ARWEN

MARI HADN’T SAID WEARING BLACK on my wedding day was a bad omen exactly, but she had brought me six different white dresses from her

wardrobe, each with more detail than the last, until I physically couldn’t see my way through all the lace and tulle.

Her focused expression and insistent hands, pushing eyelet lace at me like it was gospel, brightened the entire closet. It wouldn’t be instantaneous, but Mari had already begun to find herself again, and I was grateful. I’d missed her spirit tremendously.

“I’m going to stick with this one,” I told her. “Please don’t groan again.” “Fine.” She sighed, propping herself against the only armoire not piled

high with white chiffon. “I suppose it is your day.”

I studied myself in the full-length mirror. My long chestnut hair, lightly curled and pulled back into my now well-worn onyx bow. The brightness in my eyes. Fullness in my cheeks. Strength in my bones and muscles. “I suppose it is.”

As I looked down at the black tea-length dress I’d borrowed from Mari so long ago—the one I’d worn to Kane’s forum—I couldn’t deny how much I felt like me. It was the dress I’d worn when I’d first thought I might belong here.

Acorn’s scampering sounded from Kane’s attached study and I listened as he scurried into the bedroom. We glided from the large closet to greet

him, his birdlike head nuzzling my palm for scratches.

“I can’t believe you’ve befriended the beast,” Mari said, though I could hear the smile in her voice.

“He’s actually a big softie. Aren’t you?”

The strix nuzzled into my legs and hummed happily.

Despite the slight apprehension she had around the creature, Mari looked sunny and luminous. Her cap-sleeved periwinkle gown had a sweetheart neckline that showed off the dusting of freckles along her collarbone, and the crepe fabric was light and easy, spilling along the floor as she walked.

Dagan surveyed us both, his embroidered, indigo tunic a welcome change from the swordsman’s usual aged armor. But he hadn’t matched the fine apparel with dress shoes, opting instead to keep his trusty scuffed boots on, which brought me a strange comfort.

“Ready?” he asked.

“I think so.” I appraised myself. “How do I look?”

“I am rarely one for sentimentality, but…” Dagan cleared his throat. “Quite lovely.”

Mari squealed with delight, Acorn mimicked the sound, and a grin tugged at my cheeks. “Thank you. Both.”

“I have something for you,” Dagan said quietly. “A wedding gift!” Mari chimed.

I shot her a look—I got the feeling Dagan might scare easily.

The old swordsman only shook his head and pulled a creased envelope from his pocket. I wondered if he didn’t look a little embarrassed. “It’s nothing fancy. Just a note.”

“Thank you,” I said, heart swelling with appreciation. My fingers slipped under the outer edge to tear it open, but Dagan’s dry, cracked hands stilled my own. “No gifts yet. After the wedding.”

“He’s right,” Mari added. “Another bad omen.”

“Of course,” I said, placing the letter on Kane’s desk. “After, then.” Dagan offered a slight smile and tipped his elbow out for me to take.

“Any nerves?”

And it might have been the first time I looked into Dagan’s warm, wrinkled face—after months and months of so much fear and so little courage and about a thousand different variations of panic and anxiety— and shook my head. “None at all.”

After making our way through a lively Shadowhold filled with children ringing bells and throwing rice, Mari, Dagan, and I made the hike up the mighty stairs to the temple, which put the library climb to shame.

Overhead, a decorated ceiling arched high and allowed for ample sunny winter light to filter in. A few thickly vined plants spilled from whitewashed ceramic pottery, and vibrant stained glass depicted all nine stones, none more prominently than the rich black onyx, which cast the room in a soft violet glow.

Between the pews, in time to the harp’s poignant tune, Dagan walked me toward Kane.

And I thought then that maybe I’d always been walking toward Kane. Tethered to him in some way or another since the moment we’d met in that glade in Amber. When the most terrifying creature I’d ever seen was able to bring me comfort.

And when I couldn’t walk to Kane, I’d climbed, fallen, crawled…I’d found my way back to him time and time again.

Kane hadn’t dressed up for the wedding much, either. He faced me at the end of the aisle in simple, sophisticated trousers, his thorned crown, and a finely stitched white shirt, like the snow on the treetops, visible behind him from the temple’s towering height. Kane didn’t wear white too often, and I decided that was a misfortune for us all. The color enriched his hair to an otherworldly black—the embodiment of all colors, rather than the absence of them.

“You look…” Kane’s words failed him and he cleared his throat.

This was the only kind of wedding I ever would have wanted. Dagan, standing beside us, no fuss or flourishes. Only our closest friends, highest- ranking generals, and few members of Kane’s court in the pews. A single harp playing, a handful of lilies in my grasp—a crisp and clear morning, just for us.

