CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

THE WEDDING

May 12, 1990 — Aelin

The Great Chapel of Harmonytis had stood for nine hundred years.

It had been built in the first generation, when Aelin was still finding its shape and the Brotherhood was still learning what it was, and it had been added to and refined and loved by every generation since. The stone was the island's own, white granite quarried from the northern coast, pale and luminous, the kind of stone that held light differently depending on the hour. In the early afternoon of a May day, with the lavender sky pressing against every window and the Atlantic visible through the high eastern glass, the chapel did not merely hold light. It breathed it.

Guardian Brannach MacCrae had commissioned the five great windows in the fourth generation, and they had been here ever since, seven hundred years of colored light falling across the same stone floor, seven hundred years of Aelinian citizens standing beneath them and understanding, without requiring explanation, what the Brotherhood was and what it protected and what it cost. The windows were each three stories tall, arched at the top, positioned across the entire front wall of the chapel so that they functioned less as decoration and more as a declaration. From the nave, looking toward the dais, you saw them all at once: the Guardian in white and silver and opal, the Visionary in emerald and gold, the Sentinel in onyx and black, the Warrior in sapphire and deep blue, the Conjurer in crimson and garnet. Each figure depicted in the full expression of their power, the Guardian with hands raised and the weather bending to his will, the Visionary with green energy blazing from his open hands and his eyes alight with what only he could see, the Sentinel mid-leap with a portal opening behind him and his form half-shifted at the edges, the Warrior with lightning channeled through his sword and the ground cracking beneath him, the Conjurer with all four elements orbiting him in a ring of living matter. The lead came that held the glass together was original, repaired and maintained by Aelinian craftsmen in every generation, never replaced wholesale, always preserved. You could see the age in it if you looked closely. Most people did not look closely. Most people simply stood in the light the windows made and felt the weight of what they were standing inside.

The four opaline cross windows along the side walls were older than the Brotherhood windows, first generation, their glass worn to a soft translucence that diffused rather than directed, scattering light through the nave in the way of things that had been doing their job for a very long time and had learned to do it without effort. In the early afternoon they provided everything the chapel needed. The electric fixtures mounted discreetly along the upper walls were dark. They would not be needed today.

The decorations had been placed by Indira's team beginning at four o'clock in the morning.

Amethyst ribbons ran the length of every pew in long draped swags, the ends gathered with small clusters of Night Blooming Lilies, deep amethyst, the color of the ribbons themselves, the blooms opening fully in the morning warmth in as they only did on Aelin. Guardian Roses stood in tall silver arrangements at the end of each pew row, their petals catching the colored light from Brannach's windows and throwing it back in the iridescent way of opaline things, white that was also every color, pale that was also deep, simple that was also impossibly complex. The lavender-tinted votive candles in their silver stands lined both walls of the nave in rows of twelve, their flames burning steadily in the still air of the chapel, decorative and warm both, their soft color pulling the purple tones from the stained glass and anchoring them in the stone space with the warmth of candlelight that electric fixtures could approximate but never quite replicate. The altar dais at the front had been dressed with the same flowers, the same ribbons, the same candles on either side, and Magistrate Kovar's lectern stood precisely centered before the five great windows, so that when he turned to face the congregation the Brotherhood's entire legacy stood behind him in colored glass.

Seven hundred seats had been filled since one o'clock.

Aelinian citizens occupied the tiered gallery sections along the upper walls, the traditional placement for the island's own people at a Guardian's wedding, close enough to see everything, removed enough to leave the floor for the honored guests. Below them, in the main nave seating, the world had arranged itself in the way that seven hundred people arrange themselves when they understand that what they are about to witness will not be repeated in their lifetime. Foreign dignitaries in the front sections, flanked by their details. Vice President Quayle seated in the second row, his expression carrying the careful composure of a political figure navigating an occasion that was considerably outside the parameters of his professional experience. The oath holders distributed through the middle sections, REO Speedwagon in a full row, Neal Doughty already examining the upper windows with the eyes of a man who intended to understand every structural detail before the proceedings began. Mötley Crüe behind them, Tommy already watching the dais with the focused attention of a man who had been waiting for this day for a long time. Quiet Riot. Kip Winger and Reb Beach. Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley. Ozzy and Sharon. David Coverdale. Johnny Carson. Dolly Parton, in a rose-colored gown, seated near the aisle with the unpretentious warmth of a woman who understood exactly what she was witnessing and was not going to perform her feelings about it for anyone.

The chamber orchestra occupied the alcoves of the east wall, twenty-two musicians in black formal wear, each with a single purple accent. The men wore deep purple ties, precise and formal. The women wore purple sashes draped at the neck, the fabric catching the light from the opaline windows beside them. They had been playing since the first guests arrived, chamber pieces, Aelinian traditional compositions, the selection that Connor had chosen months ago with the care of a Visionary who understood that music was not background but atmosphere, and that the right atmosphere made everything that happened inside it carry more weight. The music filled the chapel without overwhelming it. It was present the way good ceremony music was present: felt more than heard, the sound of a space taking itself seriously.

THE PROCESSIONAL

At one forty-five, the chamber orchestra shifted.

Not dramatically, a key change, a tempo adjustment, the musical signal that Aelinian tradition reserved for the formal opening of a Guardian's wedding ceremony. Seven hundred people registered it without being told what it meant. The gallery sections went still. The nave fell quiet. The orchestra held the new key and waited.

Magistrate Kovar entered from the side door.

He was a tall man, silver-haired, in his formal judicial attire, the deep charcoal of Aelinian civil authority, the chain of office at his chest, the composure of a man who had presided over the highest ceremonies this island had to offer and understood that his role was to be the still point around which everything else moved. He had married Nathan Dallenger and Galena Slotskya in this chapel five years ago. He had thought at the time that it was the most significant ceremony he would ever conduct. He had been wrong. He walked the length of the nave with the measured pace of his office, took his position at the lectern before the five great windows, and turned to face the seven hundred.

He said nothing yet. He simply stood there, in the colored light of Brannach's windows, and waited.

The orchestra shifted again, the processional proper, the arrangement that Aelinian tradition reserved for the entrance of the wedding party, and the doors at the back of the nave opened.

Jace came in with Marcus on his left and Maeva on his right.

He was in his formal attire, the midnight black coat with the opaline and silver embroidery, the Celtic knotwork running from collar to hem interwoven with the Nevada petroglyphs that Brigid had spent three weeks rendering in thread, each one precise, each one deliberate, each one a piece of the heritage that lived in him alongside the Aelinian. The Guardian's crown sat in his dark hair, the heavy silver circlet with the white opal at center flanked by the Brotherhood stones, over nine hundred years old, the crown of every Guardian since the first. The white opal amulet at his chest caught the colored light from the windows and held it, luminous against the black fabric. He was 6'4" and the coat had been made for exactly that frame, and he walked the way a man walked when he had finally arrived somewhere he had been moving toward for a very long time.

He was smiling.

Not performing it. Not managing it. Simply smiling.

Marcus had his arm linked through Jace's left, his expression the complicated pride of a man watching his brother's son walk toward the thing Thomas Elias never got to see. Maeva had Jace's right arm, her dark eyes bright, the small bundle of wild sage and cedar she had carried from Nevada visible at her wrist, she had wanted something of the land with her, and she had brought it.

They walked the full length of the nave. Seven hundred people watched without making a sound.

At the dais, Maeva turned to Jace and cupped his face in both hands as she had cupped it when he was a boy and she was telling him something important. She kissed him once on the cheek. Then she stepped back.

Marcus pulled him into a hug, the full embrace, both arms, the kind that said everything a man of Marcus Elias's particular stoic temperament was not able to say in words. He held it for three seconds. Then he released him, pressed one hand briefly to the back of Jace's neck, the Elias family gesture, the one that meant I am here and I am proud and you are not alone, and stepped back to take his seat in the family section.

Jace turned and took his position beside Magistrate Kovar.

