“I bind my heart to yours,” answered Nadiya Loreni.
Alucard swallowed.
“I bind my fate to yours,” said the king.
“I bind my fate to yours,” said the queen.
Tieren drew the gold rope from their hands with a flourish.
“Is fir on,” he said, the oath ringing through the hall. It is done.
The words landed on Alucard like a door slamming shut. Cheers went up. Voices rang out in celebration. The king and queen turned to face their court, their hands still joined.
Alucard smiled and clapped with the rest of the crowd, and then went to find himself another drink.
And why not? After all, the whole city was celebrating.
The port was full of ships, and the streets outside the palace were crowded with vendors, their stalls grown up like mushrooms overnight, and Alucard hadn’t seen the soner rast so alive since before Maxim and Emira died.
The city’s ostra were dressed in white, a sea of cream-draped bodies gathered in the Great Hall, where music rang against the gilded walls, and the tables were heaped with food and drink, and the marble pillars were draped in the colors of the newly twined houses. According to Rhy, the four colors would have clashed terribly—the red and gold of the Maresh, the dark purple and pale grey of the Loreni—so he had decided on two, purple and gold. He’d offered to add a streak of blue, for Emery, for Alucard, but he declined.
That was not his family anymore. And yet, when he had dressed that morning, he’d worn his family colors. Not because he missed the sight of silver and blue, the memories they conjured, but so that all who gathered here would see that the house of Emery stood with that of Maresh.
As if to drive the point home, in place of his own family’s sigil, he wore the chalice and sun, forged in silver and sapphire instead of garnet and gold.
A servant came by and he held out his glass, watched as the golden wine rose like a tide inside the goblet. Rhy’s laugh, full and bright, spilled toward him, and he turned, and saw the king across the hall, dark skin luminous beneath the gold. The queen smiled, and bowed her head, and jealousy coiled around his heart as he wondered what she could have said to make Rhy laugh like that.
He had just decided to retreat to the balcony when someone called out his name.
“Alucard Emery! How much you’ve grown.” A woman strode toward him, her dress a lush forest green. The ostra were expected to wear white, but the vestra came draped in their own colors, another reminder that they too were royal families.
“Mirella Nasaro,” he said, painting a smile on his face.
The sigil of the stallion hung around her neck in emerald and white, and her long hair was pulled back, revealing a widow’s peak, the point made bolder by the pearls that traced her hairline. The largest fell in a crystal drop just over her brows. As he bowed to kiss her hand, his memory caught up, supplying the most relevant details.
The Nasaros were the farthest from the throne, scattered as they were across the countryside. Mirella was shrewd, but her husband was weak-minded and soft-willed, his only ambition for swaths of land and heads of cattle.
“Always the charmer,” she said, reclaiming her hand and promptly using it to gesture out at the hall. “What a splendid affair this is. I wish my sister were still alive to see it. You may recall my niece, Ezril—you would have made a lovely couple, you know, if she hadn’t gone off and become a priest.”
“A pity, then,” said Alucard, “that we both are spoken for.”
Mirella nodded vaguely, scanning the crowd. “I cannot seem to find my son, though. He should be here by now. I wanted him to meet the king.”
“And the queen, I’m sure.”
“Oh yes, her too,” said Mirella, clearly distracted, and Alucard backed away, planning to escape, when another voice said his name.
“Master Emery.”
He sighed and turned to find Sol Rosec, draped in black and gold, their sigil—a blade and crown—shining at his throat. Behind him stood a boy and a girl, just shy of adulthood, and clearly siblings. Though when it came to Rosecs, it was sometimes hard to tell. It was often said that Rosecs were so proud, they wore their colors on their skin, and sure enough, all three had the same gold hair, albeit different shades, and the same black eyes, like drips of ink on white linen.
“Master Rosec,” said Alucard, with a bow. “It has been too long.”
“Indeed,” said the vestra. The truth was, the Rosecs were the only royal family who did not keep a permanent home in London. Instead they held their own court in the north, though they knew better than to call it that.
Master Rosec gestured to his children. “My son, Oren. My daughter, Hanara.”
The boy, Oren, gave a nearly perfect bow, but there was a mocking flourish to it, his mouth twisted in a private grin. The girl, Hanara, bowed her limbs, but not her head, those black eyes hanging on Alucard as she sank and rose again.
“You know, I was a good friend of your father’s,” said Sol Rosec.
Ten years dead, but the mention of Reson Emery still made Alucard stiffen.
“I was sorry to hear of his passing—”
“That makes one of us.” The words came sloshing out before Alucard could stop them.
Behind his father, Oren snorted. Hanara arched a brow. Sol only frowned. He made a show of scanning the crowded hall. “And where is your older brother, Berras?”
Alucard flinched at the name. “I fear you have missed much of recent events,” he said, “in your time away from London.” He made sure to lean on the last word. “My brother is no longer welcome at court.”
Rosec’s black eyes raked over Alucard. “Pity. To see a great house fall into such … disrepair.”
Alucard’s fingers tightened on his glass. He imagined squeezing the air from the old man’s lungs. It wouldn’t be hard—Sol Rosec’s own magic had once been a burnished red; now it was little more than a pale pink thread around his shoulders. He was dying. Alucard wondered if he knew it yet.
“Father.” Oren was leaning forward. “Shouldn’t we give our blessings to the king and queen?”
“Of course,” said Rosec, and with that, the three departed, and were soon mercifully swallowed by the crowd.
Alucard did not abandon the hall at once. No, he endured another hour, smiled and joked and made pleasantries until his face hurt, and then at last he escaped to the gallery above, told himself it was not an escape at all, simply a chance to get a better view.
From here, the bodies below became a tapestry, one he could read as easily as the threads of magic in the air around them.
The king and queen, ablaze in gold.
The royal guards and servants, dressed head to toe in crimson.
The ostra and the Faroan emissaries both in white, though the latter’s clothing was cut differently, wrapped close against their skin.
A single Veskan moved through the crowd—not a representative from the foreign court, but the youngest prince, Hok, now being raised by the London Sanctuary. He apparently spoke Arnesian well enough to pass for London-born, but the shock of the young man’s fair skin and white-blond hair stood out easily in the crowd.
The green pool that must be Mirella Nasaro skirted the room, still looking for her son.
The three black-clad Rosecs grouped together like drops of ink.
The new queen’s family, the Loreni, dressed in violet, grey collars shaped like crescent moons around their necks.
Alucard took in them all, but even once he scanned the entire hall, he found himself still searching. For a slash of silver. A swath of blue.
For any sign of his brother.
Of course, he wasn’t there. Berras Emery had not shown his face in almost three years, not since the night Osaron’s poison swept through the city. The night their sister Anisa died, and Alucard had burned fighting the magic that Berras let pour into him like drink.
Not that there had been much love before that.