Saturday, July 30, 4 S.E.

  The doors to the Palace’s grand foyer shut behind their party after they entered, cutting out the still-echoing cheers from the massive crowd that had formed to follow Aylar’s march.

  Leonidas let out a sigh of relief when they did, and glanced down at Synthra, who also appeared markedly more at ease now that the din and stares had vanished. The Duskguard had peeled away to stand vigil outside the Palace itself, given that it was the Realm of the Royal Guard, and only the Reds from that particular force remained as escort for Aylar.

  Ceruviel and Uriel walked alongside the Queen-Potentiate, too, standing near enough to her that their very presence warned that any attempts to forestall her could very well end in obliteration. Knowing Ceruviel, Leonidas had no doubt that it would probably be the case.

  “{Where is Braedon now?}” Aylar asked in formal Haelfennyr as they walked, breaking the momentary silence that her inflection and the weight of the moment had wrought.

  “{Either in his chambers, or waiting like a fool for Verity’s Lance to report their dirty work achieved,}” Ceruviel replied derisively, her disapproving voice reverberating within the monolithic palace chamber. “{I have no doubt he’ll be high-tailing it here the moment the System makes the Announcement.}”

  “{And that will happen as soon as I take the Throne?}” Aylar clarified, despite Leonidas knowing Primus had explained the process. He couldn’t blame her for wanting to be absolutely certain—there was too much riding on the moment and, as they moved through the Palace, he realized that he was also on a clock of his own.

  “{That is the usual process, Your Majesty,}” Uriel answered steadily, his deep voice emanating with musical undertones within the entrance hall as they crossed its vastness toward the immense, sealed doors leading toward the throne room. “{It was the case when your Father aceded to the Throne in Eldormer, and I cannot believe it would be different on Terra.}”

  “{You need to be ready for the Challenge,}” Ceruviel said when Uriel finished, glancing back at Leonidas with a glint in her eyes that he couldn’t have missed if he wanted to, and then refocusing on the golden-haired Queen-Potentiate. “{Braedon will issue it the moment he’s able, before you have a chance to build your strength. I can see you’ve achieved Adept rank, which bears congratulations, but it won’t be enough. Your brother is at the cusp of Elite, now, thanks to that mad dash I sent him on.}”

  Aylar took a breath at Ceruviel’s words and nodded, her armored right hand tightening on the pommel of her sword.

  “{I will be ready,}” she said with resolute conviction, her head only shifting to peer up at the immense, stained-glass windows ringing the dome at the center of the entrance hall’s ceiling. “{I am not prone to shrinking from what must be done.}”

  “{The Challenge is to the death,}” Ceruviel noted simply, while her hands tightened behind her as if in impatience, and her armored feet clanked as they walked. “{It always has been, to avoid needless friction. The System doesn’t enforce it, but Braedon likely will. His head is too full of stories about those Challenges to do otherwise—plus, it will remove you and any future children as a threat to him permanently.}”

  “{Is exile not enough?}” Aylar questioned with a hint of hope as they reached the doors, and the Royal Guards marched forward to push them open.

  “{It can be,}” Uriel said before Ceruviel could answer, drawing a glare from the Dusk-Lord that he calmly ignored, “{but it is not a true mitigation. If the survivor’s descendants decide to contest the Throne in the future, their blood makes the Challenge lawful each time, no matter how many generations removed they are.}”

  Leonidas felt his heartbeat spike as the doors to the Throne Room opened and the Royal Guard led the way inside, followed by Aylar, Uriel, Ceruviel, and then the rest. Leonidas entered at the same time as Bardulf and Parnym, while Synthra stepped closer to him and gripped his vambrace.

  “What are you doing?” she hissed to him, her voice low as she darted a glance toward Aylar, steadily approaching the throne.

  “What do you—”

  “Don’t be an idiot, Achilles!” Synthra cut him off, her hand on his vambrace faintly heating as her magic expressed itself. “The moment she sits on that throne, she’s locked into the bloody Rite. You need to make your move!”

  Leonidas hesitated at that, and his heartbeat ramped within his breast.

  He knew she was right. He knew what duty demanded. He knew what his conscience demanded, and he knew what his heart wanted—Aylar, him, together. He’d accepted that when he’d kissed her, but his mind kept warring with his heart; dancing back to the moment in Ceruviel’s home when she’d yelled her love of romance novels.

  Leonidas wasn’t in love with Aylar, and he was reasonably certain she wasn’t in love with him. The ‘yet’ was implicit in both cases, but it didn’t invalidate his concerns.