He looked out at the seven hundred. He looked at the five great windows behind him, the Brotherhood in glass and colored light. He looked at the doors at the back of the nave, which were still open, through which his brothers were about to walk.

He was still smiling when Tobin and Susan came through the doors.

Tobin walked with Susan Wallace on his arm, the best man and the maid of honor, the prince of Aelin and the bride's older sister, the moonstone crown catching the afternoon light in the iridescent way Nathan had designed it to catch light, the silver and opal embroidery of his black coat shifting as he moved. Susan was in lavender, the bias-cut satin cowl gown that draped off her shoulders and fell to the floor in the fluid way of fabric that had been cut precisely for a woman who knew how to wear something. Her auburn hair was up, and the amethyst drop pendant and matching drop earrings at her throat and ears caught the light from the opaline windows as she walked. She was composed. She was happy. She had been watching her sister work toward this for seven years and the expression on her face was the expression of a woman who had been patient and had been right to be patient.

Tobin walked with the ease of a man who had decided, approximately four hours ago, that he was a prince and intended to conduct himself accordingly. He delivered Susan to her position on the bride's side of the dais, took his position at Jace's left, and looked at his brother.

Jace looked back at him.

"You ready?" Tobin asked, quietly, from the corner of his mouth.

"Have been for years," Jace said.

Connor and Indira came through the doors next.

He walked with her as he had been walking with her for years, close, her hand in the crook of his arm, the ease of two people who had been moving through the world together long enough that the movement had become shared. The emerald green embroidery on his black coat caught the light from the Visionary's window as he passed beneath it, a coincidence of positioning that made several people in the gallery catch their breath. The emerald amulet burned steady at his chest. Indira was in deep purple satin, the cowl draping off her shoulders in the same silhouette as Susan's gown, her dark hair loose around her shoulders, the amethyst drop pendant at her throat and the matching drop earrings catching the chapel light. She carried a small bouquet of Guardian Roses and Night Blooming Lilies. She walked with the quiet certainty of a woman who was entirely comfortable with where she was and who she was walking beside.

Nobody in the Brotherhood knew yet what Connor had been carrying in his jacket pocket for two months. They had their suspicions. He had given nothing away. The Visionary's expression was the expression of a man who knew exactly how this day was going to end and was deeply satisfied about it. The shard that lived near his heart, Sorienne's working, the old damage that no one had yet been able to remove, had been quieter lately. He had noticed. He had not yet said why.

He took his position beside Tobin. Indira took hers beside Susan.

Nathan and Galena came through next, the Conjurer and the Prime Minister, the man who had made the High Votaress amulet and the woman who ran the island they were all standing on. Nathan's coat was black with deep crimson embroidery, the scrollwork running the full length of the coat in the bold fluid pattern of Brigid's finest work, the garnet amulet vivid at his chest. He walked with the quality of a man who was currently thinking about at least three things simultaneously, one of which was the carved wooden box he was carrying with careful attention. Galena was in deep purple satin, composed as always, the amethyst drop pendant at her throat, the matching amethyst earrings catching the light from the windows, her dark hair up in the arrangement that formal occasions required. She walked with the authority of a woman who ran a government and was currently choosing to be a bridesmaid about it, which she did with complete grace.

Nathan took his position. He held the box. He did not set it down.

Erik and Rebekah came through the doors with the combined effect of two people whose physical presence tended to reorganize a room's sense of scale. Erik was 6'6" in his formal attire, the sapphire blue embroidery of his black coat catching the light from the Warrior's window as he passed, the sapphire amulet vivid against the dark fabric, the Warrior's circlet at his brow. He walked with the measured pace of a man who had led armies and understood that the way you entered a space communicated something about you before you said a word. Rebekah was in deep purple satin beside him, poised, composed, the amethyst drop pendant at her throat and matching drop earrings at her ears, her small bouquet carried with the ease of a woman who had learned, in the years of being partnered with the High General of Aelin, that composure was a skill worth developing. They took their positions. Erik glanced at Jace. A nod, the nod of a Warrior to his Guardian on the most important day either of them had lived through. Jace returned it.

Ricky and Leilani came through last.

Ricky walked with the deliberate restraint of a man who had been asked by Jace not to do anything unpredictable during the processional and was holding to this request as an act of concentrated will. The silver embroidery on his black coat caught the light differently than the others, not the vivid color of the county stones but a subtler luminescence, the silver threading through the black scrollwork as his onyx amulet caught light, present and shifting and not immediately obvious at a distance. His auburn hair was loose around his shoulders. The onyx circlet sat at his brow. He walked with the contained energy of a man who was very happy and was doing his absolute best not to express it in ways that would be inappropriate to the occasion. Leilani was in deep purple satin beside him, warm and composed, her Hawaiian coloring striking against the rich fabric, the amethyst drop pendant at her throat and matching drop earrings catching the light, her bouquet carried with the cheerful patience of a woman who was used to being next to Ricky at significant events and had learned to enjoy wherever she found herself.

They took their positions. The processional line was complete.

Five members of the Brotherhood of Aelin stood at the dais in their black formal coats, emerald, sapphire, crimson, silver, and the white opal and silver of their High King, alongside the brother of the Guardian in his moonstone crown, and the five women who stood with them. The colored light from Brannach's windows fell across all of them. The chamber orchestra held the processional key, soft and steady.

The doors at the back of the nave closed.

 Seven hundred people holding their breath.

Then the doors opened again.

The orchestra shifted into the bride's processional, the arrangement that Aelinian tradition had reserved, since the first generation, for the entrance of the Guardian's chosen. It was older, slower, more deliberate, composed for exactly this moment and waiting seven hundred years to be used again.

Christopher Wallace walked his sister through the doors and into the chapel.

Jace had been warned. He had been warned by Christopher, with the frank wisdom of a man who had watched his sister's face for thirty years and knew what she looked like when she was certain of something. He had been warned by Dolly Parton, who had cupped his face in her hands and told him his brain was going to stop working for a second. He had been warned by Connor, who had seen it in fragments and had simply smiled when Jace asked him how bad it would be.

None of it helped.

Samantha came through the doors in Brigid's dress, the cream and gold Aelinian scrollwork embroidery, the cathedral train following her across the stone floor, the Wallace tartan cuffs at her wrists catching the colored light from the opaline windows, the High Votaress tiara sitting naturally in her auburn waves, her hair down and beautifully styled the way Leilani had arranged it that morning. Her throat was bare, no pendant, no necklace, the neckline of the dress and the bare skin above it framing the space where the amulet was about to go. She was carrying the bridal bouquet of Guardian Roses and Night Blooming Lilies, the blooms that existed nowhere else on earth, in both hands. She was looking at him.

It took him approximately three seconds to find himself again. In those three seconds he was aware of nothing except her, not the seven hundred, not the Brotherhood at his back, not the ancient windows above him, not the weight of the crown on his head. Just her. Walking toward him in the light of the chapel, in the dress that carried both their worlds in its embroidery, on her brother's arm, looking at him the way she had been looking at him since 1984, when she first looked at him in a management office in Atlanta and his empathy had gone sideways and knocked her off her feet before he had learned her name.

He was still smiling. He had been smiling for approximately eight hours without significant interruption, and he did not intend to stop.

Christopher walked her the full length of the nave. Every eye in the chapel followed them. The orchestra played. The colored light fell across the stone floor in the patterns it had been falling in for seven hundred years, and today it fell across a woman in a cream and gold dress with Wallace tartan at her wrists and Guardian Roses in her hands, and the pattern was the same and also entirely new.

At the dais, Christopher placed Samantha's hand in Jace's.

And Jace went still, not the stillness of composure but the stillness of a man who has just been reached by something he was not prepared for. It came off her skin with the warmth of the chapel: desert sage and cedar, the dry sweetness of high Nevada land, the smell of the country where he had grown up and where his parents were buried and where a part of him had never left. Maeva's herbs. The pouch Dolly had noticed that morning, pinned inside the bodice, working steadily against the warmth of her body through the hours of the day until it released exactly what it was meant to release at exactly this moment. He breathed it in and for one second he was somewhere else, a Nevada summer, his mother's kitchen, the land before all of it, and then he was here, in the chapel, holding Samantha's hand, and those two things were the same thing. Home, and home.

