Chapter 653: Let Them Eat Cake

Behind him, the courtyard descended into a clusterfuck circus that had caught fire.

"SHE BIT ANOTHER ONE! THAT’S THREE!" the wedding officiant yelled, chucking ceremonial composure into the nearest bush. Forty years on the job and finally one worth staying awake for.

The applause for River’s magic went full degenerate. Hundreds of people started cheering the guards like this was a boxing match and not a sacred bonding ceremony that had been face-fucked followed by publicly assassinated.

An elderly Fae woman in the third row, who had kept her mouth shut in public for four decades like it was a vow of celibacy, cupped her hands and screamed "SWEEP THE LEG!" like she’d been edging that sentence since her mid-seventies.

Atlas knew full well he should call for order. He kept his expression stern. He remained silent. Just a king watching his royal guard take down a crazy bitch, and the crazy bitch was winning.

"SHE’S GOING LEFT! LEFT! YOUR OTHER LEFT!" a pregnant woman called over the crowd.

Maids flooded the balconies. Pink magic snapped around each of them on arrival. Within seconds, every single one was coaching the guards with the enthusiasm of women who had been waiting their entire careers for exactly this moment.

"GET HER, BOYS! PIN HER DOWN!"

"GIVE HER THE CHAIR!"

The two standing arrest guards lunged at Vesper. She sidestepped. They tackled each other. The oldest trick in the book, executed immaculately.

"ANOTHER TWO HIT THE DUST!"

"WHERE’S YOUR BACKUP? CALL FOR BACKUP!"

The crowd booed.

Lucian, despite everything, despite the matebond and the wolf and the grief and the deja vu and the twenty years of silence and the fact that he had died on a gate in a timeline he couldn’t remember, felt his mouth twitch.

It was the tiniest movement. A millimeter. The ghost of a smile that his discipline killed before it reached his eyes.

Because the scene unfolding behind him was objectively, unarguably, cosmically hilarious. A woman in a red dress at a white wedding was currently winning a fight against six members of the Fae Royal Guard while two hundred nobles provided color commentary and the king of all Fae watched in silence because he was enjoying it too much to stop it.

Fin saw the twitch. Filed it under evidence that Lucian Moon, despite his best efforts, was a human being.

Vesper gave double middle fingers to the audience, then broke into a dead sprint.

"YOUR GUARDS CAN’T CATCH A WOMAN IN HEELS! THIS KINGDOM HAS BIGGER PROBLEMS THAN ME!" she called over her shoulder.

The boos turned back into cheering.

"COME ON! HIT THAT BITCH WITH MAGIC ALREADY!" an elder who had been silent throughout the entire council proceedings yesterday, today, and possibly for the last century, decided THIS was the moment to have an opinion.

Six remaining non-arrest guards stepped forward. All of their palms extended in unison, aimed at the woman resisting arrest and assaulting their colleagues. Green magic shot from six different directions.

WHOOMPF.

It hit her.

Nothing happened. River’s pink magic, still wrapped around Vesper because River’s magic had decided to protect everyone including the woman who had called her a whore, absorbed the impact. Six guards’ worth of combat-grade Fae magic hit a pink wall and dissolved like ice cubes dropped into a furnace.

Vesper glanced down, surprised.

The crowd gasped, then cheered louder. This time for the pink that was apparently stronger than six guards combined.

"THE PINK JUST TOLD THE ROYAL GUARD TO SIT DOWN!"

Lucian’s wolf stirred in his chest. The purring had stopped. What replaced it was a low, vibrating hum of pride that Lucian absolutely refused to examine because examining it meant acknowledging that his wolf was proud of his mate’s magic and acknowledging his mate’s magic meant acknowledging his mate and acknowledging his mate meant the next twenty years of silence were going to be significantly harder.

Atlas looked toward his daughter, currently being carried through the opposite doors by Tristan.

Through the matebond, Lucian felt River’s confusion. She had no idea her magic was doing any of this. The pink barrier around Vesper, the courtyard-wide healing, the six-guard magic deflection: all of it was running on autopilot while its owner was being carried in a prince’s arms thinking about grief and resolve and a timeline only she remembered.

"The TEARS!" Vesper roared, sprinting past an upended flower arrangement. "ALL FAKE, you manipulative cunt! ’Oh DADDY! Wah, wah. I’m so scared and homeless. Please save me. Big brother, let me suck your dick for a crown!’"

More guards swarmed into the courtyard from every entrance, including the doors Tristan was planning on taking River through. Pink snapped around all of them immediately. None of them reacted because the pink felt like a warm bath and a pay raise and their grandmother’s cooking.

Tristan turned around with River still in his arms, only to witness Vesper downing two champagne flutes at a full sprint toward their six-tier wedding cake.

Twenty new guards aimed their palms at the woman. Confidently.

The crowd collectively screamed "NOOOO!"

Green magic hit her and did absolutely nothing. She dove into the giant cake, green magic still following her.

The cake exploded. Frosting went absolutely everywhere, spraying the audience in a radius that suggested the cake had been structurally overengineered and the frosting had been applied with a fire hose.

Vesper didn’t stop running.

"’PLEASE DADDY, let me ride my brother’s dick straight to the throne!’" she yelled over her shoulder. "CRYING LIKE A BABY WHORE IN HEAT! FAKEST SHIT I’VE EVER SEEN!"

Lucian’s jaw tightened.

Every insult landed on him through two channels. Through the air, the way insults land on anyone within earshot. Through the matebond, at full emotional fidelity, carrying River’s reaction to each word. And River’s reaction was the specific, quiet pain of a woman who had been called every terrible thing a world could invent and had learned to absorb them the way stone absorbs rain: silently, without erosion, with the stubborn endurance of a material that was harder than the weather thrown at it.

But the pain was there. Under the stone. Under the silence. Under the composure. And the matebond didn’t lie.

His hands uncurled. Then recurled. Then uncurled again. The cycle repeated three times in five seconds, the physical manifestation of a wolf king deciding and undeciding whether to cross the courtyard and end Vesper Willow’s ability to produce sound permanently.