Chapter 286: Chapter 286: I told you it wasn’t goodbye
It was like.....like the binding had been running on one thread for six hundred years and had suddenly been given three more and didn’t know what to do with the abundance of it.
It knew exactly what to do.
It ran.
Varek hit the window.
She felt it.....the cold rushing toward the open binding, twenty years of patience finally moving at full speed. It was fast. Faster than she’d expected. Faster than Vessa had described.
But the binding was faster.
Completing from three directions at once. Damian’s bond sealing one side. Damon’s sealing another. Silas’s closing the third. And Eve in the center of it....the heir, the bloodline, the thing Avara had built all of this for, holding it together.
Varek hit the window.
The window was already closing.
She felt the impact of it.....cold and furious and desperate and then she felt the binding snap shut.
Complete.
Six hundred years of contained power renewing all at once.
And Varek on the outside of it.
She felt it there, pressing against the closed binding, testing it, looking for a gap that wasn’t there anymore. The cold patience turning to something else. Something she didn’t have a word for.
It pressed.
The binding held.
It pressed harder.
The binding held.
It pressed one more time.
And then it retreated.
Slowly.
Reluctantly.
But completely.
The cold faded.
The temperature in the room came back.
Somewhere along the walls the candles relit themselves one by one.
Eve sat on the throne and breathed.
The binding was warm inside her. Not overwhelming anymore. Settled. Complete. The way something felt when it had been wrong for a very long time and was finally, actually right.
She could feel it.....Avara’s work, six hundred years of it, steady and whole and fully renewed.
She could feel the Court around her. Not just the throne room. The whole building. The wards and the chambers and the corridors and the ancient stone of it. Like the building had been waiting for this too. Like it recognized her.
She looked up.
Damian was looking down at her.
His hand still on her shoulder.
His face, she had never seen his face do exactly what it was doing right now. Open in a way it almost never was.
"It’s done," she said.
"It’s done," he said.
Damon was crouched in front of her.
Still holding her hand.
His eyes were wet.
"Hey," she said.
"Hey," he replied back.
"I told you it wasn’t goodbye," she said.
He laughed.
One short sound.
Real and sudden and bright in the quiet room.
She felt Silas’s hands on her shoulders from behind. Both of them.
She reached up and covered one of his hands with hers.
Raphael was standing at the edge of the room.
She looked at him.
He was looking at the throne. At her on it. At the three men around her.
She held his gaze.
He nodded once.
She nodded back.
Then the doors opened and Seraphine came in first.
She stopped when she saw Eve.
Looked at her on the throne. At the binding completed. At the candles burning steady and warm along the walls.
The expression on her her face was that of pure relief
"It’s done," Eve said.
"Yes," Seraphine said. She looked at the room. At the absence of cold. At the candles. "Varek."
"Gone," Eve said. "The binding closed before it got through."
Seraphine looked at her for a long moment.
"Your mother would be...." She stopped.
"I know," Eve said.
Seraphine nodded and stepped back, and Vessa came through the doors next.
She saw Eve on the throne and stopped walking completely.
She just....stopped.
Her hands came up to her mouth.
Eve looked at her.
At the woman who had kept a promise for two decades.
Who had watched and waited and built and placed and arranged and carried a pendant in her coat pocket across two decades and had never stopped keeping her promise.
"Vessa," Eve said.
Vessa lowered her hands.
Looked at her.
"It’s done," Eve said. Quietly. Just for her. "It’s done."
Vessa closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
When she opened them they were wet but her face was steady.
"Yes," she said. "It is."
Maya appeared behind her.
Looked at Eve on the throne.
Her expression cycled through approximately seven things in three seconds.
Then she said..... "Okay that’s genuinely insane and I need a minute."
Eve laughed.
She didn’t move for a long time.
Just sat there on the throne with the binding warm in her chest and the candles burning steady along the walls.
Damon was the first one to break the silence.
"So." He looked around the throne room. "Is it always going to be this cold in here or....."
Eve laughed.
"It’s not cold anymore," she said.
"It’s cold," he said. "I’m standing in a stone room with no heating in April."
"Damon," Damian said.
"I’m just saying," Damon said. "We won. We should at least be warm."
Silas made a sound behind her.
Not quite a laugh but close enough.
Eve looked at Damon.
He was grinning at her.
She loved him so much it was almost inconvenient.
****
Seraphine gave them an hour.
She cleared everyone out of the throne room except the four of them and closed the doors and didn’t knock until sixty minutes had passed.
Nobody talked about what came next. Nobody talked about the Conclave or the formal ascension announcement or the political machinery that would start moving the moment word got out.
Damian pulled a chair up beside the throne and sat in it like he was sitting at his desk at home. Normal. Unhurried. His arm resting near hers on the armrest.
Damon sat on the floor.
Of course he did.
He leaned his back against the base of the throne and stretched his legs out and tipped his head back and closed his eyes.
"I could sleep," he said.
"You’re not sleeping on the throne room floor," Damian said.
"Watch me," Damon said.
He didn’t sleep. But he didn’t move either.
Silas stood behind the throne.
Both hands on the high back. Not talking. Just there. Present the way Silas was always present.
Eve looked at the room around her.
At the high windows and the old stone and the candles burning steady.
At her mates.
She thought about a girl who had signed a contract with nothing and come out the other side as something no one expected.
That girl felt very far away.
She wasn’t sure when exactly she had become someone else.