  It wasn’t that he doubted it could happen; it was that he worried about the cost if it didn’t. Aylar’s desire for romance had always been clear, and part of him recoiled at the idea of risking that for her—of the small, cruel possibility that, despite their best efforts, they really might never reach that point of true devotion in their relationship.

  He’d had girlfriends before. He knew how real those risks were, no matter how strong his feelings for her were in that moment.

  That point of doubt churned within his awareness, stalling him at the final moment before an irrevocable choice. He was afraid of making the wrong one, afraid of the second trial, when he’d seen a future where their marriage had been shattered to pieces. Even now, after everything, he was still afraid.

  Not for himself, not anymore, but for what he could rob from her if he wasn’t enough.

  “She wants a marriage based on love, Synthra,” Leonidas muttered back finally, his gaze affixed to Aylar’s steadily retreating form. “I don’t know if I—”

  “You stupid bighead!” Synthra interrupted, managing to shriek while simultaneously whispering. “Aylar’s already head-over-heels for you, you big dumb lummox, and I know that because—” she caught herself on the edge of something, blushed, and then powered through “—because I just know! You can’t fool me with this rubbish about loveless marriages. I saw how you kissed her! I saw you strolling along, looking like your head was above the clouds! Stop being a damned idiot, you coward, and make your move!”

  Leonidas took a breath when Synthra very nearly shoved him, and glanced askance at the Sorceress, only for her to point insistently at Aylar, her cheeks flaring with a more intense blush.

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  A moment passed, and he suddenly felt himself relax, smiling faintly at her.

  “You’re impossible,” he said simply.

  Synthra stared at him, blinked, and then glared hard a second later.

  Leonidas raised his hands in a gesture of peace.

  “I’ve got it,” he assured her, and turned to follow Aylar, pausing only to say “Thanks, Synthra” before he did.

  The flicker of self-satisfaction and mild embarrassment in her mind-glow told him all he needed to know as he accelerated across the Throne Room, rapidly approaching Aylar, Ceruviel, and Uriel as the former neared within mere feet of the Throne.

  “Aylar!” he called, voice filling the chamber and halting the Swordmaiden mid-step.

  The Royal Guard tensed when he approached, but Leonidas ignored them. The look of naked relief on Ceruviel’s face, coupled with annoyance at what he presumed was his late resolution, told him that the golden-adorned warriors would be a moot point even if they did try to intercede.

  His armored footsteps carried him closer as Aylar turned to look at him, and Leonidas made the conscious choice to dismiss his warplate—allowing it to dissipate into ribbons of red-and-violet power as he closed distance with the Queen-Potentiate. His eyes locked in on her as he did, and he realized immediately how public the space was—how exposed it was.

  Not that it mattered, in the end. More witnesses were probably good.

  Leonidas moved forward until he was within a few scant feet of Aylar, drawing a faint look of uncertainty from her rooted entirely in what his [Psionic Focus] told him was a mix of hope, denial, and fear of that same hope.

  Gods, I’m an idiot, he said, smiling ruefully to himself. I almost let her slip through my fingers, just like Lyara.

  For the first time, invoking his old flame did not confuse his feelings for Aylar; it solidified them. Lyara remained part of him; she likely always would, but for the first time, the memory informed his decision; it didn’t complicate it. After the trials, it wasn’t possible to really conflate them anymore. They’d experienced too much, even if they’d barely experienced anything at all. It likely wouldn’t have made sense to anyone else, but it made sense to him.

  It was enough. For the now, for the moment, for the future: it was enough.

  “Aylar,” he said again when he drew closer to her, and absently noticed Uriel and Ceruviel taking two subtle steps backward, with the former flicking his eyes to the latter at what was no doubt a psionic instruction. “I’m sorry for not acting sooner. I was spiraling again.”

  Aylar’s eyes flickered at his words, and her brows rose faintly toward her fringe, cupid’s bow lips twitching at the corners in fragile hope.

  “Does that mean you got over it yourself?” she asked, voice forcefully composed.

  “No,” he admitted ruefully as he finally reached her and came to a halt, close enough to smell the jasmine scent of her hair. “Synthra had to verbally kick my ass.”

  Aylar’s eyes darted past him to the redhead, and her smile widened slightly.

  “She is good at that,” the Swordmaiden admitted, and then returned her gaze to Leonidas. “But she can’t make the choice for you, Leonidas. We both know that.”