He looked at her. She was watching him with the clear-eyed warmth of a woman who knew exactly what she had done.

He looked at Jace with the expression of a man making a formal transfer of something he had spent his whole life watching over and was satisfied with where it was going. Then he looked at his sister, and something moved across his face that was not the composed steadiness he had been carrying all morning, something quieter and more genuine, the face of an older brother watching his little sister become a queen.

He squeezed her hand once. She squeezed back.

Then he went to his seat, and Jace and Samantha stood at the dais together, in the colored light of the Brotherhood's windows, before Magistrate Kovar and the seven hundred and the lavender sky of Aelin pressing against every pane of glass in the chapel.

Magistrate Kovar looked at them both, a man who had been doing this for forty years, looking at something that exceeded it.

Then he opened the proceedings.

THE CEREMONY

Magistrate Kovar's voice carried the full length of the chapel without effort, not loud, simply present, the voice of a man who understood that authority did not require volume.

He welcomed Aelin, and the world beyond the Veil that had sent its representatives to stand witness. He acknowledged the Brotherhood, all five of them present, standing at the dais in their formal attire, the amulets at their chests carrying the light of the chapel windows. He acknowledged the families. He acknowledged the seven hundred years of Guardian weddings that had been conducted in this chapel before this one, and the continuity they represented. His words were formal and precise and carried the weight of a man who took the occasion seriously and intended to honor it.

Then he turned to Jace and Samantha and said, more simply: "Shall we begin."

It was not a question.

Nathan stepped forward.

He carried the carved wooden box in both hands, the box he had made himself, Aelinian hardwood with the Brotherhood sigil inlaid on the lid in opaline shell, the work of an afternoon in his workshop in Draíocht. He held it at the level of Jace's hands and opened the lid.

The High Votaress amulet lay on its cloth, white opal surrounded by deep purple amethysts, set in silver Aelinian metalwork, the piece Nathan had spent three months making. It was smaller than the Brotherhood amulets and carried a different quality than theirs, not lesser, but different. More intimate. Made for one person and no other, by the man who understood better than anyone alive what an amulet was and what it asked of the one who wore it.

Jace looked at it.

Then he reached into the box and took it in both hands.

He held it up, not dramatically, simply present, the way you held something you had been waiting to give someone for a long time. He looked at Samantha over it. She looked back at him. Her eyes were bright and her throat was bare and she was the steadiest person in the chapel.

He brought the amulet to his lips and breathed on it, gently, the breath of the ceremony, the waking breath, and then he lowered it and held it against the Guardian Amulet at his own chest. The two stones touched briefly, the Guardian Amulet recognizing what it had made. Then Jace stepped forward and placed the High Votaress Amulet around Samantha's neck and fastened it.

The stone settled against her skin.

The Guardian Amulet activated the High Votaress Amulet as it was supposed to. That part went exactly as planned. What did not go as planned was the moment the stone found its wearer and understood who she was.

The two amulets reacted to each other.

The Guardian Amulet blazed, a deep, opaline light, the white-that-is-every-color, sudden and vivid. The High Votaress Amulet answered it, flaring to life with the same light, the amethysts in its setting catching the opaline glow and deepening it with their own purple. The light came off both of them in pulses, synchronized, as though the two stones were communicating in a language that predated every human language currently in use.

Jace felt it, a quickening in his chest, the Guardian Amulet pulling toward something, bonding to something, the sensation of a connection being forged at a depth he had not anticipated.

Samantha's hands began to glow. A soft opaline light, rising from her palms and the backs of her hands, the same light as the amulets, the light that belonged to the Guardian's stone, that lived in the white opal at Jace's chest and crown. Her eyes caught it next, a faint luminescence in her irises, there and unmistakable. The High Votaress amulet at her throat blazed with the same opaline light, all three sources together, her hands and her eyes and the stone at her neck all speaking in the same register.

Jace's amulet responded. His eyes caught the same glow. His hands, both of them, the hands of the man who had held the Guardian Amulet for seven years, lit with the same light, the opaline pulse coming off his palms in as it came off them in battle, as it came off them when the power was running through him fully and without restraint.

The chapel was completely silent.

The colored light from Brannach's windows, the Guardian in white and silver at the center of the front wall, fell across both of them. The opaline light from their hands and their eyes and the amulets between them filled the space around the dais with a glow that had no precedent in any Guardian wedding in the chapel's seven hundred year history. It was not frightening. It was the most beautiful thing most of the people in that chapel had ever seen.

Samantha made a sound, not distress, but overwhelm. She could feel them. All of them. The seven hundred people in the chapel, their emotions arriving all at once, the amazement, the wonder, the love, the joy, the tears being held back and the tears already falling, the complicated feelings of people watching something they will not see again. She had always been able to feel Jace, since the amulet bond had begun forming between them years ago. She had not been prepared for seven hundred people arriving simultaneously.

Jace took her hand.

He felt her overwhelm through the bond and moved immediately, as he moved toward anything that needed steadying. He held her hand and pushed calm through the connection between them, not suppressing what she was feeling, just giving her something to anchor to while she found her footing in it. His amulet pulsed once, warm and deliberate.

Hers pulsed back.

She took a breath. Let it out. Squeezed his hand. The glow in her eyes and hands did not disappear, it settled, softened, became something she was holding rather than something that was holding her.

She looked at him.

He looked at her.

"Okay?" he asked, quietly enough that only she heard it.

"Okay," she said. And then, because she was Samantha: "I felt everyone."

"I know," he said. "I know."

Nathan, standing two steps back with the empty wooden box in his hands, was watching both of them, a man who had just generated a significant number of questions he was going to need to find answers to. His garnet amulet had flared when both of theirs blazed. He was thinking about Galena. He was going to be thinking about Galena for the rest of the day, and possibly the rest of the week.

Magistrate Kovar, to his considerable credit, had not moved. He stood at his lectern before the five great windows and watched the opaline light settle and waited with the composure of a man who had been officiating ceremonies for forty years and had learned that the unexpected was not his to manage. When the light had softened and both Jace and Samantha were steady and present and looking at him, he inclined his head slightly, an acknowledgment, not a comment, and continued.

THE VOWS

"The vows," Magistrate Kovar said, with the simple authority of a man naming the next thing.

Jace spoke first. Aelinian tradition, the king always spoke first.

He had written nothing.

He looked at her and said what he knew.

He said that the first thing he had understood about her, before he even knew her name, was that she was exactly who she appeared to be. That in seven years he had never once caught her performing anything, not composure, not competence, not warmth, not patience. She simply was those things. He had grown up surrounded by people who had to work at being what they presented to the world. He had never quite understood how extraordinary it was to simply be it until he met her.

He said that he had walked into a management meeting in Atlanta in January of 1984 and found her already there, a woman he had never seen before, sitting across the room with a tool bag and a professional opinion about drum kit maintenance, and his empathy had slipped completely before he had learned her name. He had spent three weeks trying to figure out how to apologize for that. Which was, he acknowledged, a somewhat unusual foundation for a relationship, and also the only foundation he had ever wanted.

He said that she had never asked him to be less than what he was. That in seven years she had encountered the Guardian, the High King, the man who had been carrying an island's nine hundred years of history since he was twenty-five years old, and she had treated all of it the same way she treated the drum kit, with competence, with care, and with the complete absence of unnecessary drama.

He paused.

"And for the record," he said, "she has never once, in seven years, used my spider problem against me. Which I appreciate more than I can say."

Laughter moved through the chapel, warm and genuine, the laughter of seven hundred people who had been holding something large and were grateful for the release of it. Samantha's eyes were bright. He waited for it to settle.

He said: I spent the first thirty years of my life learning what the Guardian was supposed to be. I have spent the last six years learning what it means to be Jace. You are how I know the difference.

He said: I love you. I have loved you since before I had the word for it. I will love you for the rest of my life, however long that is, and whatever comes after, and I intend to be profoundly useful to you for all of it.

