Shadow Cursed by May Sage Page 0,75

and Vlari agrees, but our daughter is seelie to the core. She’s always had her eyes to the north. Binding her to Tenebris would be unkind.

Whenever we talked of succession, I imagined it would occur in the future—in hundreds, if not thousands of years. Not now.

I search her eyes. She can’t mean—

“High Queen Nevlaria, do you consent to surrendering the crown?”

“I consent,” she replies, without a moment of hesitation.

Just like that, it’s done. She’s no longer queen. Rulla takes the dark crown on her head, into which the green heart stone of Tenebris has been set, and Vlari rises to face the stunned court. My mother hugs her grandmother. The folk murmur amongst themselves, as stunned as I.

Vlari’s giving me the one thing I wouldn’t have asked for, the one thing I truly want. Herself. Her time, her priority. She’s given up all of her power for me.

Rulla strides to her brother, and Dornant kneels to receive his crown.

“Long live the high king!” she bellows.

There’s silence at first, but all, puck and pixies, elves and gentry, come to their senses and exclaim as one. “Long live the high king!”

I woke up believing the rest of my life was going to be meetings and festivals, parades and war councils. I woke up knowing that I had to compete with the rest of Tenebris for my mate’s time. Now, we have our entire lives before us to do as we please.

For the first time in centuries, I’m free. We are free.

I wish Alven were still with us, little as I liked the bastard. Vlari cared for her grandfather. He’s gone, too. I wish Nero had shown his face sometime in the last century, but since his bondmate’s death, he’s retreated deep into the Wilderness, like so many shy folk. I wish my sister were here with us, but she’s one of the names we shout at the sky every year, in remembrance of the battle of Whitecroft.

They should have enjoyed today with us, but they can’t, and I have to make peace with their loss. The one true shadow that can never heal from my heart is the absence of Cissa, our third-born daughter. A child of the sea who hardly knows us. I don't doubt that she was invited, but she never comes to us.

I stride to my mate and wordlessly lift her, throwing her on my shoulder.

I know just how I want to spend the next hours, and that’s not playing nice with a court that's no longer ours to rule.

"Revolting," the high king states, glaring at us.

I wink at my son, dragging his mother to our bed one last time, before we vacate the royal rooms that now belong to him.

* * *

The End

* * *

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Next in Álfheimr

The Cursed Crown

My lips hitch up an inch as the hulking, slender man bends down to whisper in my ear. “A divided kingdom without a leader is weak. You will fall. You will fail. You will all die without my kindness, little girl.”

He expects me to falter, shiver, and drop my gaze to the ground like the flock of gentry buzzing around him.

My eyes widen in feigned dismay. “Kindness? Why did no one think to tell me you had any?”

I have to allow him that one concession: Rydekar is fun to tease.

He doesn’t even smile. I don’t think anyone has taunted him. “I have none. You will beg nonetheless.”

I just may, in his dreams. And in my nightmares.

* * *

No one was ever born less suited to ruling than Rissa, the thorn of the seelie realm—a half-fae so wild she’s spent the better part of a hundred years in the woods.

For all her flaws, she’s the last of the high court bloodline, and the southern king seems to think that’s reason enough to slap a crown on her feathered head. He needs her to unify the seelie forces. She needs him to forget about that nonsense.

In an effort to aid her people without condemning herself to a lifetime of misery, she sets off on a journey to find the one person with a stronger claim to the throne than hers: the cursed prince.

Sealed in the mountains of the Wilderness, under many spells, the heir of the