Page 124 of The Chaosweaver's Daughter
Nesrina ties things up.
Oneweekbeforetheirwedding, and two weeks after Kas officially proposed, they finally visited the temple after Nes asked if they might have the ceremony there like his grandparents. Kas said it was far too decrepit, prompting an adventure to prove his point. It turned out, he was wrong.
“Huh,” Kas commented, looking flabbergasted as he stared at the marble structure in the woods. “It appears Hevva got here first.”
Nes tried not to laugh, failed, and he “taught her a lesson” by taking her on the stone, atop a blanket she’d woven from chaos.
“This isn’t a temple,” she announced, walking a circle around the columns after they fucked on the floor. “It’s a gazebo.”
“How do you know?”
“There are no runes,nothingto indicate it was ever used to honor the gods. My old point still stands: no temples in Selwas, the gods were likely never here to begin with.”
Kas wasn’t sure he agreed, but there were no markings on the stones. “An earthshaper could’ve smoothed out runes ages ago. We don’t know.”
“It’s possible,” she relented.
“So, you can’t say definitively that it wasn’t a temple.”
“Istronglybelieve it’s a garden feature,” Nesrina concluded with a smile, before spinning away and running off towardhome. “And we’re getting married here!”
“It’s a temple, because I’ve worshiped you on the floor,” he called out, following along.
“Ican’tbelieveit’sover.”Kas exhaled, releasing Ehmet from an embrace in the foyer of Stormhill.
There was one day until their wedding, and she and Kas greeted the first guests to arrive, the king and queen. Nes’s mama was expected the next morning.
“It’s nice to see you too,” Hevva scoffed at her brother, catching Nes’s eye with a look of incredulity upon her face.
Laughing, Nes greeted the rulers with hugs of her own. Ehmet’s was an odd one, as they held hands with their arms outstretched, staring at each other for a long while.
Her heart raced, and a spiral of excitement swirled behind her ribs as she took in their similarities. Their noses bumped out in the same way, and their cheeks were identical. Their hair was the same texture and thickness, but his was darker like Papa’s. He’d gotten all of Papa’s height, too, but then again, her mama was tiny. And their eyes were the same. Same color, same angle, same everything. The tension snapped, and they grinned, shaking their heads in matching motions before Ehmet wrapped her in a warm embrace.
“Sister,” he murmured.
“Brother,” she replied.
Tears sparkled in Ehmet’s eyes, and a fat drop rolled down her cheek.
“That’s enough.Please,” Hevva begged. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I miss my babies. You two have all the time in the world for this reunion after we find them andafterwe’ve all caught up.”
“Please?” Kas asked Nes and the king with a gentler tone and a partial pout.
In agreement, they procured two bottles of wine, which Hevva uncorked with her magic before they’d even made it onto the back patio. Sitting at a table while the twins played in the grass with Vites and Enoth, Nes scratched Lellin behind the ears, and Hevva regaled them with the tale of Rihan and Nekash.
“I discovered them in a well-fortified, previously abandoned boathouse outside the city.”
“You were alone?” Kas checked, looking between Ehmet and his sister.
“No. She had a cadre of guards,” Ehmet confirmed.
“Yes, butIdiscovered them.” With an eyeroll, Hevva continued. “The runes proved what we thought to be true—do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes, Hev. We get it,” Kas said, and Nes smacked him on the thigh.
“Let her tell her story!”
“Yes, thank you. Unfortunately, the beach sand blew in, hard and fast. Wrecked the runes.” She shrugged, saucily. “The evidence was all lost when it whooshed out to the sea.”