He stopped. It was complete.

Samantha had been looking at him the whole time with the expression he knew best, not performing anything, not managing anything, entirely herself, watching him with the clear-eyed warmth of a woman who knew exactly who she was looking at and had decided, a long time ago, that he was worth all of it.

She spoke.

She said that she had been sitting in a management meeting in Atlanta in January of 1984 when the door opened and in walked the drummer, who was late, and whose empathy apparently had no manners whatsoever. She said that he had knocked her sideways before he reached his chair, and that she had spent the next three weeks watching him try to figure out how to apologize for it, which she had found both endearing and deeply entertaining.

The chapel went delighted. Jace laughed, the full version, the unguarded one. Several people in the front rows recognized the sound of a man being surprised into happiness and found it very satisfying. Tobin, at Jace's left, was grinning with the expression of an older brother who had been waiting his entire adult life for his little brother to have exactly this moment and was receiving it with full appreciation.

She said that she had not known, when she first walked into that management office, that she was walking into the life she was going to live. She had figured it out fairly quickly.

She said she had never been afraid of what he was. That the island, the amulet, the Guardian's power, the enemies, the nine hundred and forty-three years, none of it had ever made her want to be somewhere else. She had thought about it, honestly, in the early years, because she was a sensible person and sensible people thought about things. And the answer had always been the same: there was nowhere else she wanted to be.

She said that he was terrible at asking for help and excellent at giving it. That he made decisions too quickly when he was tired and too slowly when he was not. That he was the most stubbornly certain person she had ever met and also the first person to question himself when he thought he had gotten something wrong. That these qualities together produced a man she could not imagine not knowing.

She said: You showed me this island and this sky and this life. You asked me if I wanted to be part of it. I said yes. I am still saying yes. I will be saying yes for the rest of the time we have, however long that is.

She said: I love you. I have loved you since before I admitted it to myself. I love the Guardian and I love the High King and I love the man who fell completely apart in front of a daddy longlegs spider four months ago, she paused here for the precise beat of a woman who understood timing, and I intend to love all of them for every year you have got.

The seven hundred were completely still.

Then the chapel exhaled, the sound of seven hundred people who had been holding their breath without knowing it and had just been given permission to let it go.

THE RINGS

Magistrate Kovar waited for the chapel to settle.

Then: "The rings."

Tobin produced the first ring from his jacket pocket, he had been holding it since eight o'clock in the morning and had checked for it approximately eleven times, which was the correct number of times for a best man to check for the ring on his brother's wedding day. He placed it in Jace's hand.

It was Nathan's ring. The diamond Nathan had made from a lump of coal in a dressing room in El Paso in 1985, a raw diamond, two carats, which Nathan had then spent three months crafting into a setting worthy of what it was for. The center stone was the diamond itself, large and brilliant, flanked by a constellation of smaller stones that Nathan had cut from the same original piece. The band was white gold, delicate and precise, made to sit flush against the opal band Jace had given Samantha at the reservation. They had been designed for each other without either of them knowing it at the time.

Jace took Samantha's left hand.

He held the ring at the tip of her finger, the pause of a man who understood that this was the last second before a thing became permanent and was not afraid of it, was in fact ready for it in a way he had not been ready for anything since the night Seamus Greene had handed him the Guardian Amulet behind a club in San Diego. Then he slid it home.

It caught the light from the windows. The diamond and the opal band together, side by side on her finger, the two rings that Nathan had made, one from coal and one from the island's own stone, sitting there as though they had always been there and were simply waiting to be recognized.

Samantha's turn.

She took the ring from the small velvet pouch she had been given that morning, the ancient Guardian's wedding band, the one Nathan had found in a box in the castle's lower archives and brought to Jace three months ago, the one Sidney had identified immediately, the one that had been made by a conjurer in the early years of Aelin and had been enchanted in the way of all conjurer-made things to fit itself to its wearer. The opal in it was white, the same white opal as in the Guardian Amulet, as in the Guardian's crown, the stone of the Guardian's line, inlaid thick in the band, almost flush with the surface, catching the chapel light in the way of opaline things.

It looked, Samantha had thought when she first held it, almost like it could have been made alongside Katherine Elias's ring. The same quality. The same quiet beauty. Something made to be worn every day by a man who did extraordinary things and needed to be reminded, in the weight on his finger, of what he was also coming home to.

She took his left hand. She held the ring at the tip of his finger.

She slid it home.

The Guardian Amulet flashed, once, vivid, the opaline light blazing at his chest. The High Votaress Amulet answered it. The ancient ring on his finger flashed in the same register, the enchantment recognizing its wearer, the bond completing itself the way conjurer-made things completed themselves, fully, immediately, without negotiation. The Guardian's crown flashed at his brow, the white opal at its center catching the light of the amulet below it.

Three flashes. Simultaneous. Opaline light filling the space around the dais for one bright second.

Then it settled, and Jace was standing with Samantha's hand in both of his, the ancient ring on his finger, the High Votaress Amulet glowing softly at her throat, and they were looking at each other with the expression of two people who have just made something permanent and are glad of it.

THE PRONOUNCEMENT

Magistrate Kovar let the moment breathe.

Then he straightened at his lectern, and his voice went to the full register of a man making a formal declaration before a nation and its witnesses.

"In the sight of Aelin," he said, "and in the sight of all who stand witness here today, by the authority of this island's law and its nine centuries of tradition, what has been joined here cannot be undone."

He paused.

"It is my profound honor," he said, and something moved in his voice that was not the formal register, something genuine, the feeling of a man who had spent forty years conducting ceremonies and had arrived at the one he would remember for the rest of his life..."to present to Aelin, and to the world: Jason Beannú Elias, High King and Guardian of Aelin, and Samantha Tené Elias, High Votaress and Queen of Aelin."

He looked at Jace.

His eyes carried what a man carried who had thought, five years ago, that he had already seen the ceiling.

"Your Majesty," Magistrate Kovar said. "You may kiss your queen."

The chapel came apart.

Not gradually, instantly, the way a held breath releases when it has been held too long and the body simply takes the air it needs. Seven hundred people finding their voices all at once. Tommy Lee on his feet immediately, the way Tommy Lee did everything, immediately. Kevin DuBrow making a sound that could be heard over most of the other sounds in the chapel. Sharon Osbourne applauding with the decisive energy of a woman who had been waiting for this moment since 1988 and was thoroughly satisfied with how it had arrived. Dolly Parton with both hands pressed to her heart and her eyes full. Alice Cooper with his head bowed briefly, the private quality of a man offering something upward before joining the noise.

Jace was not listening to any of it.

He cupped Samantha's face in both hands and kissed her.

Not quickly. Not ceremonially. He kissed her the way a man kissed the woman he had been waiting for since January of 1984, in the full colored light of Brannach's windows, with the weight of the crown on his head and the Guardian Amulet warm at his chest and her hands coming up to hold his wrists the way they always did, the way they had been doing since Hawaii, since the first time, since before any of this was official. He kissed her until the chapel had been thoroughly kissed, and then he rested his forehead against hers for one quiet second in the middle of all of it.

Then the seven hundred made the noise of seven hundred people who had been holding their breath and had just been given everything they came for.

Outside the chapel, the citizens of Harmonytis who had gathered in the streets heard the noise through the stone walls and answered it. Their voices rose around the building, through the narrow streets of the old city, along the harbor road, up toward the castle walls. Within minutes the signal had reached the county simulcasts, the ABN screens in the pubs of Léirstenach, the market squares of Neart, the village greens of Ainmhithe, the university courtyards of Draíocht, and all of Aelin was making the same noise at the same time. People in the streets. People dancing in front of their televisions. People raising glasses in pubs and calling blessings in the old language, the words that had been called at every Guardian wedding since the first one, nine hundred years ago in a chapel that was smaller then and had been made larger over the centuries to hold what it needed to hold.

The island had been awake since three o'clock in the morning.

Now it was celebrating.