  “I know,” he agreed calmly, “and she didn’t, she just helped me realize how much I’d kick myself if I didn’t make it sooner.”

  Aylar’s blue eyes brightened faintly at that, and her armored hands twitched, her fingers clenching nervously around the pommel of her sword. “I—I don’t have very long, Leonidas. Braedon could be here any second, even before I take the Throne, and—”

  “It won’t take long,” Leonidas assured her, cutting her off to a hiss of disapproval from some of the Royal Guards, who promptly went deathly silent when a wash of Psi erupted from Ceruviel—visible only to his Affinity-borne senses. “I should’ve done this after the Rite, but I was scared. I remember what you told me, about the Terran romance novels—”

  Aylar turned red immediately at his words, but Leonidas continued.

  “—and I thought, maybe, I was robbing something from you… especially after the second arch, but—hell, Aylar, I can’t tell the future. We can use what we saw to inform our path, but we can’t be ruled by it. You understand what I mean, don’t you?”

  Aylar’s lower lip trembled, but she nodded, her eyes never leaving his.

  “We don’t have the luxury of a perfect love story,” he said to her steadily, causing her lips to part in instinctive protest before he pressed on. “It’s okay, because that doesn’t mean it can’t happen—it doesn’t mean it won’t happen, it just means we need more time. Normally, that would be fine… but you need to be alive for us to have that chance, Aylar, and hell, I’d like you to be alive long enough for us to claim it.”

  Aylar blinked at that and then smiled ruefully.

  “You’ve got it all figured out, huh?”

  “Bits and pieces,” Leonidas said with a smile of his own, and then, after a moment, reached out to take her vambraces—pulling them up until her hands were in his.

  Aylar hesitated for a moment, and then promptly tore off her gauntlets, tossing them to one of the Royal Guard without looking, and then sliding her deceptively feminine, delicate fingers back into his own. “Go on,” she commanded with another blush, refusing to elaborate on what she’d done.

  Leonidas felt himself grinning, and her actions only affirmed his choice.

  Instead of speaking immediately, he lowered himself to one knee, keeping his eyes on hers as Aylar’s mind-glow spiked with disbelief, excitement, and alarm all at once. He knew she’d recognize the position, abstract to Alterans thought it might have been. She’d read Terran romance novels, after all.

  “Aylar Taleria Lux Fortuna Eldormer,” Leonidas said as he heard the sudden sound of alarmed voices and running footsteps behind him, ignoring them despite the commotion. “I don’t know what the future holds, I don’t know where our choices will lead, and I have no fucking idea what tomorrow will bring—but I do know this: in this moment, in this city, you are the one thing I’m certain I would live the rest of my life regretting.”

  Leonidas paused when Aylar blinked at him, and then he sighed.

  “Shit. Uh. What I mean is, you’re the one thing I’m certain I’d regret losing,” he clarified, and drew an abrupt laugh from the Swordmaiden, a sigh from Uriel, and a groan from Ceruviel.

  “I don’t want to live with that regret,” Leonidas continued a second later, cheeks red at his own mistake. “I don’t want to wake up wondering ‘what if’, so I’ve decided I won’t.”

  He glanced down at his hands, and after a moment, he pulled off his Latherian Signet Ring and took her left hand in his.

  “Aylar, you know my secrets, you know my past, you know my burdens. There is no part of me that isn’t nervous as hell right now, but with you, those nerves seem just a little less important.”

  Leonidas smiled, and Aylar’s eyes glistened as he spoke, her hand trembling faintly in his while her gaze remained locked on him.

  “Aylar,” he said again, voice warm and certain, for the first time in what felt like a very long time. “Will you do me the honor, the privilege, and the absolute joy of agreeing to be my wife?”

  The Swordmaiden’s eyes spilled over when he said the words, and she lifted her left hand to him, allowing him to slide the amusingly oversized signet ring onto her ring finger as she spoke.

  “Yes, Leonidas,” Aylar said in a voice so vulnerable it swelled his heart, “I will.”

  Leonidas stood and pulled her into a kiss the moment she said yes, tasting the honey and cinnamon, the warmth of her full, plush lips, and feeling the faint wetness of her tears as they connected. The moment felt right, it felt earned, like something he’d been heading towards and had finally seized despite all the opposition the world had placed in his way.

  A second later, as Leonidas’ hands reached up to cradle her face, the shouting voices hit a crescendo.

  Ceruviel laughed, low and savage, as the source revealed itself.

  Two seconds too late, Braedon Eldormer stormed into the Throne Room.

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