Chapter 56

Chapter Fifty-Six

It was pure bad luck that this year, unlike all that’d come before it, the sovereign couple chose to forgo their usual discreet entrance through the back of the cathedral. Normally Petra hosted them for a few minutes in her office. She’d hoped to catch them before they walked out in front of the packed crowd waiting for the solstice service, but Robert informed her that for reasons unknown to him, they would instead enter the cathedral at the start of the ceremony.

It was more bad luck that whenever she glanced at Silas, he shook his head, wordlessly confirming the fact that the grid hadn’t gone down yet. She trusted that it would, but as the minutes ticked by, it became more and more likely that she would have to intercept Margot and the sovereign herself.

“You’re not going out there,” Silas flatly informed her as she released her glamour.

Already stripping out of her casual clothing fast enough to tear seams, she argued, “It’ll be the easiest way to get to them.”

“They’re expecting Robert to give the service, not you. I’m not putting you up there when we don’t know what they had planned. What if they planted a bomb?”

Petra tried to hide a shudder. I didn’t think of a bomb. Why didn’t I think of a bomb?

After all, Margot and Theodore Solbourne’s relationship began with the bombing of her healing house. It would’ve been tragically ironic for their story to begin and end with a bomb. The dirty little secret that the public didn’t know, and the main reason she’d been taken into Margot’s confidence in the first place, was that the person who’d planted the bomb was Delilah Solbourne herself. The only reason Petra knew that was because she happened to be in the room when the truth came out, and she’d been very firmly sworn to secrecy by the sovereign himself.

But knowing how precious Antonin had been about using Glory’s iconography to assert his importance, she doubted that he’d blow up her seat of power in the city, especially if he intended to utilize his connection to the Temple to win trust with people.

“If Antonin had planned to be here for this, then a bomb would’ve been stupid,” she replied, fervently hoping she was right. “And if all of his soldiers are knocked out, we shouldn’t have a problem. Performing the ceremony will give me a chance to talk to Margot up close.”

She could see in his sour expression that he hated the idea, but he also had no good arguments against it. Unzipping the garment bag that held her wildly expensive ceremonial gown, she added, “You’ll be there, so I know I’ll be safe. You’d never let anything happen to me, right?”

Silas let out a slow exhale through his teeth. “Never.”

“See? Everything will be fine.”

She’d just shimmied into her ceremonial gown — a weighty confection of crimson velvet, seed pearls, shiny gold thread, and garnets — when Silas allowed Yelizaveta into her bedroom.

After a moment of shocked silence, the pale yellow dragon scurried across the room, a stream of words flying from her lips. Petra could hardly understand half of them. It took a precious minute before she could calm the initiate down enough to ask, “Did you do what Robert told you to?”

Yelizaveta’s tail whipped back and forth behind her. “Yes, your grace, but I don’t— what if they don’t eat their breakfast?”

Petra shot Silas a panicked look. First a bomb and now this. Why didn’t I think of that?

It was all too stressful. There were too many things that could go wrong. It seemed that every time she thought she knew what to do, there was some new factor added to the equation that she’d never considered.

“If they’re real soldiers with strict orders and they eat their meals at the same time every day without fail, then I doubt they’d skip breakfast,” Silas assured her.

“See?” Petra forced a smile. “I’m sure it’ll work.”

Yelizaveta’s wide eyes darted between Petra and Silas. Shuffling half a step closer, she whispered, “Why do you have a demon with you? He’s terrifying.”

Petra could feel Silas’s gaze on her as the nervous dragon waited for her answer. Taking a deep breath, she gently clasped Yelizaveta’s hands. There was no time to be nervous about how her staff would react to the news or to consider whether she’d still have a future in the Temple after this was all done, but she wasn’t about to lie or brush it off.

No matter what happened next and no matter what anyone said, Silas was hers.

“He’s my mate,” she answered simply. “And once this is all over, we’re going to get married.”

Yelizaveta’s eyes went impossibly wider. Her great, leathery wings mantled with surprise before they settled back against her spine. “You Chose?”

Knowing how seriously dragons took mating — or Choosing — Petra nodded firmly. “I did.”

There was half a beat of stunned silence before she blurted, “Are you going to leave the Temple?”

Releasing Yelizaveta’s hands with a small squeeze, Petra admitted, “I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’d like to stay.”

A friendly chime echoed outside in the hallway. Silas tensed and turned toward the door. Hiking up her skirt, she shoved her feet into her heels and explained, “That’s the warning bell. We have five minutes before the ceremony starts. Yelizaveta, I need you to run back to the initiate hall. I want you and all the other initiates to leave the grounds. Kitchen and custodial staff, too. I don’t care what they’re doing. Get them outside until I say it’s safe to come back. Okay?”

The young dragon’s complexion went ashen. “But your grace, we can’t?—”

“You can and you will,” she interjected. “Above everything else, you keep yourself safe. If you run into any of the Protector’s men, you have my permission to roast them and then fly away as fast as you can.”

Yelizaveta’s voice was barely a whisper when she replied, “This is very scary.”

“It is,” Petra replied, voice thick, “but that only means it’s time to be brave. Never forget that we don’t walk alone — and our goddess is not just love and sunshine. She’s also scorched earth.”

