Onali stepped forward, the only Elite with the blood of the Pure. She sought her friend’s gaze, begged her with a desperate and silent prayer to bless this union.
It was the only way to bring them all together.
And she loved Cyn. She wouldn’t give him up for the throne.
Onali gave her a sly smile and pulled her last dagger from the straps on her arms. She knelt, sinking it into the floor at Yara’s feet. “So be it,” she declared.
One by one, the Elite fell to their knees, planting their daggers in the floor before her. She looked up at the Nudari, and the ships came alive with light and color before they slowly rose and then darted swiftly toward the horizon and their homes in the sea.
As the ships rose and disappeared over the crest of the canopy, the people stood, jumping and hugging. Their cheers rang over the tops of the trees.
They did it
.
Yara bent and took Cyn’s hand, she pulled him to his feet and raised their interlocked grip above their heads. The crowd went into a frenzy as she fought back her own tears of relief and joy.
“Let’s get out of here,” Cyn murmured as he leaned closer to her. “This blood is stinging my eye.”
“It’s a good thing you aren’t wearing your contacts,” she teased. The Elite rose and parted for them as they crossed over the bridge that led toward the Halls of Honor.
The chorus of cheers greeted them, rising up from the cities below, even as throngs of people gathered in the streets.
“This isn’t over,” Yara warned. “Change doesn’t come this quickly. The Elite are unsure about this, and won’t accept it easily. They just don’t dare to start a fight now. There will be challenges, attempts on our lives.”
“Sounds like fun,” Cyn replied.
“We’re talking about the future of Azra,” she scolded, even as she held his warm hand tighter. “Can’t you be serious?”
“Not until I’ve run through the cleanser and cracked a bottle of nilo.” He waved to a little girl who shook ciera blossoms at him.
“The Elite aren’t supposed to partake—”
“Then it is a damn good thing I’m not one of the Elite.”
They entered the Halls of Honor as the sun broke through the leaves and cast the hall in golden light. The Matriarchs’ still expressions seemed to smile, the light playing with the shadows of their lips.
Cyn lifted his gaze, taking in each of the statues. “You are Yarini reborn,” he stated with conviction.
“No,” she dismissed. “I’m just a woman, as was she.”
He looked at her. “You’re more than that to me.”
They entered the throne room, and two of the temple attendants held out the mantle of power.
Yara stepped forward, her body weak, her mind numb, but her heart so filled with hope and love that she felt she could bear any burden.
They lowered the mantle on her shoulders, the heavy fabric pressing on her even as the secure weight warmed her. With slow and deliberate steps, she climbed the spiraling stairs to the throne.
CYN WAITED AT THE FOOT OF THE THRONE FOR HOURS AS YARA SET THE ELITE and the Enforcers to work. Everything she said, she said with conviction.
In spite of being weak and in pain, she cared for their people first. Tuz clearly enjoyed his perch on the high throne as he hung his head and paws over the edge and stared down at the throng of people below.
Bug brought him a med cleanser, and he used it to take care of the mess on his face. The cut at his temple had healed enough to stop seeping.
He thought he would shed a lot more blood than this, but she had stopped it.
He loved her so much.
After what seemed like an eternity and a week, the crowds in the throne room thinned, until only a pair of Elite guards remained, the same two that had dragged him up from the ground.
“Get her out of here,” one of them commanded. “She needs to rest. We’ll keep you safe.”
He nodded to the Elite warriors, then turned his eyes back to her. She seemed to float as she descended the throne. With the gleaming mantle of power on her shoulders, she almost didn’t seem real.
But he knew the woman beneath that mantle. And tonight he’d show her how he felt.
She stopped before him and took his hand. Her eyes looked sunken and weary, but she offered him a soft smile. He didn’t say a word as he wrapped her arm around his neck and lifted her into his arms.
She tucked her head against his shoulder as he carried her out of the throne room into the suite for visiting dignitaries. He couldn’t bring her into Fira’s quarters, not until the place had been purged of the taint of his aunt. Even then, he wasn’t sure if they should ever reside in that place.