THE RECESSIONAL

They came back down the aisle together.

Jace and Samantha, husband and wife, High King and High Votaress, walking the length of the Great Chapel of Harmonytis through the colored light and the noise of seven hundred people who were not attempting to be quiet about how they felt. The Brotherhood followed, Connor and Indira, Nathan and Galena, Erik and Rebekah, Ricky and Leilani, Tobin and Susan, and then the families, and then the seven hundred themselves, directed by the castle aides toward the Great Hall of the castle, where the feast tables had been laid since morning.

In the anteroom just off the nave, a stone room with high windows and enough space for the wedding party to collect themselves before the reception, the private moment arrived.

It was not quiet. Nothing about the next twenty minutes was quiet. The Brotherhood descended on Jace and Samantha simultaneously and without coordination, which resulted in the warm chaos of five men who had been holding an enormous amount of feeling all day and were now in a room where they did not have to hold it anymore. Connor pulled Jace into a hug first, the Visionary's embrace, the one that lasted longer than most people's embraces because Connor felt things at a depth that required more time to express. Nathan was next, then Erik, careful, deliberate, both hands, then Ricky, who also briefly lifted Jace off the floor, because Ricky, and because today was the day for it.

"Ricky," Jace said, from approximately four inches off the ground.

"Sorry," Ricky said, setting him down. He did not look sorry.

Samantha was being hugged by everyone simultaneously, which was a physical challenge that she navigated with the competence of a woman who had spent seven years being part of this Brotherhood and understood that they expressed things with their whole bodies or not at all. Galena hugged her with both arms and said something in her ear that made Samantha laugh. Leilani hugged her and said she had never seen anyone look so beautiful and meant every word of it. Indira held her and said nothing, because sometimes Indira said the most important things by saying nothing, and Samantha understood.

Tobin was standing slightly apart from the chaos, still wearing his moonstone crown, watching his brother with the expression of a man who was very happy and was also processing something large.

Jace found him. They did not require a ceremony for what passed between them in the next few seconds. Just the look of two brothers who had grown up in Reno, Nevada, the sons of Thomas and Katherine Elias, standing in a castle on an island in the Atlantic on the day that one of them married the woman he had been waiting for since before he knew he was waiting.

"Dad would have been out of his mind," Tobin said.

"Yeah," Jace said. "He really would have."

Marcus, standing nearby, made a sound that was not quite a word. Ira put her hand over his.

Susan, recovering her professional composure with impressive speed, produced a makeup kit from somewhere and began conducting an assessment of the situation, which was considerable. The Brotherhood's ancient crowns, 900 years old and heavy, beautiful and punishing, were exchanged for the half circlets, which were lighter and would make the four-hour reception survivable. Tobin did not want to take his crown off. Tobin was, in fact, deeply reluctant to take his crown off.

"It stays on," Tobin said.

"It's going to give you a headache," Christina said.

"It can try," Tobin said.

"Tobin," Marcus said.

"I'm keeping the crown," Tobin said, with the absolute certainty of a man who had discovered approximately four hours ago that he was a prince and intended to make the most of it. He looked around at his wife, his uncles, his aunts, and the assembled Brotherhood. "Also, I've decided I'm going to make my cousins bow to me."

The room received this.

"They're just going to look at you," Jace said, "and then get up and leave."

"Worth it," Tobin said, completely unbothered.

Leilani, moving through the room with the efficient warmth of a woman who had a job to do and intended to do it well, was fixing hair, the Brotherhood's, resettled after the crown exchange, and Tobin's too, because the moonstone crown was staying and it needed to sit right. Susan was powdering foreheads with the focused attention of a makeup artist who understood that a four-hour reception under Aelinian lighting was a technical challenge requiring proper preparation.

"Jace," Susan said, powder brush in hand.

"I'm fine," Jace said.

"You will be," Susan said, and attended to him.

Nathan, in a quiet corner, was very still. He was looking at his garnet amulet. He was thinking about what had happened at the dais when the two amulets touched each other and the light had come off Jace and Samantha simultaneously. He was thinking about Galena. He was running calculations.

"Nathan," Galena said.

"I'm thinking," Nathan said.

"I know," she said. "You have the face."

"I need to talk to you," he said, "about something that may have happened when I placed the amulet on you five years ago."

Galena looked at him with the composed attention of a woman who ran a government and was accustomed to significant information arriving at unexpected moments. "All right," she said.

"Not now," Nathan said. "Tonight. It's... it's probably fine."

"Probably," Galena said.

"Almost certainly fine," Nathan said.

Jace, from across the room, caught Nathan's eye. Nathan gave him a look that communicated several things simultaneously, most of which resolved into: we need to talk about what just happened and I have questions. Jace gave him a look back that communicated: I know, and also: not today. Nathan accepted this with the pragmatism of a very intelligent man who understood that today was not the day for the conversation he needed to have.

Samantha, standing beside Jace, was still adjusting to the feeling of the room. The empathy was present, quieter now, more controlled, something she was holding rather than something flooding through her. She could feel the happiness in the anteroom like warmth from a fire, specific and real, and underneath it the threads she was beginning to identify: Tobin's complicated pride, Nathan's focused concern, Connor's barely-contained joy about something he had not yet shared with the room.

She looked at her hands. The glow was gone, but she could still feel where it had been.

"How are you?" Jace asked, quietly.

"I don't know yet," she said. "But I think... good. I think it's good."

He took her hand. The amulets hummed, both of them, in the register they had been humming in since the dais, a new note, deeper than before, the sound of something that had just been completed.

"Come on," he said. "They're waiting for us."

THE FEAST

The Great Hall of the castle had been dressed for a royal wedding since the day before.

The long tables ran the length of the hall in the Aelinian formal pattern that had governed Guardian wedding feasts since Daeron's time, the high table across the front for the wedding party and families, the long tables running perpendicular to it for the seven hundred guests, the whole arrangement opening toward the hall's great arched windows where the lavender afternoon sky pressed against the glass. Brigid's iridescent county banners hung from the vaulted ceiling, green, blue, black, red, each one bordered in Wallace tartan, the fabric catching the light from the chandeliers and throwing it back in the way of iridescent things. The flowers were everywhere, Guardian Roses and Night Blooming Lilies in arrangements down the center of every table, the amethyst ribbons running between them, the lavender votive candles in their silver stands flickering warmly in the draft from the hall's high windows.

At the center of the high table, the wedding cake stood on its own silver platform.

Five tiers, each slightly smaller than the last, the whole construction rising to the height of a man's chest and covered in white icing dusted with opaline sugar that caught the light as the amulet stones caught light, the white-that-is-every-color, shifting and iridescent under the chandeliers. Deep purple and lavender borders ran between the tiers in precise piped lines, the detail work of a pastry chef who had been preparing for this for three weeks. Sugar opals dotted the surface of each tier, dozens of them, each one hand-formed, each one catching the light individually. Small purple sugar jewels clustered at intervals between them. At the very top, the topper: two doves facing each other, beaks almost touching, formed entirely from opaline sugar, their wings slightly raised, their whole presentation carrying the quality of something made with complete care for one purpose.

Seven hundred people found their seats. The Aelinian chamber orchestra, relocated from the chapel to the hall's music alcoves, played softly. Wine was poured, Aelinian vintages, the island's own production, deep and complex, and also the Aelinian spirits that the distilleries of Draíocht County produced from the island's native grain and that had no equivalent anywhere in the world beyond the Veil. Several of the rock musicians encountered the spirits for the first time and had an immediate and enthusiastic response. Vince Neil held his glass up to the light, took a considered sip, and said something to Tommy Lee that resulted in Tommy immediately signaling for a second pour.

The feast was extraordinary.

Three kitchens had been working under Galena Dallenger's direction for two days. The tables carried everything the island could produce and everything the mainland had contributed by request, fruits in arrangements that functioned as decoration until you reached for one and found it perfect, vegetables prepared in the Aelinian manner that was nothing like any preparation available on the mainland, meats and fish in the island's own tradition: slow-cooked, seasoned with herbs that only grew in the Léirstenach valleys, served at the temperature that made the difference between a good meal and a meal you remembered for the rest of your life. Bread from Neart, from Rebekah's bakery in the harbor district, the loaves ordered weeks in advance and delivered to the castle kitchens that morning, the bread that the island's own people considered the finest produced anywhere on Aelin.

