“Now, my children,” Mistress Umbra murmured to her shrouds. “We feast upon her flesh. For our collective has no place for despair this deep.”
As the shrouds swept in to devour her, Griselda cursed her wasted years. She begged for mercy to the stifling, ash-filled air, as there was no one else to hear. Then she turned to ash herself and lived no more.
Within Eldoria’s gardens, Crony awoke to the excited flutter of Thana’s feathers against her neck. She knew the identity of her visitor before her scent—snow, burning leaves, and sulfur—cut through the stench of singed hair and flesh. She knew before those soft hands dabbed salve atop her blisters to soothe the agonized pulses of Crony’s shredded nerves. She only wished she could see her, for that would’ve becalmed her soul.
“Glad ye brought another dose,” Crony croaked.
“I assumed what I sent with your sylph would be evaporated by now,” Dyadia answered.
“Aye. Still can’t believe he took time to go to ye for treatment, with the princess gone missing as she had.”
“He kept quite busy in that interim. Tricked Eldoria’s wretched regent, too.”
Crony tried to smile, but without lips, the attempt was futile. It was enough to feel it in her heart. “Told ye I chose wisely. Ye have yer set of wings, and I have mine.”
Thana cawed belligerently, offended by the comparison.
“The regent was exiled to the ravine,” Dyadia said over her bird’s antics. “I thought you would like to know. Queen Lyra sent her to the shroud’s lair, half-naked and shaved in a coffin filled with bugs.”
Crony cackled. “I would’ve giv’n me right horn to be a biting midge in that box.” Her laughter halted abruptly as she coughed up a smoky lump.
Dyadia patted Crony’s chest—a concerned gesture Crony hadn’t expected. “Your sylph wanted me to tell you he’s there now, taking care of things, tying up loose ends and settling old debts.”
“Good. Will make it easier to leave, knowin’ that. So, when the wedding be takin’ place?”
“As we speak. And since it all must be timed properly, shall we watch together?”
“I be likin’ that.”
“Go then, Thana. Let us spy through your eye.” Gusts of wind raked across Crony’s numb skin as the giant crow took flight. Her flapping grew distant and an awkward hush followed.
Crony struggled for something to say, some way to keep the pleasantries going, not yet prepared for the airing of apologies and past mistakes.
“Well, you went and did it.” Dyadia saved Crony the trouble. “Resurrected the girl and shirked the rules by stealing her memories. You took quite a chance.”
“As did ye, splittin’ the boy in twain.”
“Ah, well, we both knew how important they were. It’s been difficult, hiding the prophecy for all these centuries, waiting to share it with the humans until the right moment. Waiting for those two to be born and aged enough to jolt the kingdoms from their antipathy for one another. I’d almost given up hope. At last . . . our moment came. Then everything fell to rot—”
“Yet, fate assured they found one another, in spite of all the bumps and byroads.”
“I’m so relieved. Elsewise, we wouldn’t have this opportunity to fix our mistakes.”
Crony’s threaded pulse kicked an extra beat. “Our mistakes?”
“I’ve been blind for so long, as blind as you are today. Three eyes, yet none of them could see what my son had become, and the destruction he meant to unleash upon the world. You did what I couldn’t do, even though you lied and broke my heart in doing it.”
Crony’s own heart shriveled at the hurt in Dyadia’s voice. “That be me wrong to right. And I will. Can ye forgive me, when I be gone?”
Dyadia placed a hand over Crony’s. “I forgive you now. We both know yours was the biggest sacrifice. I understand why you gave the princess what you refused my son. For she was worthy of it.”
“More than that. There be two kingdoms dependin’ on her livin’, not her dyin’.”
“Yes,” Dyadia whispered.
Crony reached up blindly with her free hand and Dyadia bowed close so she could touch her cheek. “Me beloved one . . . I couldn’t save yer Lachrymosa then, but I can bring him back to ye now—to cast his light upon yer windowsills in the eve.” She sipped a painful breath. “It been a burden to bear, the waitin’. . . I be glad it’s almost here.”
“It was wrong of me, to place the malediction on your head. All these years, unable to close your eyes because of my anger.”