He was free of Fira. His family had finally seen justice, and it was all due to the strength of the woman in his arms. He kissed her hair as he entered the bedroom. The low wall along the edge of the floor opened up to the shimmering leaves of the canopy. A flock of colorful parrots chattered from a patch of bright red fruit, while ciera blossoms clung to the branches just beyond the low wall. A white awning stretched above them while light glimmered in the weather shield that allowed the soft fragrant breeze in.
At their feet, a nest of pale blue pillows and light silky blankets sank into the floor, inviting them to curl into the cushioned nook and sleep. Cyn gently placed Yara’s feet on the ground.
He removed the mantle from her shoulders and hung it on a stand. Now she was his, and only his. It was his time to care for her.
“How are you feeling?” he murmured, still worried about the poison, though she hadn’t succumbed to it yet. Still, he could tell she was on the verge of passing out. His palms itched from touching the blade, but it wasn’t affecting him as severely as her.
“Like a pile of sarba crap,” she admitted. “I think the fever broke. Why didn’t it kill me, or at least make me pass out?”
“Tola gave you my immunity, remember?” Cyn kissed her hand as he led her into the cleanser, then showed her his slightly irritated palms. “It takes a lot more than a little poison to kill someone from the ground.” He smiled as he undid the magnetic clasps at her neck and pulled her uniform off her shoulders.
He stripped and she leaned into his body as warm air swirled around them, stealing the last of the evidence of their ordeal. “I find that ironic. The blood of the ground foiled the tyrant,” she quipped, then placed a sleepy kiss on his scar.
“Yeah.”
He carried her back to the bed, but she had given in to her body’s urge to recuperate and heal before he reached the cozy nest. He stepped down into it, tucked her gently beneath the covers, then snuggled into her side. With reverent kisses, he used the art of Tanro to manipulate her nervous system so she would no longer feel any pain.
They had one hell of a mess to clean up. He was willing to bet there’d be some sort of formal call for his head in the morning, but he had faith that the Elite were smart enough to recognize him as a symbol and use him to appease the masses. He was fine with that as long as they were also fine with his plans for reform.
It would probably take them their entire lives, and the lives of several more generations, to undo the wrongs and the suffering of Azra. But for this moment they had peace. They had hope.
For the first time in his life, Cyn felt blessed.
24
“SO HOW DOES IT FEEL BEING THE VERY FIRST HOLY CONSORT?” YARA TRAILED a lazy hand over the fine hair on Cyn���s lower abdomen.
She’d spent a busy day negotiating with a delegation of Nudari, then visiting the hospitals teeming with the innocents brought up from the ground. She convened the Council of Islands to maintain order on all the islands and to make sure everyone was cleaning up the ground cities.
A contingent of Bacarilen traders were due in the morning, and Yara had to battle with her newborn prejudice against them. She may be the blood of the Just, but she was still human. She’d deal with them fairly as long as they agreed to her new rules for facilitating trade on Azra.
She leaned over and kissed Cyn, the caress lazy and comforting after a stressful day.
“Consort?” Cyn laughed. “That’s how the Elite decided to justify our little arrangement?”
“
Holy
Consort.” Yara playfully tapped his nose. “It’s taken them seven months to work out a way to deal with you. You should have heard the creative interpretations of the writings of Ona the Pure to come up with that one.”
Cyn slid his hands down her bare sides. “I think I like being a consort.”
She considered him. Cyn had been busy as well. The people of the ground, the Nudari, and the people of the mid-cities all embraced him as a national hero, and so far the Elite hadn’t tried to pull anything for fear of upsetting the masses. He had worked tirelessly to organize the rescue efforts for those on the ground and to create a fair trial system for those who perpetuated heinous acts there. Then he’d been the primary contact to the Nudari, drawing them out of their homes on the bottom of the ocean to become more integrated in the political discourse in the canopy. Some of the Matriarchs had done far less for their people than he had, and he was just getting started. “I wonder if future generations will look back on you as the first Patriarch of Azra.”
