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“My king.” Her hand slid up his torso, settling over his heart.

“There is no world in which I wouldn’t love you.

Freely. And from my marrow.” She kissed him again, then grinned and reached for his crown, giving a groan at its heft.

“Skies, Seidon, you weren’t exaggerating.

This thing will give you a headache in half a blink. ”

Even so, she reached up to position it on his head, smirking with clear appreciation at the sight. “There he is. That gorgeous king from all the images.”

He chuckled and reclaimed her hand, unlocking the drawer and pulling out the last crystal she’d brought him from Kiyana.

He snapped it into the reader and pulled up the recording, scrolling past all the introductions at triple speed until it reached the part where the air began to move. Then he paused it, zoomed in.

Arden pressed close to his side. “She’s standing so close to that throne—that’s a little odd, isn’t it? Like she’s touching it.”

“Someone else is too.” He zoomed more, frowning at the face half-obscured behind Jade and cast in shadow from the two massive thrones.

Whoever it was definitely had his hands on the throne.

He advanced the recording a bit, until Jade shifted and he had a better view. And then let out a breath. “Librus.”

“Who?”

He glanced down at Arden, who stared at the image without blinking.

“A cousin of the Saels—and a priest. I’ve only met him once, but he struck me as powerful.

Powerful enough that I was surprised Ralia left him alive.

” He glanced up, letting it all settle. “Someone had to teach Coral how to project her thoughts into me through her mark. It certainly wasn’t her mother or sister.

Someone had to be training the Black Tails and harnessing their magic in this new way. Why did we assume it was Finn?”

“Because he’s the one leading the army.” But she said it thoughtfully, not like a foregone conclusion. “But how would he have learned it? From what you’ve told me, Ralia tried to keep her other children at a minimal level of power, to avoid any competition for Mariana.”

“She was always short-sighted though. She claims no faith herself and hence ignored the priest sector. They could have been perfecting control of their magic for centuries, right under her nose, and she never glanced their way to see it. Librus could have trained Finn, Coral, all of the Black Tails. He could be somehow projecting through Jade here, like Coral did into me. By touch. Through the throne.”

Arden shivered once, pressed closer to his side. “But the air? If he can do that, why kidnap Jade?”

The true question. And it had only one answer.

“They wouldn’t have. This has to be some kind of trick.

” He zoomed back out, scrolled about the frozen image in search of something to validate the theory beginning to tease the corner of his mind.

He found the evidence quickly enough. “Look at everyone’s hair, their clothes.

The cities are never hot enough to make everyone sweat like that.

It must have been really damp in that room. ”

Arden let out a slow breath. “It wasn’t the air then. It was the water he was moving.”

“Even so, that’s amazing.” It had never even occurred to him to try to manipulate the water in the air without first beading it together.

It made him want to try it here and now—but as he scrolled to the next frames and “Jade’s” display ended, he zoomed in again on Librus’s face and saw the pained exhaustion there.

Those thirty seconds of drama had cost him.

Not here and now then. Seidon had more important things to do this afternoon than try to replicate Librus’s show.

Arden stretched her fingers, light currents of air fluttering over him at the movement. Which made her frown even as it made him grin. “I’m such a freak of nature,” she muttered.

He laughed. “Welcome to the club.”

She curled her fingers into her palm, staring at them. “What if I can’t learn how to use this, Si? What if it’s too different from your gift and your lessons don’t work?”

He ran a hand up her arm, over her mark.

The fabric of her sleeve was light, filmy—he could feel the heat through it of his mark on hers.

Had she even taken a good look at it yet in the mirror?

Had she traced the swirls that somehow evoked wind instead of water with their shape?

Or had she done what she always did and avoided anything that reminded her that she wasn’t her own ideal of beauty?

That she wasn’t Jade—even though she was so special, so perfect?

“There will be some similarities,” he said, believing it solely because her mother had said he would teach her what he could. That surely meant something. “There will be differences. Your mother said she would teach you what I couldn’t.”

But she winced at your mother . “I still just…this can’t be real, right? I can’t be the daughter of a hawk.”

His lips twitched. “Seraph. Although…” He dropped his hands to her waist and picked her up by a few inches, enough to watch her eyes go wide.

Chuckling, he set her back down. “Perhaps that form has some similarities to the hawks and that’s why they choose it.

I would bet your bones are hollow—that’s why you’re too light to dive.

