come to celebrate.
Oprah Winfrey and Stedman Graham came through the portal at twelve-thirty. Stedman stopped for the sky the way everyone stopped. Oprah stood very still beside him, she had received the invitation, a formal Aelinian card hand-delivered with Jace's seal on the envelope, and she had come, and she looked at the sky and the castle and the banners and the chapel bell tower above the rooftops, and something moved across her face that was not quite surprise and not quite awe but lived in the territory between them. Then she straightened, smoothed her jacket, and walked through the castle gate with the bearing of a woman who had been handed something extraordinary and intended to be worthy of it.
The Brotherhood dressed Jace at noon.
The formal attire of the High King of Aelin was not clothing that could be put on carelessly, the black coat with its silver and white opal embroidery required the Brotherhood's hands, the embroidery checked and rechecked, the amulet positioned exactly right. Connor straightened the embroidery at the shoulders. Erik checked the boots with the methodical precision of a man who understood that details mattered. Ricky adjusted the cuffs with the officious intensity of a man who had been waiting six years to do this thing and was going to do it correctly.
"You've been rehearsing this in your head," Jace said.
"Since 1984," Ricky confirmed, without looking up from the cuffs. "Don't rush me."
Jace looked at Connor and grinned. Connor shook his head with the expression of a man who had been shaking his head at the same two people for twelve years and had made peace with it.
Nathan brought out the Guardian's crown last.
The room went quiet, the heavy silver and the opals, the weight of twelve years of kingship in the metalwork, the piece that Nathan had made and remade twice before arriving at the version that was finally right.
He placed it on Jace's head with the care the moment deserved.
Jace stood in front of the mirror and looked at himself.
The Guardian of Aelin. The High King. The drummer from Reno who had received an amulet from Seamus Greene behind a club in San Diego on May 22nd, 1983, and had been carrying it ever since, through every stage in every city, through the Veil and the island and the Brotherhood, through grief and assault and kidnapping and the Dragon above Gaelen Bay, through six years of loving a woman who had walked toward every form he had ever taken and was about to walk toward him one more time.
He looked at his brothers reflected behind him, Connor's emerald, Erik's sapphire, Ricky's onyx, Nathan's garnet. All of them in their formal attire. All of them looking back at him.
He looked at Tobin in the corner, wearing his own crown. At Katherine's ring on his own finger and Thomas's bracelet on his wrist.
He was smiling again. He had not really stopped all morning.
"You ready?" Tobin asked.
Jace looked at his brother in the mirror.
"Yeah," he said. "I really am."
In the eastern residence, Samantha stood in front of the full-length mirror.
The dress was cream and gold, the Aelinian scrollwork embroidery catching the light with every breath. The Wallace tartan at the wrists. The tiny opals on the veil, pinned into her hair by Leilani's careful hands and crowned with the thin silver circlet that was the High Votaress's traditional headpiece. The cathedral train lay behind her. Her bouquet was in her hands, Guardian Roses and Night Blooming Lilies, Indira's roses, grown in the Léirstinach gardens and cut this morning.
Her hair was down and styled, the way Jace had always loved it. Her neck was bare, waiting.
Diana stood beside her, one hand on her daughter's arm.
"Ready?" Diana asked.
Samantha looked at her mother in the mirror. At Susan behind them. At Leilani. At Yara near the door. At the room that had held this morning's prayers and tears and laughter and the smell of the herbs from the pouch pinned close to her heart.
She thought about a management office in Atlanta and a drummer who had walked in late and looked up across the room, and the floor came up to meet her before she even knew his name.
She thought about a lamp falling in Nashville and a forehead against hers and we're just a band said in a voice that meant the exact opposite.
She thought about a plateau in Aelin and a man spiraling into guilt and her own hand on his arm and that's what I'm here for.
She thought about a cliff above Gaelen Bay and a Dragon's eye finding her in the crowd and the warmth of those scales under her palms and every single way I have ever seen you.
She thought: I have been ready for this since the lamp.
"Yes," she said. "I'm ready."
The Great Chapel bell tower rang the half hour.
One-thirty.
Thirty minutes.
Outside the castle walls, the streets of Harmonytis were full, the citizens of Aelin pressed along the chapel road in their finest, the simulcast screens in the market square and in every county alive with the preparations. The cameras were already positioned in the chapel, where Magistrate Kovar stood at the altar reviewing his notes, a man who had married the Conjurer and the Prime Minister in this very chapel and intended to do this one at least as well.
The Guardian Roses and Night Blooming Lilies lined every pew.
The banners of all five counties hung from the vaulted ceiling alongside the silver and white of the Guardian's own colors.
The stained glass windows cast their colored light across the stone floors that had held every Guardian wedding since Gaelen, and would hold this one, and would hold the memory of this one for as long as the island stood.
Aelin was ready.
In the royal residence, Jace stood at the window one last time.
Crown on his head. Brotherhood behind him. His brother at his right shoulder. The Guardian Amulet warm at his chest.
He looked at the chapel road below, dressed in the colors of the island and the tartan of a family from Oregon, and he thought about everything that had brought him to this window on this morning. The amulet behind a club in San Diego. The woman in the vision. The cabin in Hawaii. The cliff above the bay. The seven years of music and magic and grief and survival that had made him exactly who he needed to be to stand here today.
He was not carrying any of it heavily. He was just holding it. The way you held something you were grateful for.
He was smiling at the chapel road.
"Time to go," Sidney Greene said, from the doorway.
Jace turned from the window.
He looked at Sidney, his trainer, his tactician, the man who had said I am so proud of my Guardian son that I could rocket straight into that lavender sky and burst, and his chest settled into a place of complete and absolute peace.
"Yes," he said. "It is."
He was still smiling when they went.