Page 25 of Bros Come Before Hordes
"Bravo on not calling all of us savage stovetops,” Tavis said with a laugh.
I huffed a relieved breath. "So no mention of stovetops. Funny you didn't give me that tip beforehand."
"But then what you had to say wouldn't have been from the heart.” Vance pressed his palm to my chest where my heart leaped toward his touch. His fingertips rubbed the silk of my dress as he looked at me with those pale, mysterious eyes. “It would've been practiced, rehearsed. You got the message across. Several of them."
“I’d like to revisit the one about kidnapping kids when this is all over,” I said through gritted teeth. “I have a lot more to say about the subject.”
Tavis leaned in to kiss my cheek, easing some of my anger and turning it into something much hotter and even more intense. “I can’t wait to hear that.”
Calhoun stepped down the stairs with a smile. “Have fun at coronation practice, Yara and Vance.”
Oh yeah. That.
* * *
"YARA?" VANCE ASKED.
I snapped to attention."Huh?"
"Did you hear a word I just said?"
"Um. Something about walking?" I was supposed to be listening to Vance's instructions for my coronation, but my mind was slipping all over the place.
We stood outside the castle where the ceremony was to take place, the high platform under our feet already decorated with dragon statues glaring out over the sea of empty chairs below us. Every dragon shifter would be here, many of whom wanted me dead. All of them would be watching to see if I failed at getting us out of this mess we'd found ourselves in.
What I didn’t understand, though, was why we needed to have a coronation in the first place. Léas wasn’t here to give me the queen’s power, so really, this was all for show.
Vance took my shoulders in his large hands and squeezed, his pale eyes lit with understanding. "Let's just get through this one more time, and then we can take a break, okay?"
"Right. Sorry, Vance."
He shook his head. "No need to be. So, you walk up through the center aisle there and climb the steps up to here. While you do that, the three of us will already be standing up here and preparing your crown. We'll set it on your head."
The crown itself sat on a pedestal, imbued with magic older than Léas herself that prohibited anyone else from touching it and protected inside a glass box. It was a huge, monstrous thing that I feared would topple me over once placed on my head, but it was beautiful too. The sunlight dazzled across the jewels of all shapes and sizes and colors set into immaculate designs. It was something I would’ve never stolen, believe it or not, because something that looked this priceless wouldn’t have gotten me much in terms of trade. Of course I wouldn’t have to steal it if it was given to me, a thought I still couldn’t quite wrap my head around.
"Got it, I said. “Then we can all go home?"
Vance chuckled. "Not quite. We'll present you as queen, and then you can say something to them, if you want. They're allowed to come up and give you their blessing, if they want.Thenwe can all go home."
"Two questions: will there be cake and what does Asa do during all this?"
"We can have cake if you want it, sure.” He absently smoothed his hand down the front of his white T-shirt. “You're a big fan of cake?"
"No,” I admitted, “but Asa would bathe in it if he could."
He nodded, an amused smile touching the corners of his pale eyes, which appeared almost golden in the sunlight. "We're going to need cake, then. Asa can sit wherever you want him to. Front row, mayb—"
"Inside," I said, much harsher than I needed to. "I don't want him anywhere near the other dragon shifters."
No traces of hurt or anger in Vance. Just a simple nod. "If that's what you want."
"Calhoun thinks I should try to trust them, but not with Asa." I shook my head. "Do you think someone will try to keep the coronation from happening?"
I kept flashing back to that shifter saying,Just wait until the coronation...
Vance’s eyebrows climbed up his forehead. "Well, they would have to be a special kind of stupid to do that. Léas chose you as queen, and with her missing, there's not a whole lot anyone can do to change that."
"Unless they'd rather just not have a queen altogether like the last one hundred years. It seems they got pretty used to that, right?"