At the high table, Jace and Samantha sat at the center of everything, and the expression on both their faces was the expression of people who were too happy to perform happiness and were therefore simply radiating it without effort. Jace had his hand over Samantha's on the table. He had not let go of her hand for more than a few minutes since the chapel, and he did not intend to.

THE TOASTS

Tobin stood first.

As best man, he had the floor, and he intended to use it.

He stood with his wine glass and the moonstone crown still on his head, he had declined every suggestion that he swap it for the half circlet and appeared to have no intention of revisiting that decision, and looked out at the seven hundred with the ease of a man who had spent his life being the steady one and was, just this once, going to be the one who talked.

He said that he had spent his whole life being Jason Elias's older brother, which had not always been a simple thing to be. He said that Jace had been strange and gifted and difficult and extraordinary from approximately the age of six, and that their parents had known it and Tobin had known it, and that watching the world figure it out over the course of thirty-one years had been one of the more interesting experiences of his life.

He paused.

"What most of you don't know," Tobin said, and his voice shifted, still steady, still the voice of the man who had always been the calm one, but carrying something underneath it now that had been there for a long time and had never been permitted to come out, "is that I have known about my brother's destiny since I was twenty years old. I was told. And I was sworn to secrecy. I could not tell him. Not a word. Not even when I wanted to more than anything."

The hall was quiet.

"That is," Tobin said carefully, "a difficult thing to carry. Watching your little brother grow up not knowing what he is. Knowing what's coming for him. Knowing what it's going to cost him and what it's going to give him and not being able to say a single thing about any of it." He looked at Jace. "I kept the oath. Every year. I kept it."

Jace was very still.

"I kept it," Tobin said again, quietly, "because I believed it mattered. Because I believed in what he was going to become. And because..." he stopped, briefly, the steady one finding the edges of what was underneath the steadiness, "...because our father believed in it too. And I was not going to be the one to undo what Thomas Elias believed in."

He raised his glass.

"You became everything you were supposed to become, Jason. And more. Dad knew it. Mom knew it. I know it." He looked at Samantha, and the steadiness cracked just slightly, the older brother surfacing through everything else. "And Samantha... he did spend three weeks trying to figure out how to apologize for knocking you sideways with his empathy before he even knew your name." He let it land, precise and deliberate. "Which is very Jace."

The hall found its laughter, warm and genuine and grateful for the release of it. Samantha covered her mouth. Jace shook his head slowly with the expression of a man who had known this was coming and had made his peace with it weeks ago.

"You are what this family needed," Tobin said, simply. "We are glad you said yes."

He raised the glass higher. "To Jason and Samantha."

Seven hundred voices answered him.

Connor stood next.

He said that he had known Jace was going to marry Samantha since approximately three weeks after she joined the band, which was, he acknowledged, slightly before Jace had figured it out himself, and possibly slightly before Samantha had consciously decided to allow it, but he was the Visionary and these things arrived for him on their own schedule. He said that watching the two of them navigate the question of what they were to each other for seven years, while the island and the amulets and the enemies and the whole enormous machinery of the Guardian's life kept operating around them, had been one of the more genuinely moving experiences of his own life. He raised his glass and said, simply, that some things were exactly what they were supposed to be. That today was exactly what it was supposed to be. That Samantha Elias, he smiled when he said the name, was exactly who Jace was supposed to find.

Nathan stood and said that he had made the ring and the amulet and the crown and he wanted the record to reflect that he had no idea what was going to happen when the two amulets touched each other, and that he was going to be spending some time in his laboratory in Draíocht working out the mechanics of it, and that in the meantime he was raising his glass to two people who had just demonstrated that the bond between a Guardian and his Votaress was apparently capable of things that nine hundred years of Aelinian history had not previously documented. He sat down to laughter and said something under his breath to Galena that made her smile in as she smiled when Nathan said something that was simultaneously very funny and technically accurate.

Erik stood with the economy of a man who did not use more words than required. He said that Jace was his Guardian and his brother and the finest man he had ever served beside, and that Samantha was now the queen of the island he had sworn his life to protect, and that he intended to honor both of those things for as long as he drew breath. He raised his glass and sat down. It was the shortest toast of the evening and also, somehow, the one that made the most people need to look at the ceiling.

Ricky stood and immediately said he had prepared remarks. He had not prepared remarks. What followed was approximately four minutes of Ricky Strathan speaking from the place where genuine feeling and complete inability to filter met, which covered the time Jace had talked him down from a ledge in Minneapolis in 1981, the time Samantha had talked all five of them down from various ledges in Nashville in 1984, the time Ricky had known immediately when he saw them together that something was happening and had told Connor and Connor had already known, and the somewhat emotional admission that he had been practicing his position in the processional in his head since 1984 and was very glad he had finally gotten to do it correctly. He raised his glass. He appeared to have additional remarks. Leilani touched his arm gently. He sat down.

Galena stood.

The hall waited.

She said that she had come to Aelin as a diplomat. She said that she had met the Brotherhood in their professional capacity and had understood immediately what they were and what they protected and what they cost. She said that she had then made the decision, not impulsively, she was constitutionally incapable of doing anything impulsively, to marry one of them, which had required her to understand not just what the Brotherhood was professionally but what it was personally. And she said that in the years of that understanding, the thing that had surprised her most was not the power or the history or the weight of it. The thing that had surprised her most was that underneath all of it, what the Brotherhood needed most, what Jace needed most, was exactly what any person needed. Someone who saw him. Not the Guardian. Not the High King. Him.

She looked at Samantha.

"You see him," Galena said. "You have always seen him. That is the rarest thing there is."

She raised her glass.

The hall was very quiet. Then it was very loud.

Susan stood last among the wedding party and said that she was Samantha's older sister and had therefore been watching her make decisions for her entire life, and that Samantha had an extremely good track record and this was the best decision she had ever made, and also that she had done Sam's makeup this morning and it had held up beautifully all day which was a professional achievement she was quietly proud of. She raised her glass, told Jace to take care of her sister, told Samantha to be happy, and sat down to warm and genuine applause.

THE DANCING

When the feast was finished and the wedding cake had been cut, Jace and Samantha's hands together on the silver-handled knife, the opaline doves carefully preserved at Samantha's specific request and wrapped in sugar paper to take with them, the tables were arranged to clear the center of the hall, and the chamber orchestra shifted from the ambient music of the feast into the traditional Aelinian opening dance.

Jace led Samantha to the floor.

He had spent three weeks teaching her to waltz. He had been patient and she had been determined and by the third week she had stopped looking at her feet, which was the breakthrough that meant everything was going to be fine. Now she moved with him as they moved through most things together, in the easy synchronization of two people who had been in each other's space long enough to know instinctively where the other one was going. He led, she followed, and what came across to the seven hundred watching was not a lesson successfully applied but something that looked like it had always been natural.

The hall watched them for exactly one circuit of the floor.

Then the Brotherhood descended.

Not all at once, there was a sequence, loose but present, beginning with Connor, who asked Samantha for the second dance with the courtesy of a Visionary who knew she was going to say yes and asked anyway because it was the right thing to do. Then Erik, who danced with the careful formality of a man who was better at it than he appeared and was not going to tell anyone. Then Nathan, who talked to her the entire time about the amulet reaction and what he thought might have happened and what questions he needed to answer, which was exactly the kind of dance Nathan provided and which Samantha found she did not mind at all. Then Ricky, who spun her twice more than was strictly necessary and once performed a brief move that was more appropriate to a Sentinel's agility than a formal reception but which made her laugh, and was therefore worth it.

Jace, meanwhile, had been acquired.

