Page 82 of Valor’s Flight (The New Protectorate #5)

The night of their wedding, everyone assembled in the lush garden she’d so relied on all her life.

Candles hung from glass globes strung in the branches of her fruit trees and fireflies danced along the path to the firepit.

Taevas’s blue flame roared within it, ice cold and deadly.

Its pale glow limned the man himself as he stood proudly at the end of the path.

When Alashiya emerged from the flower-decked doorway Taevas had once nearly destroyed, her gaze immediately found his through the gauzy film of her veil.

She thought she’d be afraid or nervous — and she had been, listening to all the voices outside as the women of her clan and Debbie, to a smaller degree, helped her get ready — but as soon as she looked past the crowd and found him…

There was no fear. There was no reason to hide.

I love you, she whispered through the hyphae as she stepped out onto the green path. Her bare feet sank into wild grass and wildflowers. Her golden anklets tinkled as she drifted toward him, drawn to his towering form wreathed in dragonfire.

Her veil, long enough to brush the backs of her calves, whispered around her.

It carried all the memories of those she loved, but it carried the hopes of her future, too.

A great purple dragon, wings spread, filled out the once empty space in the back.

A curl of blue flame erupted from his mouth and a tangle of vines curled around his tail, symbolizing all that they were and would be.

Securing it to her curls was a wreath of laurel leaves — the only crown she allowed Taevas to give her.

Beneath her veil, she wore a dress of air-light, violet silk and her ancient gold arm bands.

Every inch of her carried the love and memory of her people, present and long since passed.

Behind her, Hele and Alex, dressed in their own purple gowns, carried the sash of Adon’s robe, one hand on each tasseled end.

Traditionally, one of her chosen bridal entourage would carry the ritual knife, but since it wasn’t necessary in this case, they’d made a compromise.

When she passed the assembled nymphs, they brushed her shoulders with their fingertips, offering love and luck as her own grove might.

It was only a few dozen steps to reach him, but it felt like an eternity before she joined her husband by the fire.

He looked regal and almost too striking in his burgundy robe embroidered with gold, his raven hair pulled back in a tight braid.

Gold rings glittered on his fingers as he reached for her hands.

Pulling them out from beneath her veil, she slid her palms against his to grip his sturdy wrists.

“I love you,” he rumbled, dipping to touch their foreheads together. Her lashes fluttered as the world shrank to fit the space between them. “I love you so very much, minu metsalill.”

There was no officiant. No speeches or formality. There was only their love and their vows. Alashiya breathed deeply, soaking in the strength he offered her, before she nodded toward her bridal entourage.

Hele moved to one side and Alex the other, until they were facing each other with Taevas and Alashiya between them. Together, they wrapped the sash — already bloody from their first marriage ceremony — around their hands. Their job done, they stepped to the side.

Knowing how much this meant to him, Alashiya shoved down her nerves and summoned the words that had come so easy to her once before.

“Taevas, I swear to carry you. I swear to honor you. I swear to provide for you. I swear to warm you when the night is cold and find you when the days are dark. I swear to love you now and in the hyphae, long after Grim has returned what her father gave us.” Her throat tightened, making it nearly impossible to speak.

She had to clear it before she could continue, but even then, her voice was thick with emotion.

“I knew you first as Adon, then as the monster in my barn, and then the bossy dragon sick in bed. I’ve had the privilege of seeing you at your lowest, argaman mlk, and even though I know you’d rather I only knew you at your strongest, I wouldn’t change it for anything.

Because even when you were stripped of everything, you were still kind, patient, compassionate, and so very dear to me.

I am proud to claim you, Taevas A?daja, and to never let you go. ”

Taevas’s pleasure was a fierce note in the hyphae, a plucked chord that vibrated through the entire web of her being. A tear streaked down his darkened cheek and glittered in the light of his flame.

“My Alashiya. My metsalill. My beloved Chosen,” he rasped, voice almost guttural with emotion, “I swear to carry you. I swear to honor you. I swear to provide for you. I swear to warm you when the night is cold and find you when the days are dark. I swear to love you now and in the hyphae, long after Grim has returned what her father gave us.”

His fingers tightened around her wrists, holding tight as his violet eyes gleamed.

To her, to both of them, they were entirely alone as they pledged themselves to each other.

“You are the bravest person I know. When you had no reason to and every reason not to, you took this strange, beaten dragon into your home. You nursed me. You eased my pain. You were kind even when I didn’t deserve it.

It is the greatest miracle of my life to have been tied to you through happenstance, and it’s one I will never, ever take for granted.

I am proud to be claimed by you, my Shiya.

I’ll follow you wherever you lead and love you until my last breath. ”

It was a good thing the only makeup she wore was Alex’s golden body shimmer. If she’d dared to wear anything more, as Debbie suggested, it would’ve run down her face in rivulets.

Since there was no need to cut their hands, they’d decided that they would steal from other ceremonies to seal their union. Vows done, Alex delicately lifted the front of Alashiya’s veil and draped it over her crown of laurels before stepping back once more.

