Reign Shadowfell's Arc

Chapter 22 of 29

The small demon's hand was already on the door when Reign spoke. "My women come with me," he said. He did not raise his voice. He set the chain back over his neck and let the red stone rest on his shirt. "Vixen Silvercoat is my match by blood contract. Lyla Thorne is bound to me by mine. They are my party. My grandfather will accept that, or he will not see me at all." The small demon turned. Her single eye moved from Reign to Vixen in his lap, to Lyla at the wall, to Lux on the sill. She did not answer at once. Reign kept his hand flat on the arm of the chair. He did not repeat himself. He had spent the last hour learning that repeating a thing in this city made it smaller. The imp on the sill stayed very still. Vixen's fingers rested on the silver raven at his throat, not gripping, only there. Lyla's arms stayed folded, but her chin came up. The small demon smiled. It was a thin smile, and it changed her face into something older. "You have just earned the hall," she said. "He would have turned you away if you had left them. He wanted to see if the boy came in as a son or as a suppliant. Bring them. Bring the imp. First light." She opened the door herself. On the threshold she stopped and looked back, not at Reign's amulet, but at his face. "You look just like her," she said. Then she was gone, and the corridor swallowed her steps. Lux let out a long breath and his shoulders dropped an inch. He climbed off the sill and sat on the table beside the lamp, small hands folded, tail slack. He did not speak. He had not breathed like that since the cave. Vixen turned in Reign's lap and kissed him. It was not the polite kiss she had given him at the manor gate. It was the kiss of a woman who had just heard her man name her in front of a king's runner. Reign felt her hand tighten on the stone at his chest and then let go. Against the far wall, Lyla's face went red. She looked at the floor, then at Reign, then at the floor again. She had heard her name in the same breath as Vixen's. She understood what that meant. Reign closed his hand around the amulet and held it a moment before letting it fall. The gate was open. The hall was open. His grandfather would see him at first light with the imp who knew his mother and the two women who had chosen him over their own blood. He had bought the audience without a hair of Merida's or a line in her hand. He had bought it with the people she had left him to find. What his grandfather would say when the doors closed behind them, he did not yet know.