Galena first, she danced with him in the composed, efficient way she did everything, and told him with characteristic directness that he had chosen well and that she was pleased for him. Then Leilani, warm and easy, who told him Ricky had been crying in the processional and Ricky was going to deny it forever. Then Rebekah, who said almost nothing and simply danced with the steady grace of a woman who had learned composure from living beside the High General of Aelin and wore it well. Then Indira, who held his hand as they danced and looked at him with the quiet warmth of a woman who carried a shard near her heart and understood, perhaps better than anyone, what it meant to have something worth fighting the darkness for.

Then Dolly Parton.

She came to him with both hands out and the warmth of a woman who had decided she was dancing with the High King of Aelin and was not going to be talked out of it, and they danced while she talked to him in the low, private voice she had used in his residence that morning, telling him things she had already told him and saying them again because some things needed to be said more than once. He listened. He was a man who knew how to listen, and he was also a man whose mother was fourteen years gone and who was receiving, in this woman, something that felt enough like what he had lost to be worth holding carefully.

Sharon Osbourne was after Dolly, which was a tonal shift that the King of Aelin navigated with considerable grace. Sharon danced with the decisive energy of a woman who had opinions about everything and was going to share several of them in the course of one song, which she did, and all of which were either accurate or genuinely useful.

Belinda Carlisle. Susanna Hoffs. Yara, who had been Jace's aide long enough to have developed a friendship forged by the elixir mishap into something specific and permanent, the kind that comes from having been involuntarily connected to someone at a level neither of you planned for and choosing afterward to find it funny, danced with him with the full delight of a woman celebrating her friend's wedding. She said something sharp about the crown. He said something back. It was entirely the exchange of two people who had no formality left between them and were enjoying themselves thoroughly. Daria, when her turn came, was equally unimpressed by the occasion and told him three things he needed to know about the reception logistics for the next hour.

Samantha, across the floor, had been just as thoroughly claimed.

Bryan Hitt danced with her with the steady, unhurried quality he brought to everything, he held the rhythm the way a drummer held a rhythm, without effort, and she found it immediately natural. Kevin Cronin danced with her and told her that he had watched Jace all morning and had never seen a man so completely ready to marry someone and that she should know that was rare. Tommy Lee danced with her and made her laugh twice in one song, which was the Tommy Lee experience in miniature.

Nikki Sixx danced with her with a surprising formality that she had not expected and which she found immediately charming. He said that he was genuinely glad for Jace and that she seemed like exactly the kind of person that a king needed and that he meant that as the highest possible compliment. Vince Neil danced with her and told her she was the prettiest queen he had ever met, and when she pointed out she was likely the only queen he had ever met, he said that was true but the statement still stood.

Alice Cooper danced with her with the unhurried grace of a man who was more comfortable with himself than almost anyone she had ever met. He held her hand with the gentle certainty of someone who had known her husband for eight years and was, in his quiet way, welcoming her into something. He said nothing for most of the dance. Near the end he said, simply, that Jace was a good man and deserved this day, and that he was glad she was part of it.

Vice President Quayle danced with her with the careful correctness of a political figure navigating an occasion that was considerably outside the parameters of his professional experience, and managed it with more grace than might have been expected. Several members of the Aelinian Congress danced with her after him, ministers and representatives who had spent years serving the island that she was now queen of, and who expressed that service in the Aelinian way of people who took formal occasions seriously and brought their whole attention to them.

Jace found her again when the Aelinian traditional set began, the music shifting to the older compositions, the ones that had been played at Guardian receptions for centuries, the ones that required the Aelinian steps that neither of them had formally been taught but that Jace had grown up knowing in the way you grew up knowing things that lived in your blood alongside the island itself.

He led. She followed. She was better at it than either of them had expected.

The hall danced around them.

THE PROPOSAL

It happened during the third traditional set.

Connor was on the floor with Indira, the two of them moving in the easy way of people who had danced together enough to have stopped thinking about it, the emerald amulet steady at his chest in the candlelight. The hall was full and warm and loud with the happiness of a gathering that had found its own momentum.

He stopped dancing.

Not gradually, he simply stopped, in the middle of the floor, in the middle of the song, and Indira stopped with him because she felt the change before she understood it.

He took her hand out of the dance position. Both her hands, holding them between his, the emerald burning softly.

The people dancing nearest them registered the change first. A small ripple of stillness that moved outward from the two of them through the floor, the way a stone dropped in water sends rings to the edge. Partners stopping to look. The crowd creating space without being asked.

The orchestra played on for another eight bars.

Then the conductor turned, saw what was on the floor, and his baton lowered. The music tapered. The final notes hung in the hall's air and then the hall was quiet, not the silence of something gone wrong, but the silence of seven hundred people who had collectively understood that something was about to happen and had decided, without discussion, to make room for it.

Connor looked at Indira.

He reached into his jacket pocket.

The ring was small, a woman's ring, the gold worn smooth with decades of use, the stone a deep warm carnelian that caught the candlelight the way old things caught candlelight, with more depth than new things could manage. Nasrin's ring. His grandmother's ring, which had been on Nasrin's hand in a Persian kitchen in San Diego for forty years, which had come to Connor when she died in 1982 and had been in a box in his dresser in Léirstenach since then, which he had quietly taken to Aelin's jeweler two months ago and had sized for a finger.

He had not told anyone. Not even Jace.

Indira looked at the ring. She looked at Connor. She had known, some part of her had known, for two months, the way you know things that have not yet been said when you are close enough to someone to feel the shift in them. She had felt something change near Connor lately, something old and damaged going quieter when she was near him, and she had not yet had words for it. She would, eventually. But that was a conversation for another day.

"This was my grandmother Nasrin's," Connor said. His voice in the quiet hall carried without him raising it, the Visionary's voice, the one that reached distances when it needed to. "She wore it for forty years. She cooked Persian food in a house in San Diego and she taught me to say hello to knives and she was the finest woman I have ever known, besides you."

He paused.

"I had it sized for your hand," he said. "I've been carrying it for two months. I didn't tell anyone. I wanted this to be yours first, before it was anyone else's news."

Indira's dark eyes were very bright.

"Indira Saatva," Connor said. "Will you marry me."

Indira took a breath. Let it out.

"Yes," she said. Simply, directly, with the complete certainty of a woman who knew her own mind and had known it for a long time. "Connor Thomas Braydee. Yes."

He put the ring on her finger.

The hall came apart.

Seven hundred people who had already been through a royal wedding ceremony and a feast and three hours of dancing and had thought they had reached the emotional ceiling of the day discovered that they had not. The noise was enormous and warm, the quality of joy that has been surprised out of people.

Jace, from the edge of the floor, put his hand over his mouth. Then he dropped it and was smiling. Beside him, Samantha had her hand on his arm and her face was the face of a woman who had known Indira for years and was watching something she had been waiting for with the patience of a friend.

Nathan's garnet flared once, an involuntary response, the Conjurer's bond with the Brotherhood registering the magnitude of what had just happened. Galena turned to look at his amulet and then at him and then at Connor and Indira, and she was smiling in as she smiled when things went as they were supposed to.

Ricky lifted Leilani off her feet, briefly, which was entirely unnecessary and which Leilani received with the patience of a woman who was used to it.

Erik nodded once, from the far side of the hall. The finality of a man confirming something he had suspected and was satisfied to have confirmed.

The Brotherhood descended on Connor, all four of them, immediately, as they descended on anything that mattered. Jace first, pulling him into the hug that carried everything it needed to carry. Then Nathan, who shook his hand and said something technical about the shard and the Votaress bond that was Nathan's specific way of expressing that he was deeply happy. Then Erik, who gripped Connor's shoulder with both hands and said nothing, which was Erik's way of saying everything. Then Ricky, who said: "I knew. I knew two months ago. You kept touching your jacket pocket."

"I know," Connor said.

"I didn't say anything," Ricky said, with the pride of a man who had kept a secret successfully and wanted credit for it.