“What would they call me?” he teased. “Cyn the Handsome?”
“I prefer Cyn the Pliant.” She smoothed her hands down his chest.
“No you don’t.” He grabbed her around the waist and rolled her beneath him. He entered her in a swift hard stroke that stole her breath as she clung to his shoulders.
By Ona, this was pure.
He surged into her again. “How about Cyn the Insatiable.”
She gasped.
“No?” His fingers trailed over her breasts, playing her like the strings of his precious guitar.
“Ona, forgive me, yes!”
He collapsed on top of her laughing, his eyes crinkling in the corners. She kissed him on the nose. “Perhaps you’ll be Cyn the Honorable.”
He propped himself up on his elbow and looked away. “I don’t deserve that.”
“I heard the speech you broadcasted when you hacked into the array,” she murmured as she enjoyed the feel of the slow flexing of his muscles beneath her hands. She kissed him on the chest, then the neck, reveling in the sweet and salty taste of his skin and the feel of him settled peacefully inside her.
His skin flushed. “I didn’t intend for you to hear that.”
“Follow her, for she is the true queen of Azra? Only Yara can bring us justice, prosperity, and peace?” She pressed her palms to his chest as he pushed deeper within her, moving again. His love felt like the constant crash of the sea against the cliffs. That wasn’t the half of what he had said about her. When she listened to the recording, she couldn’t contain the love that swelled in her heart. “Trust her because I trust her?”
“I know what I said,” he growled. He pulled away from her, flipped her over with a strong arm, and surged into her from behind. She let her upper body collapse against the soft bedding, completely dominated by him. “I haven’t forgotten.”
“And I won’t ever forget,” she gasped as he thrust deep and hard. Her core ached as he buried himself in her. The cool bedding kissed her heated skin as the breeze from the open arch to the canopy slid over her bare back and hips.
His hands stroked her, igniting her nerves, heightening her pleasure as he pushed her closer and closer to the edge. Hot, slick, and wanton, she abandoned herself to the pleasure of his body.
She was his woman.
Consort
didn’t begin to describe what he was to her. He was her equal, her man, her king. “My Cyn.”
He unleashed his passion as he grasped her with firm hands and thrust within her, over and over. She fisted her hands in the bedding, holding on to anything she could as her pleasure built until it erupted in wave after blinding wave of ecstasy.
She cried, overcome by the power and the pleasure of it as his breath came in short gasps. The intensity blinded her, thrilled her. He gasped, shouted, then clung to her, shaking as he released.
They collapsed together, sated and reeling from the power of their love.
He rested his head on her chest, idly trailing his fingers over the sensitive skin just below her breast.
Yara frowned as she stroked his hair. The high cities hadn’t quite embraced him as a peer, but generations of sexism didn’t die in a matter of months. They’d fight the prejudice for the rest of their lives, as would the generations that followed, but Yara held out hope that his presence here with her was the beginning of the end of the separation that had nearly destroyed Azra.
“Onali asked if I was going to change my name,” Cyn murmured, then turned his head and kissed her breast.
Yara laughed. Normally when a man was given to a woman, he kept the suffix of his name and added the prefix of hers. “What did you tell her?”
“That I refuse to be called Yarn.”
They both laughed. He kissed her, a deep and hard kiss filled with the promise of endless nights just like this. Maybe
consort
wasn’t so bad after all. He ended the kiss with a teasing nip and gazed down on her, admiration shining in his gorgeous eyes.
“I think it’s about time men kept their names. Their bloodlines are just as worthy as ours,” she mused.
Her merciless rebel
. She thanked the Matriarchs for his blood. It had awoken the woman within her, and saved them all.
“Save it for the throne, Pix,” he teased. She laughed then tugged a lock of his shining hair.
“Have you heard from Xan?” she asked. She owed him her life.
“The Kronalen know a prince is out there, but they haven’t identified him yet,” he answered. His brow creased with concern.
“We’ll be there when he needs us,” Yara offered. “It’s up to him now.”
Cyn lifted her hand to his lips. “It’s up to all of us.”