Page 105 of To Wake a Kingdom

For a long time, none of us moved. Our arms and bodies entwined, I basked in the sound of their breaths and the beats of their hearts, like I could distill them down and infuse them into my veins.

“Marry me, Thorne,” Ronan said, breaking the silence. Kianna and I both looked up, our eyes wide. “I love you. Be my wife and my queen and be with me forever.”

“I’ve never wanted anything more,” I said as I floated on a golden river of light.

I had been broken.

I had been beaten.

But I had not shattered.

Finally, after every baptism by fire I’d walked through, I would get my second chance.

Kianna let out an ear-splitting shriek and threw her arms around us both. “You’re getting married!”

Ronan kissed me and stood with me gathered in his arms.

“I think I can walk,” I whispered.

He shook his head, dropping his forehead to mine. “No. I am never, ever letting go of you again.”

Chapter Forty-Three

Wefreedtheprincesses,reuniting them with their families, knowing the memory of their captivity would be etched into them forever. But they had survived and could now begin to pick up the pieces of their future.

For those who hadn’t—for those whose crowns had become the weapons that had destroyed Mare—we vowed to honor their memory.

Camped outside the menagerie’s walls, Em and the rest of the Estrian army filtered into the compound. Enchantments had blocked their entry after Mare had captured Ronan, Noah, and Kianna for her cruel games. Together, we tore it all down. Every golden cage was stripped and broken. The stadium was toppled, its empty stands collapsed to the bloodstained floor.

We burned the wedding-cake castle, smashed apart Mare’s labyrinth of mirrors, and destroyed every shred of misery and anguish that haunted this place. While it didn’t cleanse away the stains forever inked on my heart, it did finally release the claws that had found a permanent place around it.When all that was done, we finally went home.

We arrived in Estria quietly, only a handful privy to the full weight of the truth. When I laid myself bare for Kianna, reliving every painful detail, she broke down in tears. Together, we would heal against what Mare had done to us both. After one hundred and twenty-one years, Kianna and I had finally become friends. So much more than friends. She’d saved my life and shed the weight of her sisters’ scrutiny. We were both changed forever.

Gideon was so happy to see me, he nearly crushed my ribs in his enthusiastic embrace. Then he promptly turned bright red, let go, and offered me a formal bow. “It is good to have you home, where you belong, Your Majesty.” His eyes shone as he cleared his throat and emotion stuck in mine. I might have lost a father, but maybe I’d gained something else.

Ronan and I were married quietly, under a starry night sky. Only those who meant the most were there. We both agreed it was the most perfect wedding in the history of weddings. To the most perfect man I could have ever dreamed of.

Ronan and Em didn’t blame me for Noah’s death, but a part of me would always shoulder the burden of his last moments as his innocent blood gushed over my hands.

“He told me to take good care of you,” I told Ronan. “I begged him to kill me, but he said you would never forgive him.”

“That was Noah,” Em said. “Faithful to the very end.”

We fell silent, each lost in our thoughts.

“I will,” I said, taking Ronan’s hand. “Take good care of you. I promise.”

He gave me that smile that had kept me warm in my darkest moments in the menagerie.“I know that, Thorne. You changed everything. Who would have thought a cursed princess in a castle would be my destiny?”

“Speaking of the castle,” Kianna said, “what are we going to do with it?”

“I think I have an idea,” I replied.

On the edge of a small kingdom, a princess had been born, but hers had not been a fairy-tale beginning. She’d grown up in a castle haunted by her own ghost, and all that remained now was a tomb of countless shattered lives.

This, too, we took apart brick by brick.

My family, my parents, Isabelle, Adrian, and every other person who’d slept in the castle were buried on the grounds. Side by side they lay, finally at peace.The Fae graveyard was now overgrown with flowers. A carpet of them covered the once-grassy clearing, including the space where Ronan’s father once lay.

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