Indira was swarmed by the women before Connor had finished talking to his brothers. Samantha reached her first and held her. Then Galena, then Leilani, then Rebekah and Susan and Diana Wallace, who had met Indira that morning and had immediately understood her, and then, because it was Dolly and Dolly did not stand on the edges of things, Dolly Parton, who took Indira's hands and looked at the carnelian ring and said something in her ear that made Indira's eyes fill.

Sharon Osbourne examined the ring with the expert eye of a woman who had opinions about jewelry and expressed them as such. "Beautiful," she said, meaning it. "Old gold. You can't replicate that."

Magistrate Kovar, who had been seated at the dignitaries' table and had watched the entire proceeding with the expression of a man receiving an unexpected gift, made his way across the hall to Connor and Indira when the initial wave had subsided. He shook Connor's hand with both of his and looked at him with the warmth of a man who had just presided over the most extraordinary ceremony of his career and was apparently being told he would have another one.

"Governor Braydee," he said. "I look forward to it."

Connor smiled, the full smile, the one that reached everything. "Thank you, Magistrate."

The orchestra, after a moment of looking at each other, began to play again. Something celebratory and Aelinian, the kind of piece the island's musicians knew when joy was the requirement.

The dancing resumed. Better than before.

THE BOUQUET

An hour later, Samantha announced she was going to throw the bouquet.

This was not an Aelinian tradition. Magistrate Kovar, overhearing the announcement from his seat, looked mildly puzzled. Several members of the Aelinian Congress looked similarly uncertain. The oath holders, however, immediately understood what was about to happen, and a significant migration occurred toward the relevant section of the hall.

Samantha stood at the edge of the dance floor with the bridal bouquet, the Guardian Roses and Night Blooming Lilies that Indira's team had cut that morning, and turned her back to the hall.

"Ready?" she said.

The crowd of women behind her indicated that they were.

She threw it.

Leilani caught it. She looked at it in her hands with the expression of a woman who had been standing next to Ricky Strathan for long enough to find this very funny.

Ricky, from across the hall, went completely still.

"Huh," he said.

"Huh," Tommy Lee agreed, from beside him, with deep satisfaction.

Leilani looked at Ricky across the hall. She raised an eyebrow. He raised one back. Something passed between them that was not a conversation and also was entirely a conversation.

The dancing resumed for the final time.

THE DEPARTURE

The reception ended at six o'clock.

The party on the island did not.

In the streets of Harmonytis, the celebration that had begun when Magistrate Kovar said you may kiss your queen had been running for four hours without significant interruption and showed no signs of concluding. The pubs of Léirstenach were at capacity. The market squares of Neart had been cleared for dancing. In the villages of Ainmhithe, people were gathered around the simulcast screens that had been set up in the central greens, and in the university courtyards of Draíocht, the students who had been watching the broadcast all day were now in the streets with the energy of young people who had been given a legitimate reason to celebrate and intended to use it fully.

Jace and Samantha left the Great Hall through the main doors of the castle, and Aelin received them.

Not with rice or birdseed, no Aelinian tradition called for that, and the castle staff had confirmed it was not happening. What the citizens of Harmonytis who had gathered along the castle road offered instead was their voices. They cheered, the full-throated, complete sound of a people who were genuinely happy about the thing they were cheering for. They waved. They called blessings in the old language, the words that had been called at every Guardian wedding since the first one, the phrases that Jace had known since childhood and that now, for the first time, were being called for him. He heard his name in them and Samantha's new name, Elias, the name she was carrying for the first time, and the island's name, Aelin, and the ancient word for the bond between a Guardian and the people he protected.

Samantha heard it all. The empathy was present, quieter now, something she was beginning to understand how to hold rather than something that held her, and what she felt from the crowd was not overwhelming. It was warm. It was the warmth of people who loved the place they lived and were expressing that love in the clearest way available to them, which was this: the presence of their Guardian's happiness, and the knowledge that today he was happy, and the sound they made when they wanted him to know they were glad of it.

She held his hand. He held hers.

They walked the castle road in the early evening light, the lavender sky beginning its deepening toward violet, the Atlantic audible below the western cliffs, the banners still stirring in the salt breeze above them. The cheering followed them the full length of the road and then continued behind them as they passed through the castle gates and the doors of the Royal Residence closed.

And Aelin celebrated on.

THE WEDDING NIGHT

The Royal Residence was quiet.

Not the quiet of emptiness, the quiet of two people in a space that belonged to them, finally, after a day that had contained seven hundred people and nine hundred years of history and the weight of everything it meant to stand in the Great Chapel of Harmonytis and say yes to all of it. The formal crown was off. The coat. The cathedral train long since detached and folded somewhere. The High Votaress tiara sitting on the dressing table, the opaline sugar doves from the wedding cake wrapped in their sugar paper on the windowsill.

Samantha was at the window.

She was still in the dress, the cream and gold of it, the Wallace tartan cuffs at her wrists, standing with her back to the room, looking at the Atlantic in the early violet of the Aelinian evening. The High Votaress amulet was at her throat, glowing softly in as it had been glowing since the chapel. She could feel the island through it, not the emotions of individuals, but the broader warmth of a place that was content, the low hum of seven hundred years of Guardian bond made new in this version of it.

She could feel Jace behind her before he reached her.

He put his hands on her shoulders and she leaned back into him, and they stood like that, looking at the Atlantic together as they had been looking at things together for seven years, in the easy configuration of two people who had been in each other's space long enough that proximity had become its own language.

"High Votaress," he said.

"High King," she said.

She turned to face him. The room was lit by the violet evening coming through the windows and the soft glow of the two amulets between them, and in that light she looked at him, Jace, Jason, the Guardian, the man who had walked into a management meeting in Atlanta in January of 1984 and knocked her sideways before he reached his chair, and who had spent the better part of seven years being exactly who he said he was, and who was also, underneath all of it, simply and completely hers.

She reached up and touched his face the way he touched hers. Both hands. The gesture, returned.

He kissed her.

Not the way he had kissed her in the chapel. Not the way he kissed her on ordinary nights, which were good nights. This was different. This was the night with nothing held back, no restraint applied, no care taken to be careful, the night that being married made available to them, the one they had been moving toward since the morning when she had looked at him in this same residence and told him to stop playing it safe with her and just love her. He had listened. He had been listening ever since.

Tonight he was not being careful about anything.

She kissed him back in exactly the same register, because Samantha had never needed to be told twice and had in fact been the one doing the telling, and they moved toward the bedroom with the complete knowledge of each other that years together produced, unhurried because there was no reason to hurry, entirely present because there was nowhere else either of them wanted to be, the amulets warm at both their chests with the warmth of stones that knew what was happening and were glad of it.

They made love the way people made love when they had stopped holding anything back, with full passion and full knowledge and the joy of two people who understood each other completely.

Both amulets blazed.

The opaline light came off them in a pulse that moved through the walls of the Royal Residence and out into the Aelinian night, warm and vivid and unmistakable, the light of the Guardian's stone in full expression, the blessing that went through the stone floors and the ancient walls and into the ground of the island itself. It was not a surprise. Every Aelinian knew this happened. They had been waiting for it since the ceremony, the way Aelin had always waited for the Guardian's wedding night blessing, with the anticipation of a people who understood that the island received something from this that went beyond sentiment.

The people still in the streets of Harmonytis looked up and saw the opaline light coming from the high windows of the Royal Residence and they cheered, not with embarrassment or delicacy but with the full-throated Aelinian delight of people whose island had just been blessed and who intended to celebrate accordingly. The signal moved through the simulcasts to every county. In the pubs of Léirstenach, glasses were raised. In the squares of Neart, the dancing that had been going since the ceremony found a new reason to continue. Nine months from now, Aelin would be somewhat more crowded than it was tonight, and everyone knew it, and everyone was fine with it.

And in the Royal Residence, in the warmth of the amulets and the violet-black of the night and the sound of the Atlantic below them, Jace and Samantha fell asleep, husband and wife, finally, after everything, with the island quiet around them and the bond between them settled into something deeper than it had been before, something that had been forged in the Great Chapel of Harmonytis that afternoon and would not be undone.

At peace.

Both of them. At peace.