Delia Prance's Arc

Chapter 49 of 59

The coronation day came before Delia felt ready. She left the healing house at dawn and rode to the palace with Nick. The two crowns waited inside, wrapped in cloth, and she had agreed to wear the smaller one. She wore a pink flowing dress, the drape soft against her legs. Nick stood beside her in his court coat. She had told him only one thing that morning. Whatever the crown did to her, they faced it together. The palace hall filled with nobles. They watched her the way they watched all her secrets, hungry and cold. King Rowan stood at the front, the two gold crowns on a cushion, each set with red gems. He did not smile. He never did. "Kneel," Rowan said. Nick knelt. Delia knelt beside him. Her heart beat hard. She thought of the locked room, the family tree, the elf blood no one here knew ran in her. She kept her face still. Rowan lifted the larger crown and set it on Nick's head. Then he took the smaller one. He held it above Delia. "You earned this yourself," he said. "Not by birth. Remember it." The gold touched her hair. The crown was old, older than any book she had read. The moment it settled, something in it woke. Delia felt it pull at her, the way the willow fruit had pulled. Her elf blood answered. A shiver ran up through her hands. The floor shook. Nobles cried out and grabbed the walls. A crack ran up a tall window. Rowan gripped his belt and stared at the trembling stone. "What is this," he said. Not a question. A demand. "I don't know," Delia lied. But she did. The crown had touched her blood, and her blood had touched something sleeping in the ground. The shaking stopped. Through the tall windows, the courtyard below began to glow. Delia rose and moved to the glass. Nick came with her. Across the palace grounds, flowers pushed up through the stone in bursts of blue and pink and deep red. Their petals shone with light, as if each held a small fire. They spread past the gate and down the avenue, farther than she could see. The nobles crowded the windows, silent now. The glowing blooms were nothing they could name or price. Rowan stood beside Delia. He looked at the flowers, then at her. He said nothing, but she saw him understand something he could not prove. "The old magic," a noble whispered. "It knows the true blood." Delia's hand found Nick's. She was queen now, crowned before the whole court. But the ground had spoken her secret in light, and every noble had seen it. Her safety and her danger had arrived in the same moment. "Every step," Nick said, low. "Every step," she answered. And she turned to face the room that now knew too much.