A small boy shot through the ranks, tangling in the knees of one of the men as he bent over. I recognized High Vestai Thessaly and went over to him.
“My queen,” he greeted me, giving me the formal triple bow. “May I present my son, Aero Thessaly?”
Aero gave me his own version of the triple bow, which wasn’t quite as sharp in his small body. “Three blessings,” he mumbled quickly, like it should have all been a single word.
“Thank you,” I told him, crouching down. “How old are you?”
He held up three chubby little fingers. A fourth started to lift, and he tucked it down with the other hand.
“Oh, you look at least five. Are you very brave?” I asked.
He nodded.
“And very noble, I suspect.”
He nodded again.
“Will you—”
“Shalia,” Calix said sharply, standing before me and putting his hand in front of my face. I put my hand in his, and he pulled me to my feet. “High Vestai,” Calix said, nodding.
Thessaly bowed to him with his hands on his son’s shoulders. “Aero, go find your mother,” he said. “I’ll be there in a moment.”
“Adria, you may follow your brother,” Calix told her. Calix nodded once to me and guided me away from Thessaly without another word.
The other men began walking forward, progressing by twos down the walkway. We settled into line behind them and I lost sight of Thessaly as my heart tripped faster in my chest.
As we crested the archway, I looked down to see the vast pool beneath us, reflecting the sunlight and flickering like it was on fire. Drummers around the pool pounded out our footsteps, and the crowd fell very silent. I saw Thessaly on a wide platform with two other men behind him, and a beautiful woman holding Aero, with Adria beside her.
The wind went still, and I barely breathed as we marched, dipping down behind the height of the platform before climbing the staircase up to it.
I stepped onto the platform, and the people cheered. My heart swelled as their joyous noise overtook the drums.
Calix stepped forward, and my hands fell to my sides. The people quieted. “My people, we have known war, and fear, and hunger,” he said. “We have been in an age of terror and pain. That age is over.”
The people cheered for this, and my stomach felt shivery and nervous. Calix waited, collecting their approval.
“Today I give you a queen, born of the desert, foreign to our city, our country, our home. Knotted together in the most eternal of bonds, together, we give you peace.” He looked back to me, giving me a brilliant smile that at once felt stunning, and intimate, and utterly new. “Together, we bring you love.”
The people cheered at this anew, and I stood silent.
Calix stepped back, moving behind me to gather up the silver filmy material that covered my face. “My people, meet my wife, Shalia!” he yelled, right in my ear, and he stepped forward and took the fabric and pulled.
It was as shocking as when Galen stole my first veil from me, and I gasped and blinked as the force of their cheers hit me like a blast. Women and children and men were jumping, heaving, pushing at the guards, their faces open and eager and screaming their approval. I felt like the rocks at the bottom of the cliff, the force of them churning against me, sweeping me away.
I sensed motion on the platform, and a small man in a black coat with a length and style similar to mine appeared beside me. He held up my crown, a thinner, daintier version of my husband’s, and the crowd went quiet again.
“By the might, the power, the right of the Three-Faced God,” he boomed, “I crown Shalia of the Desert Peoples the queen of the Bone Lands by holy appointment. She will live in the service of the Three-Faced God, she will reign in the glory of the Three-Faced God, and she will die in honor of the Three-Faced God.”
The crown settled on my hair as a sudden panic clutched my heart at those last words.
I looked at my husband, but his expression was unchanged as the people cheered again, louder, wild, pushing forward so I felt a jolt at the platform.
“Calix?” I said, my hand reaching for his as the platform swayed. The guards pushed the people back, rough and forceful, but I didn’t find his hand. I looked at him, and his head was turned, his eyes behind me.
I followed his gaze. The pool of water that extended beneath the archways looked strange, like it was forming a white crust.
People screamed, and my focus whipped away from the water to see them pointing behind me. When I looked back to the pool again, it was too late. Huge vines of ice were twining up out of the pool, curling forward like they were reaching for something.
They were reaching for me.
“Calix!” I cried, leaping and straining to get to him. He met my eyes, but it happened so quickly he didn’t even get the chance to save me. The ice caught me, freezing, shimmering vines wrapping my feet and pushing me up, up, up into the air as fear strangled a scream in my chest.
Ropes of ice as thick as tree branches formed a cage around me, and then the ropes grew spikes, pushing Galen and Kairos with their hacking swords away.
It was cold inside the cage, and quieter, my own breath magnified, rattling around inside the ice. There were wide gaps between the ice branches that meant I could see out, but in a limited way, the light refracting and bending as it came through the glass-like ice. I was nearly twenty feet above the platform, far enough that if the ice broke, it would be a long way to fall.
The ice wrapping my feet pulsed like there was energy rolling through it, and my fingertips tingled and itched. The air around me felt thick, tangible, like it was full of fine threads that breathed and rushed with energy.
No, not energy—magic. Something in the ice was calling to me, making my blood rush and beat, making power thicken around my fingertips.
The ice around my feet loosened, and I gasped, stepping out of it, but the power didn’t calm, rushing so fast it made me dizzy. It was an Elementa who was controlling the ice, and being so close to it made my power tremble frighteningly close to the surface. With every terrified heartbeat, my power drummed closer.
There was no denying what I was, not now, not with the feeling so intense beneath my hands. I was Elementa, and in a moment, my husband and his whole court would see me completely unmasked if I couldn’t control the threads weaving wildly around my hands.
“We have been in an age of terror and pain!” a voice yelled. “But it is NOT over!”
The voice seemed to move, changing locations in the middle of a word, a syllable, a breath. I tried to track it, but I couldn’t see enough around me to even begin to follow the source of the sound.
“You steal our people from their beds!” a new voice shouted.
“Kill them!” I heard Calix shouting at his guards.
“You hunt and kill those of us with power!” This was another voice.
I was breathing in short little gasps, trying to suppress the threads pushing at my fingertips, and Skies Above, it wasn’t working.