Page 167 of The Fallen Fae King

I slip my hand into my pocket.

Then I kneel in front of my nestmates.

I must do this right.

Freya’s eyes widen. She pushes herself upright amongst the soft blankets.

I take a calming breath.

This is the moment that I have dreamed about for months.

In fact, the moment with Freya that I have craved since the golden threads bound us three years ago.

“I swore to crown you both as my King and Queen. And I will.” I reach into the pocket of my tunic and pull out two heavy rings. When I open my hand to reveal the golden dragon rings that match my own resting on my palm, Freya gasps. Daire is watching me intently. “These belonged to my great-grandparents. They are known as the forgotten generation because they fought no wars nor performed any great feats. Instead, my great-grandfather married a pearl dragon who he fell in love with rather than a silver one. Together, for that single generation, they ruled over a prosperous kingdom of builders and merchants. Tarquin despised them. No one writes stories about them. Only one song remains, and it is about their sincere love. I admire them.”

There is so fucking much more that I wish I could say.

I want to reassure Freya and Daire that they will wear these rings, while I crown them as Emperor and Empress alongside me.

I wish I could ask them to trust me that we will return our kingdoms to forgotten ones, where the tales are of our love, rather than our wars.

But I can’t.

Without saying anything, as if they understand my thoughts anyway, Freya and Daire hold out their hands.

Like we are in a private marriage ceremony beside the warmth of the hearth with the brightness of the wildflowers surrounding us, which I can now see the beauty in, I slip the dragon ring on Freya’s finger and then on Daire’s.

They gleam in the fire’s light.

In my heart, we are now married.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Bael

Daire

I grin as I balance on the top branch of the wizened olive tree in the courtyard behind Consort House. The first fingers of dawn are reaching toward the dying moon.

I stretch out my wings.

This is what I have been bloody missing — sneaking out of the Shadow Court, while the wildflowers are clothed in dew and the larks are rising, to finally set my plans in motion.

If I squint, then I can imagine that I am back in the forests of the Unseelie Kingdom, about to spring another campaign of guerrilla warfare.

In a way, I am.

I curl my bare feet on the branch, touching across it with my fingers.

The world is starting to blur, but my other senses are good enough to compensate.

I can climb trees blindfold, which is a trick that I would pull off when I was still free with Bai in the forests. He would bet that I couldn’t climb the highest tree that he could find while blindfolded.

I never lost.

A king must keep up the morale of his army, aye?

I have left Freya’s favorite honey and apple breakfast by our nest, and when she wakes up and finds me missing, she’ll know that I made my move.