Pressing a kiss to Yelizaveta’s clammy cheek, Petra tried not to let the initiate see her uncertainty. She didn’t want to see fear in the dragon’s eyes. She also didn’t want to be right about any of this. A large part of her hoped that they were wrong, and they’d done all this for nothing.

The ceremony would go off without a hitch, there’d be no attack on the Tower, and she’d look like a paranoid fool.

But she didn’t think so, and that meant she had to make sure her people got out.

Petra reluctantly released her initiate and hustled across the room. She grabbed Silas’s shadowed hand and felt a little bit of her fear release when he immediately tangled their fingers together.

“We’ll go out through my office,” she explained, reaching for the door.

“Wait!”

They turned their heads to look at Yelizaveta, who’d spread her wings wide with agitation. Looking perfectly aghast, she exclaimed, “Your grace, you can’t do the ceremony without your crown.”

Before Petra could summon a response or say it really didn’t matter, the dragon had already darted into her bedroom to hunt for Glory’s Crown, the heavy headdress she was forced to wear for important events.

Silas’s lips curled into one of his knife-sharp smiles. “Do I finally get to see you in the sexy crown?”

Giving him a warning look, she primly informed him, “It’s ceremonial.”

“Ah, baby, you know how much I love ceremony,” he replied, conjuring vivid memories of their time on the altar. His hungry gaze slid down her body. Glory wasn’t particularly prudish, so most of Petra’s ceremonial outfits were composed of plunging necklines and form fitting cut. Despite the stress of the situation, it was something he seemed to appreciate very much.

“When this is done, I want you to keep that dress on,” he ordered. “I’m fucking you in that.”

Face flushing, Petra murmured, “If we get everyone through this alive, I’ll wear whatever you want me to.”

Silas clicked his tongue. “A dangerous bargain.”

Leaning in close, she whispered, “Couldn’t be more dangerous than the other one I made with a demon, right?”

A pleased rumble rattled his chest. The shadows around her throat pulsed, and something hot zinged across the electric current of their bond.

Yelizaveta burst from the bedroom waving the gold crown in the air. Rushing over, she shoved it into Petra’s hands. “Here!”

“Thank you, Yelizaveta. Now go.” She gently pushed her toward the door with one hand. The dragon looked like she desperately wanted to say more, but there was no time. “Remember what I said, okay?”

“Okay,” she squeaked, hurrying out of the room.

Petra dared to lean a little bit into the hall to watch her go as she fumbled to get the crown on. Fashioned to look like a blazing sunrise bisected by the horizon, it was a regal but uncomfortably heavy thing she normally spent a long time fussing with in order to get it to sit just right.

She was still adjusting it when Silas took her hand and began to lead her to the service corridor that connected the residential buildings to the cathedral proper. He moved at a swift clip, and as they walked, his shadows gathered around around him and along the walls, spiderwebbing out until she doubted any tiny movement would go undiscovered by their seeking tendrils.

The corridor was blessedly deserted, however, and by the time they made it to her office, she was pretty sure she’d gotten the crown on straight.

The rumble of voices, hushed but undeniably excited, made the cathedral’s sturdy concrete walls vibrate. The building energy and the urgency of what they had to do hummed in her bones. Her mind went blank. She didn’t check her reflection in the mirror by her desk like she normally did before a service. She didn’t feel the gauzy material of her veil as she plucked it from the hook on the wall and draped it over her crown and face. She didn’t go over what she planned to say. She didn’t think of anything except getting through the next few minutes, seconds even, and making it out onto the other side to finally, finally have a future worth fighting for.

Turning to Silas one last time before she pushed the door open, Petra lifted her veil and rose up onto her tiptoes for a hungry, lingering kiss.

“We’ll make it,” she promised him, steadied by the possessive grip of his hands on her waist and the comforting scent of thyme and musk that she couldn’t live without.

Breathing in her ear, Silas gave her his own promise, “I won’t let anyone take you from me.”

“Good,” she whispered back.

Pressing his forehead to her temple, he rasped, “The thing you said earlier. It’s true.”

“What thing?”

“That I love you too fuckin’ much.” His breath hitched. “I have to, right? Or this wouldn’t feel like I was putting my heart in front of a firing squad. It wouldn’t… it wouldn’t be this hard.”

“You do,” she answered, feeling too full and hollowed out all at once. “I know it because I feel the same way.”

With one last kiss, she forced herself away. He hovered behind her, ready to slip out into the shadows. She could feel his tension in the air and could only imagine the force of will it took for him to let her do this, let alone the respect he must’ve had for her to take the risk. If he didn’t respect her so much, she had no doubt that she’d be back in another closet, locked away while he dealt with things as he saw fit.

I hold the power, she thought, steeling her spine.

Forcing her hands to stop shaking, Petra opened the door and walked calmly down the short hallway. Her heels clicked a rhythmic beat on the red-brown tile floor.

Click-clack, click-clack. She focused on the sound, on Silas’s presence, and touched the shadows around her throat as the low roar of the gathered worshippers grew louder and louder.

A discreet screen obstructed her view out into the belly of the beast, but she knew what she’d find: a thousand people crammed cheek to jowl, laden with offerings for the sacred fire that burned inside Glory’s statue, and every last one of them eager to get their eyes on the sovereign couple.

Glory, she prayed, edging out from behind the screen to face the crowd, please let this work.