“I Choose you,” Taevas announced, his grin wild and triumphant.

Laughing with that same reckless feeling, she answered, “I Choose you.”

She expected to be swooped down on with a passionate kiss as they’d agreed, but her husband had one last surprise in store for her.

His massive wings, which had been through countless rounds of painful physical therapy and healing sessions with Margot, mantled high and wide around his shoulders.

Before she could begin to process that, they snapped forward.

The world became muted and dark as they closed around her.

The pale light from the fire and the glow of the candles filtered in through the thin, delicate membrane of his wings, making them glow.

His tail snaked around her waist, and his big, clawed hands cupped her jaw as his mouth descended on hers — all fierce, hungry lips and seeking tongue.

Somewhere outside the safety of his closed wings, a cheer erupted. She didn’t hear it. Alashiya slung her arms around his neck and allowed him to lift her off her feet. “Your wings,” she sobbed between kisses. “Taevas, your wings!”

“Flying is a ways off,” he breathed, “but I refused to go another day without embracing my wife.”

She’d noticed he removed his splints, but she assumed it was for the ceremony.

Taevas hated them. She couldn’t blame him, but they were necessary to wear outside of healing sessions and physical therapy to avoid severe bouts of nerve pain.

Sometimes she wondered if he’d wear them at all if she didn’t insist on it — as if muscling through agony would somehow make it better.

But that was her stubborn, hard-headed dragon, who’d put his discomfort aside at every opportunity if it meant serving his people and his clan.

He’d given her no indication at all that he’d made so much progress with his recovery. Relief, happiness, and a little exasperation bubbled in her veins as she pressed kiss after kiss to his lips within the safety of his wings.

It was a long while before he reluctantly retracted them.

The guests erupted into knowing laughter as he cast them a look of playful annoyance, as if it was their fault he was forced to release her.

Laughing, Hele and Alex unbound their hands and took the sash away.

It would be tucked safely in Alashiya’s cedar chest.

The matching robe, however, would return to its place: hung on the wall above their nest in place of the tapestry depicting their courtship, which was traditional to her husband’s people. Taevas had insisted it was better than anything that could be made by another artisan, so why replace it?

Alashiya’s face heated as several dragons, mainly members of the Wing, whooped and hollered.

A child’s gleeful scream preceded a violet blur erupting out of the crowd.

She stooped just in time to catch Emilia, who’d escaped from her parents at great speed.

Propping the little girl on her hip, Alashiya asked, “Did you want a kiss, too?”

Emilia looked up at her with big, candy apple red eyes — a gift from her father, Artem. Being the only A?daja child at the moment, and a deeply precocious one to boot, Emilia had learned the fine art of getting exactly what she wanted whenever she wanted it.

It was lucky for all of them that she generally only wanted as much love from her clan as possible.

Little claws, surprisingly gentle, stroked Alashiya’s veil when she answered, “Yes!”

The crowd laughed as the couple squeezed the little girl between them, each delivering a smacking kiss to her grinning cheeks. Taevas plucked her from Alashiya’s arms to throw her high in the air, eliciting another scream as her little wings flapped.

“If no one else wants a kiss, it’s time we feast!” he announced, swinging Emilia around in a wide circle.

Putting the giggling toddler under one arm and slinging the other around Alashiya’s waist, he tossed his horned head back toward the barn. A grand array of tables, fairy lights, candles, flowers, a band, and a truly astonishing amount of food had been set up inside and outside the renovated barn.

When they led the guests down the slope, Alashiya’s eyes stung at the sight.

Once, entering the barn had been exercised in grief and the echo of dashed hopes.

But now the hyphae sang with joy as she stepped up to her new cedar throne, carved by her husband to match his own, behind their overflowing table.

Music and laughter filled the air with life.

Little Emilia’s clawed feet clicked on the new concrete floor as she scampered off to find her parents — and sweets — fulfilling a dream her grove had so earnestly believed in.

Her land, her forest, had been renewed. Its heartbeat was fierce and joyful as a new sort of grove danced, ate, and celebrated together.

It was perhaps not exactly the kind of grove her grandparents had in mind when they set their sights on it, but she didn’t feel any complaints in the hyphae. Only a deep relief.

And when the other queens approached the table to exchange a single drop of blood with her, that feeling bloomed into something infinitely larger and more complex. It no longer belonged to just her own family, but to all of them. Their networks, too long apart, reunited.

It wasn’t the same as everyone existing in one hyphae, which would get rather loud and crowded, but more like building a bridge over a stretch of water. At any time, they could cross it and know that they weren’t alone.

Not that being alone wasn’t nice sometimes. Like when Taevas dragged her onto the dancefloor, something she’d been dreading since he brought up the idea of having one in the first place, only to snap his wings around her once again.

They swayed to a slow song, her cheek resting on his powerful heart, within the privacy of his wings.

“This is a good place to hide,” she whispered, bare feet hardly touching the floor as he swept her gently around.

A deep rumble tickled her cheek. Pressing her closer, he promised, “We can hide here together, metsalill, for the rest of our lives.”