"Yes." Petting her, he bent his head to kiss a line down her neck. "Dayn and his mate will be staying in Elden and taking over the guard."
She shivered, stopped buttoning and began unbuttoning. "And your sister?" His sister, who had become a warrior, something that had caused her older brothers intense astonishment. Micah, of course, had simply offered to let her borrow his weapons.
He sucked over her pulse. "She travels with Osborn and the boys to his homeland, so that her mate can teach his brothers what it is to be an Ursan warrior."
"Yes." She wove her fingers into his hair, holding him to her. "The berserkers are needed still."
"Hmm." Continuing to kiss her, he began to walk her backward, toward the bed. "They will not be strangers to Elden, as we are not."
Allowing him to press her down onto the bed, she waited for him to shrug off his shirt and prowl up to cover her. But instead of kissing her once there, he braced himself above her, his expression solemn. "I am the Guardian of the Abyss, Liliana. I will never abandon my duty."
"Of course." She caressed his chest. "You can keep your promise to the land by visiting regularly." Short, intense bursts of working with the earth, they had discovered, had the same impact as if he stayed continuously in Elden.
"Will you mind living in the Black Castle?"
"Living there was the first time in my life that I was happy," she whispered. "The place where I found you. You're my heart. Jissa and Bard and Mouse are family."
To her gratitude, Jissa had not blamed her for her father's evil, and remained her very best friend.
"You - Bard, too - can die in truth now, if you choose," she'd told the brownie, though it caused her terrible pain to think of a world without Jissa. "Leave the Black Castle for a day and a night and you will wake in the Always."
Jissa had shaken her head. "The Bitterness would cry, cry. And without me, you will get into more, much more trouble with the lord. Dungeon you will live in." A laughing look. "And...I would like to play more games of chess with Bard, he with me. Together we play."
"Is it only chess you two play?" Liliana had jested, overjoyed at Jissa's choice.
Except the tips of Jissa's ears had turned pink.
"Jissa."
Lips curving at the memory, she met eyes of winter-green. "The Black Castle is home."
Micah's smile shattered her, it was so very bright, and for her alone. "There are less servants there, too," he muttered, referring to the people of Elden who had begun to come out of hiding in droves to help set the castle to rights for Nicolai's wedding, "which means I can make you naked far easier."
Laughing, she stroked her hands into his hair and tugged him down for a long, lazy kiss that ended with his hand on her breast and her leg cocked around his hip. "I will be planting some flowers, though."
He reared back. "At the Black Castle? The gateway to the Abyss?"
Kissing his jaw, she nuzzled at him. "And I want more comfortable furniture - my mother will be visiting, after all." Irina, too, had been freed from her ensorcellment. She did not know her daughter, but had touched Liliana with love from the first. The bonds would only grow deeper in time.
Micah groaned, began to pull up the red, red gown he'd brought her, so very pretty and dusted with gold. "As long as you don't try to make the dungeons appealing. That I will not allow." His hand on her thigh, rough and proprietary.
Shivering, she tugged him closer. "Done."
Micah rocked against her. "Lily?"
"Yes?" she said against lips firm and sinful.
"We're getting married in an hour. I already spoke to Nicolai."
Her mouth fell open, and then she began to laugh. "My beautiful, arrogant, wonderful lord," she said, kissing his jaw, his cheeks, his neck. "I can't wait to be your wife."
"Now tell me you love me."
"I love you." She kissed the spot she'd once bitten on his lip. "Shall I say it again?"
A delighted look. "Yes."
He made her repeat it ten times. Then he said, "Your name is written on my heart, Lily."
It made her cry. He yelled. Then he kissed her.
By the time the day was done, she was married to the Guardian of the Abyss, in the gardens of the Royal House of Elden that had come back to life. The snapdragon behaved and didn't fry any of the guests.
The aseria flowers are blooming again in what was once the Dead Forest and is now a young, green playground, with saplings reaching for the sparkling blue sky. The firedancers have returned to circle above the castle at twilight, providing a show to which nothing can compare, and the lake runs clean and sweet once more.
There is still much to be done, but laughter fills the castle and the land, for the time of darkness is past and the blood of Elden walk its roads once more. This truth I write with untrammeled joy.
- From the Royal Chronicles of Elden, on the one hundred and seventy-eighth day of the Reign of King Nicolai and Queen Jane.
