Page 212 of Golden Queen
He stood and pulled me up to lead me across the room.
On the bed lay a short sword in an elaborately detailed silver and blue scabbard next to a small box and a dark flower. The sword had a large, blue idylstone inlaid into the pommel that very nearly matched the one currently hanging at his hip.
I looked at him in question.
"You know the custom of giving a crown and flower when you...ask someone for their hand," he said, almost nervously, reaching up to run his hands through his black hair. "You seem to already have enough crowns, but I thought you might not want to carry the other sword since it's so fine...and apparently enchanted. And you needed one with idylstone, so..."
I stared at him in shock.
He shook his head. “It’s stupid, I know. You also have enough swords, but…”
“No,” I said, reaching for him, sliding my arm around his waist. “It’s not stupid. It’s perfect.”
I reached out to touch the sword, but my hand went to the white flower instead. Dark blue petals, edged in yellow were arranged around a central heart of white filaments. It looked as though it had been flecked with paint like the wings of the god of darkness from Albiyn’s cathedral.
I picked it up and looked at him again, my heart warming with the same feeling I always got when his magic seeped through my skin.
"Will you marry me, Sera?" He reached for the little box and handed it to me, looking suddenly unsure of himself.How could this man be unsure to ask me anything?
"Yes," I breathed, voice breaking as tears streamed down my face. "I will." And I meant it with my whole heart.
Up until then, when I thought of the decisions I was making and their consequences, I always had the idea in the back of my mind that when it all fell apart, when we could not find a way around it, I would have to go to Behr and follow through with the contract.
As I opened the little box to find a smooth round idylstone ringed by a silver crescent moon and surrounded by tiny diamond stars, I knew that was no longer true.
My life would be here at his side. No matter what befell us—no matter what storms we would need to weather, we would do it together.
I would stay with him and damn the consequences.
Thirty-Five
The following day had us hosting Fyr and Eyildr for dinner in the mountain palace.
Io’s sisters had stayed away, on his orders, to give me time to settle in to my new home. But their patience had apparently run out. Fyr had begged, nearly to the point of tears, to be allowed to get to know me.
I dressed carefully, the ring on my finger like some endearing echo of his words;Will you marry me, Sera?Every time I saw it, my heart did a little flutter in my chest as his words filtered through my mind.
I had plenty of clothes to choose from among the literal pile of garments that had been delivered that day.
It was a little bit of everything; gowns, coats, shirts, breeches, leggings, thin, comfortable loungewear, and of course, impossibly lacy, positively scandalous night clothes and undergarments. The underthings had a lot in common with the skimpy Athelen attire I had worn on that first, ill-fated attempt at seducing him.
A seamstress called Alicenne and her young apprentice had made the delivery early that morning after working tirelessly for days to ready the clothes for me.
We left them in my chamber, piled onto the unused bed, until we could make space in our wardrobe among what turned out to be a literal ton of Io's own attire.
"You have a lot of clothes for someone who always wears the same thing," I told him when he offered to throw his clothes into the corner to make room for mine.
"As you can see, they are mostly disused. But the ever-busy Lord Azmial's mind is always working, trying to make us all as beautiful as we possibly can be so he doesn't have to suffer to look upon anything that isn't pleasing to the eye."
Jhol turned out to be responsible for my entire wardrobe as well, since he had somehow provided the seamstress with my exact measurements and taken the time to draw up plans for what he wanted her to make for me.
Alicenne refused to show me the plans, however, telling me that Lord Azmial was insistent I be surprised. She promised they would be ready in a week, and I would be very happy with what they had put together for me.
I chose a gown for the dinner with Io's sisters—a simple one of deep blue with long, fitted sleeves and a square neckline.
Fyr wore a gown as well, but hers had a utilitarian fierceness to it that made it look like she would be just as well-placed on a battlefield as the sitting room of the mountain palace.
It had structured shoulders, and she wore a heavy silver chain with conical spikes that might have come from the end of a tiny mace. She looked ravishingly dangerous, and I wanted very badly for some of that edginess to be incorporated into my own wardrobe.