You should have Datlov do a scan sometime. ”

Arden’s eyes went wide and panicked. He could well imagine the doctor’s sparkling with anticipation and glee. And the very contrast was enough to make him chuckle again and press his lips to her forehead. “Sometime. When we have the leisure for such things. Which will likely be months from now.”

Her panic receded, but then it melted all the way into a frown. “Do you think she’ll…she’ll be able to understand this? Me?”

He snorted. “She and her predecessors have been studying the Awakened for centuries, and she only just isolated the nanites in our blood. These gifts the Triada have given us are not easy for human minds to comprehend. So…no. I don’t think she will, really.

But she’ll enjoy trying. And we may learn something useful along the way, something we can use to help others. ”

Before Arden could do more than nod, someone knocked on the door—Alexei, from the sound of it. Seidon pushed the button on his desk that would signal him to come in.

It wasn’t only Alexei there though. Sapphire and Rico were too, Arden’s father looking amused and her mother scowling in what he hoped was a playful rebuke. “Arden, I swear,” she huffed out as she strode inside. “I turn my back for two minutes and you run away like you did when you were eight.”

Arden laughed, clearly not repentant. “There was absolutely nothing else you needed to do. And I needed to see Seidon.” She moved her smile to Alexei. “Your wife and Latitia will be there, right?”

Seidon’s heart squeezed at the expression of grateful adoration on his Guard’s face. “Yes, Your Majesty, in the third pew, as you requested. And they’re both so excited I half expected them to float away. Thank you.”

Her smile was so bright, yet so soft. Somehow making it clear that she considered it a favor given by them, not by her. So perfectly Arden.

He wove their fingers together and pulled her toward the door.

“Come, my love. We have a wedding to get underway.” He studied her, looking for any sign that she still had doubts, that this was happening too fast. But when she met his gaze, he knew she was as certain as he was.

About this, anyway. There were plenty of other things still looming about which neither of them could be sure.

But this? Them? The fact that they both wanted to spend the next decades and centuries together?

Centuries. Centuries with Arden . His throat went tight.

The only one of his wives with strong enough magic to lengthen her lifespan significantly had been killed.

He’d known as he married each of the others that it was only for one lifetime.

He had mourned that more, the deeper his love for them grew.

But this, her…this was different. This wouldn’t be twenty years, or fifty—not unless violence ended one or the other or both of them. This would—or could, at least—be a marriage that lasted the rest of his life, though not likely the rest of hers.

He let that thought settle, tested it. And let it soothe. No more searching. No more years of loneliness and grief. No more shouldering the burden of Daryatla alone.

“What’s that look for?” she asked him in a whisper as his personal Guard, led by Master Lee, came around them. Alexei led the whole group along the corridor, Arden’s parents chattering a few steps away.

He squeezed her fingers and sent her a look that he prayed revealed every hope and dream she was meeting, every ounce of love that filled him. “Just thinking about the miracle of it—that I get to spend the rest of my life with you. You can’t know how awe-inspiring that is for me.”

He had to wonder if she’d considered the implications of the magic in her own veins in respect to time. Not yet, from the way her eyes went wide. “Wait. You…you think I’ll actually…?”

Chuckling, he stroked his thumb over hers. “I think you have a very long life ahead of you, Arden. I think, as strong and undiluted as your magic is, you could live five hundred years or more—perhaps closer to a thousand, like the first men of old.”

Her eyes bulged. “What am I supposed to do for a thousand years?”

He laughed. “The phrase ‘whatever you want’ springs to mind. Though ‘whatever the Triada instructs’ is a better way to frame it.”

She blinked, shaking her head. Her fingers went tight around his, her other hand coming to wrap around his wrist. “Not unless you intend to set those records too. I don’t want to live centuries without you.”

He nearly retorted that it was only fair—he’d already lived centuries without her.

He nearly assured her that by the time her life stretched into its second natural lifetime and she still looked and felt as she did now, only stronger, better, more capable, that she’d stop being so uncertain about what to do with all the years and start planning on them.

He nearly cautioned her that her strength and longevity could too easily become a crutch.

But those were all thoughts for other times, other days. Today was for this. Them. So he lifted her hand, kissed her knuckles, and said the only truth that mattered as they walked to their wedding. “I will take as many years with you as the Triada will grant me. And I pray they are many indeed.”