Crony’s heart smiled again at the kind words. “Nay, I had to be lookin’ anyways . . . so I mightn’t miss the opportunity, so I mightn’t o’erpass the recipient of me resurrective. I knew what I had to be given up to straighten what I turned askew. Keepin’ me eyes open made me vigilant. I can rest now, soon enough.”
“Yes. I suppose we both can.” Dyadia forced a soft laugh, though sadness blunted the edges.
“Tell me, what ye think of me wee one for yer kingdom’s boy?”
Dyadia tugged gently at the few strands of brittle hairs left dangling from Crony’s scalp. “She’s everything his queen should be. Clever, adventurous, indomitable. Bold in her passions, yet tender and kind. She balances his brutality, but only when necessary. She has a way with him . . . our king. He respects her, treasures her, defers to her as if she were an extension of himself. There is no question they will bring prosperity and peace to both kingdoms. There is no question they’re the only ones who could.” Upon saying that, Dyadia caught a breath. She sat up with a start and squeezed Crony’s hand. “Thana has arrived in the arboretum. She’s searching for a place to perch to offer a good view.”
“The arboretum? What of the false sunlight? Lyra’s skin be so tender.”
“No longer. Taking Vesper’s sunlit curse upon herself and defeating it made her stronger. She’s no more sensitive-skinned now than any other Nerezethite. By curing him, she cured herself.”
Crony chortled between gasps. “Just goes to show . . . the tradeoff don’t always have to be a bad thing.” She didn’t need to see to know that Dyadia nodded in agreement.
“Give me your hand, here.” Dyadia guided Crony’s singed fingers to the socket on her forehead. At the moment of contact, Crony could see everything Thana and her sorceress could—sharp and vivid within her mind.
Spaces in a latticework revealed a grand expanse of meadows, fields, ponds, and lakes outside, gilded with the soft glow of thousands of fireflies adrift on a breeze. A throng of wedding guests and witnesses stretched from the footbridge leading to the iron door’s entrance, to a grove of wildflowers beneath an elm upon a hill in the distance. There waited a lone red fox, seated on his haunches. Crony laughed inside herself, unsurprised he’d worn that form. Luce couldn’t get caught being sentimental, after all.
The portending crow had landed within the shrine upon a luminary, blocking the starry imprints of light from reaching the ceiling. No one seemed to notice or care. Everyone’s attention stayed fixed upon their newly crowned king and queen as they entered through the latticework archway, holding hands, giving one another glances filled with desire and anticipation.
They were beautiful: light and dark, side by side, scarred yet lovely, representative of the two heavenly entities that once shared the skies but were torn apart.
They were both draped in long, elaborate fur-lined silver robes that gathered at the waist. The king’s fur cuffs stopped midway down his hands. A bejeweled belt peered out from his robe—binding a blue jacquard tunic embellished with braids and steel buttons. The tunic’s shade complemented the sodalite-encrusted broadsword strapped at his waist, its tip nearly reaching the toes of his long black boots. It was a family piece, handed down from monarch to monarch in the House of Astraeus. Crony remembered seeing it at convocations, strapped to King Velimer’s waist centuries earlier.
And then there was Stain in a beaded gown the blue of a spring sky, with billows of glistening web and sparkling white spiders cascading along the skirt and bell sleeves like diamond-studded lace. Living salamanders twined around her feet, their slick skin glimmering like precious gemstones. Her silver hair, thick and lustrous, swept across one shoulder and down to her waist in a long braid interwoven with amethysts and flowers. Her skin was aglow with moonlight and happiness. She looked like a princess at last. Princess Lyra.
But no, she was a queen, wearing her mother’s diamond crown. That gentle, refined woman whom she never knew, that same mother Crony did her best to stand in for in her own rough, surly way. Her scorched innards clenched tight on the thought.
“We did it, wee one,” she whispered, then strangled on a half sob. She pulled back from Dyadia’s touch, jerking them both from the scene.
“Cronatia?” Her companion gripped her fingers. “The blink of dawn and dusk is at hand; why do you pause?”
“Be that indeed the best time, to make a moment legendary ’nough that no one be doubting its credence?”
“What did you have in mind?”