Chapter 652: Give A Bitch Enough Rope

Pink magic snapped around Tristan the moment he touched her. He began walking back down the aisle, carrying her bridal style. She blinked, surprised that he had just scooped her off the ground in front of the entire Fae court like she was a cat stuck in a tree it had chosen, climbed, and then refused to admit it needed help.

Her mouth opened. Tristan looked forward and continued moving, communicating exactly how open he was to discussing her ability to walk or whether she should be protecting the woman he had just ordered the arrest of. Both topics were dead on arrival.

Her pink magic continued to spread. To the guards. To the guests. To every person within range. Apparently her magic had decided to protect everyone indiscriminately, which defeated the purpose of a threat display so thoroughly it became comedy.

The crowd started buzzing because surrounding this many people simultaneously was elite-level Fae flexing, and she was doing it while being hauled down the aisle in a wedding dress, crying, and wearing the face of a woman who had just discovered the off switch was not included.

The magic felt good. Warm. Clean. Healing in a way that bypassed intent and went straight to need.

A hungover bastard in the fourth row felt the whiskey demons pack up and leave. He whipped his head around like he’d just seen The Moon Goddess do a keg stand and was already shopping for a robe.

An Elder popped his spine like bubble wrap and stood at full height for the first time in three decades. Next to him an old priestess watched a scar on her wrist vanish and muttered, "Oh my."

Some random guard who had zero business being involved hit a full squat just to show off for the guy next to him. Ten years of that knee sounding like a bag of gravel? Gone. He stood up looking like a man already drafting his two-week notice so he could become a full-time convert to whatever religion just unfucked his knee.

Lucian’s wolf began to rumble. The sensation was new for him.

He blinked a few times, trying to understand what it was. The rumble was involuntary, deep, building in his chest with a quality that had nothing to do with aggression and everything to do with receiving River’s magic.

His wolf was purring.

Lucian’s eyes widened. Horror crossed his face with the speed and severity of a man discovering his body was making sounds in public that his dignity had never authorized.

Luckily, a standing ovation broke out at the exact same moment. Two hundred Fae nobles rose to their feet. The applause had the exact energy of a crowd that came for a wedding, received a dumpster fire, and was now watching a princess heal every broken body in range while being bridal-carried by a prince.

Fin laughed. The laugh was involuntary and genuine and carrying the particular quality of a man who had just watched a wolf king’s wolf purr in public at a Fae bonding ceremony and was going to be thinking about it for the rest of every life he lived.

Atlas pinched the bridge of his nose. Equal parts exasperation and fondness. His daughter’s magic had the targeting of a thunderstorm and the compassion of a saint and the tactical value of a hug delivered during a sword fight.

Through the matebond, Lucian felt River’s emotions shift. The resolve and grief were still there, still heavy, still carrying the weight of a future only she had seen. But underneath them, bleeding through like sunlight through a crack: relief.

Lucian felt the relief and his chest ached with it. The sensation of his mate relaxing, even marginally, even temporarily, even while being carried away from her own wedding by a man who wasn’t him, produced a warmth in his chest that his discipline couldn’t suppress and his pride refused to acknowledge.

Vesper Willow glared daggers through Tristan’s back, aimed at the woman being carried.

"She did all of that on purpose, to gain sympathy. She’s manipulating all of you!"

The applause grew louder.

"SHE IS AFTER A CROWN AND ONLY A CROWN. YOU PEOPLE ARE BLIND!"

Behind her, the guards who’d been told to hold exchanged glances that carried the sacred cop subtext of watching a suspect volunteer additional charges live, on stage, with no lawyer present and no self-preservation instinct in sight.

Vesper Willow was a General’s daughter and thus had been trained in combat since she was three years old. If she was going down, she was going down swinging and making it everyone’s problem.

The guards closed on her behind Tristan. He didn’t spare her a glance.

"IT WAS ALL HER PLAN, YOU MORONS! SEDUCE HER BROTHER. PRODUCE AN INCEST BABY. TAKE THE CROWN!"

One guard moved to manacle her. She kicked him in the balls so hard that the boys downstairs requested a transfer to a less hostile work environment.

"I WAS BORN IN BLOOD AND TRAINED FOR WAR," she thundered. "And she’s just a fake-ass princess trying to seduce her way into being queen, you blind fucks!"

She elbowed another guard in the solar plexus and bit him on the forearm.

"Don’t even THINK about it! My fated mate is RIGHT THERE, you brain-dead assholes! Tristan! Stop carrying that fake-crying problem! Drop her on the ground where she belongs. Right now!"

Lucian stopped walking.

He had been heading toward the courtyard’s eastern exit, intending to leave through the side corridor because his wolf was purring and his canines were pressing and the matebond was delivering River’s emotions at a volume that was making his composure a negotiation rather than a guarantee.

Vesper’s voice stopped him.

Not because the words merited attention. Because the matebond carried River’s reaction to them. Through the connection, Lucian felt River’s emotions tangle: relief replaced by sadness, sadness replaced by guilt, guilt replaced by a strange compassion that was aimed, impossibly, at Vesper.

River felt sorry for the woman screaming profanities at her wedding.

The matebond confirmed it. Clear as a bell. Through the connection, River’s grief carried a note of sympathy that had no right to exist and no logical foundation and was aimed squarely at the woman currently kicking a guard in the shins while calling River a whore in front of two hundred nobles.

Who ARE you, River?

The question arrived in Lucian’s mind with a reverence that his discipline couldn’t suppress. A woman who had just been called a whore at her own wedding, who was being carried away from a ceremony that had been destroyed, who had been brought to tears in front of every important person in the Fae kingdom, and her dominant emotion toward the woman responsible was compassion.