And of course, I was already crying.

“Sweet bird,” Kane soothed, brushing a thumb across my cheek.

“We come together today,” Dagan began, sending the tittering crowd quiet and the harpist’s soft melody fading away, “under the divine Stones of this great continent and before you all as witnesses, to join King Kane Ravenwood and Lady Arwen Lily Valondale in holy matrimony.”

Despite his gruff tone and ever-present scowl, in another life Dagan would have made a wonderful minister. That side of him he fought so mightily—the one that was a patient teacher, a thoughtful advisor, that offered such valuable wisdom as often as crotchety barbs—it was the same side that had all the faces in the small, intimate room hanging on to his every word.

“Marriage is a partnership, a lifelong pact of trust, and an agreement to depend on each other while you navigate the often stormy seas of life. You have probably heard the word ‘marriage’ tethered to others like ‘work,’ ‘commitment,’ and ‘sacrifice’—unfortunately, nobody knows that truth as well as these two.”

Though surely Dagan wasn’t joking, Kane’s mouth quirked up in a half grin. I fought the urge to shake my head at him. Gallows humor until the end.

“And yet, they have found happiness in moments of despair, strength in each other’s weaknesses, love when surrounded by violence. I’ve never seen two people have not only such a deep well of respect for each other, but also such fun together.”

Dagan, espousing the virtues of fun? I narrowed my eyes at the old swordsman.

“A precious rarity,” Dagan continued to the crowd, ignoring me, “in our somber world. A union such as this can only thrive when both individuals make the other stronger. In the case of Arwen and Kane, their union makes our entire realm stronger. Now, that is quite the marriage.”

Kane squeezed my hand, his rings glinting in the soft pools of morning light.

“Without further ado, as I am old and my knees are already barking, let us get on with it. Kane, do you take Arwen as your wife, to love and to cherish, so long as you both shall live?”

The words held a different meaning today, for us, than they might have if our fate weren’t decreed as it was. Had we not been staring into the gaping maw of a brutal war, a cursed prophecy, and a foe as impenetrable as Lazarus—and yet Kane answered with such a peaceful, “Indeed.”

And when Dagan prompted me, I responded in kind.

Twin sniffles echoed against the cool stone and I knew them to be Barney and Mari, sharing one handkerchief between them both.

“Then under the Holy Stones above us, and before all who are assembled here, I am honored to pronounce you married. You may—”

Kane didn’t wait for instruction. He leaned forward with catlike grace and swept me into a tasteful yet firm kiss. His lips soft as they held mine, his hands cradling my waist and neck, careful not to ruin my half-pinned-up hair nor my bow.

The cheers and hoots jostled me from the dizzying kiss and I released Kane, breathing a laugh onto his grinning mouth, inhaling his scent, that leather and cedar and masculine Kane smell that I could have bottled and sold for riches beyond measure.

“And,” Dagan said, grinning himself, deepening the soft creases of his face, “your union sets forth another ceremony.”

I lifted a brow in his direction, our friends and family quieting behind us. The harpist had begun her tune again—a less romantic one. Something a bit more ceremonial.

Dagan turned to fish something out from behind the large, dusty organ and returned with a glittering tiara.

Iridescent black gemstones—onyx itself, or maybe dark gray diamonds

—had been shaped into a dainty array of flowers, adorned with clusters of pearls and silver leaves. A garden of sparkling obsidian that Dagan placed atop my head, saying softly, and more to me than anyone else, “For the rightful queen of Onyx Kingdom. May she wear it and be well.”

Cheers of “Hear, hear” and “Long live the queen” echoed through the temple. Rays of unfiltered sunlight ricocheted off their smiling faces.

“Where did you find this?” I whispered to Kane, who had not stopped grinning at me since Dagan revealed the sparkling crown. Dimples in full effect.

“I had it made for you.”

“When?” We’d been a little busy.

“After I had more fun trapped inside a wine cellar than I’d had in two hundred years of living.”

I looped my arms around Kane’s neck and kissed him again. Chaste, joyful—my feet arched in my shoes and sparks danced up my spine when his fingers curled there.

“I think,” Kane murmured against my lips, “our friends may have had enough of our kissing.”

But I didn’t let go. I wasn’t sure I could, all my focus on those simmering, silver eyes heated with unfiltered, unending love.

“Lucky for us,” Kane continued with a mild shrug, “I don’t give a—”

My heart surged into my throat before I knew why. Just a fraction of a second—the one in which my body knew before my mind, before my consciousness, that something was terribly, grievously wrong.

Then, with a shattering roar—the ceiling rained down.