Page 20 of The Summer War
“No, all in all, I think I’d prefer to just have your throne,” Celia said, icily, before Father could even answer.
“Your father can keep the title of Grand Duke, and have our northern estates to be your lands, in exchange for the lands of the crown. And if that’s not good enough, I’ll send both of you to the Summer Lands, and see how much you enjoy Elithyon’s hospitality. Decide before sunset.”
The king chose to quietly leave for the north that same day, with a few hundred armsmen and his remaining family retainers.
In the last golden rays of the summer sunset, Celia watched them all riding away from the walls of the royal palace, and then she went inside to sleep luxuriously sprawled out all alone across the enormous royal bed that she’d had moved to a suite on the first floor, from whose window she could have jumped to the ground without even spraining an ankle.
They took the rest of the summer to properly rebuild the old royal palace at the Green Bridge.
Many willing hands pulled up weeds and cleared the rotted wood, gathered fallen stones and quarried new blocks and baked new bricks, and mixed a great vat of quicklime mortar, and then Celia stood at the foot of the old collapsed winter towers and used sorcery to raise them all back up to their full height in a single day, stones flying like flocks of mixed birds into their places, from great blocks to little dusty chips left scattered.
And in the outer courtyard they pickaxed up the dark-stained flagstones at the foot of the highest tower, and gently took out the two rows of old dead trees, all of them still bowed over with grief, that once had stood there.
The summerlings planted new seedlings in their place, and Elithyon walked among them, speaking to them softly, and overnight they grew into something between an autumn hall and a summerling palace, pillared in living wood, and even before they had finished furnishing it, gleambugs were making small stars among the rustling entwined leaves above.
They held the coronation and the wedding on the same day, with a great joyful feasting laid out ready to celebrate, leaping summerling bonfires of colored flames, ringed by beds of coals over which a vast array of wild game and luscious summer fruits sizzled, filling the air with rich roasting smells of a thousand foods that no one in Prosper could remember tasting.
The feast tables were laden with cakes and sparkling wine and towering spun-sugar sculptures of castles and dragons that enraptured all the summerlings.
Celia came to the palace driving in an open cart along the royal road, through a throng of common folk.
Father had been wary of an assassination attempt, but she’d insisted.
As they drove through, she reached out her hands to as many of them as she could reach, to her people, the people she’d chosen to care about, and as if they knew, smiles and cheers met her as they reached back eagerly, calling out blessings for her reign.
More of them were looking on, crammed into every balcony and window of the towers, as Father put the crown on her head inside the inner courtyard, and they made such a lusty din of cheering that even the stuffiest of the aristocrats in their cushioned seats on the ground floor darted looks up and thought it only sensible to put on a show of enthusiasm of their own.
Father had escorted the Dowager Marchioness of Travinia to a seat in the front row, with Roric on her other side, wearing the red fox tabard of their house.
“She’s been telling me stories about every single eligible heiress in the realm,” Roric said to Celia in the dancing after, wavering between bewilderment and laughter.
“She says she’ll host a party to introduce me to all the ones that aren’t ‘soul-devouring ninnies.’?”
But first, once she’d been crowned, Celia went to Argent, sitting on the marchioness’s other side.
The time they’d taken to rebuild the palace had also been the time they’d taken to let him heal.
He finally had some color back in his cheeks, and he was smiling up at her as she held out her hands.
He stood with her and they walked together back out of the tower courtyard and into the living hall, and when they came out of it, on the other side of the outer courtyard stood the Summer Palace, as if the courtyards of the two palaces had overlapped.
There was somehow room for all the crowding mortal guests, and also for all the summerling court.
Elithyon was waiting for them standing before his own throne with his eyes gleaming like green jewels, in robes of silk, and Celia brought Argent to him and said,
“Summer King Elithyon, I bring to you my brother, Sir Argent of the Woven Blade, to be your companion in the Summer Lands, and seal the peace between our people.”
She turned and kissed her brother’s cheek, and then laid Argent’s hand in his, and stepped back smiling through tears as they kissed one another with all the trees and vines around them blooming so furiously that the embroidered flowers on their clothes began to lift off the fabric and come alive to join them.