Chapter 35: Dancing Before the Packs
The treeline spat them out into late afternoon light, and the festival saw them before they saw the festival.
A howl went up first, from somewhere near the eastern platforms, then another, and then the whole grounds caught it like dry grass catching flame. Wolves and witches turned as one body. Lanterns swung on their cords as dancers stopped mid-spin. Someone near the wine tables shouted something that made a dozen people laugh, and the sound rolled across the clearing toward the three figures stepping out of the shadows of the ancient oaks.
Violet had made it forty feet on legs that felt borrowed from a newborn foal, which was, she reflected grimly, exactly the word Cassian had used, when the first wolf spotted the state of her.
The howling doubled.
"Oh no," she said.
"Oh yes," Cassian said, at her left, radiating smugness like a stove.
She was walking like a woman crossing ice. Every step reminded her of the past twenty hours. Her thighs ached deep in the muscle. Her hips ached. Places she had not previously known could ache ached. She had bathed in a stream half a mile back, scrubbed off the evidence with cold water and a spell, and braided her damp curls back with shaking fingers, and none of it mattered, because her body was announcing its history with every single stride.
A young she-wolf near the flower-wrapped platform pressed both hands over her mouth. Her shoulders shook.
"Don't look at me," Violet told her.
"I'm so sorry, my queen," the girl said, in no way sorry, eyes shining.
"Twelve silver on the foal walk," someone called from the back. "I said foal walk. I said it last night."
"Collect your winnings," Evander said, without breaking stride, and the crowd roared.
He was at her right, one hand resting at the small of her back, steady as a wall. His face was its usual calm, but Violet could feel him through the bond, and under the composure he was glowing like a struck match. He wanted them to see. He wanted the entire festival to look at her walking like this and know exactly who had done it and how thoroughly. Cassian wanted the same thing and was simply honest about it, grinning at the crowd, nodding to wolves who called out congratulations, one of them shouting "Long live the kings!" and another shouting something considerably less formal that made Cassian laugh out loud.
"What did he say?" Violet demanded.
"You don't want to know."
"Cassian."
"He said our queen looks well-ridden."
"Cassian."
"He's not wrong, love."
"I will hex you in front of two packs."
"You won't. You love me. You said it in a cave with great ceremony, I have witnesses."
The crowd closed around them in a warm, cheering tide. Wolves pressed forward to touch her hands, her sleeves, the hem of her dress. An elderly she-wolf with braids full of riverstone took Violet's face in both weathered hands and said, "Sun and frost, both on one throat. The Moon favors you, child," and kissed her forehead before shuffling off, and Violet felt her eyes go hot and blinked hard and pretended it was the lantern smoke.
"Drink," Evander said, steering her toward the wine tables with the firm hand of a man who had assessed her physical state and issued a verdict. "You've had water from a stream and three cherries since dawn."
"I've had other things since dawn."
"Evidently. Drink anyway."
They pressed a cup of dark spiced wine into her hands, and it was warm and heavy with honey and clove, and she drank half of it in one pull to a fresh round of cheers, because apparently her queenship now involved an audience for everything.
"Queen Violet!" A tall witch with copper rings on every finger raised a cup. "A blessing on the marriage! When do you bond the rest of the court?"
"When I've had this wine," Violet called back, and the crowd laughed and drank with her.
The second day's rites were in full swing around them. The great carved platforms were hung with lanterns and garlands of white flowers, and witches danced in slow spinning circles around bonfires whose flames burned blue with blessing herbs, and a line of priestesses moved between the newly mated couples scattered through the grounds, tying short cords around wrists, murmuring over them. The drums had not stopped since yesterday. They lived under everything now, a second heartbeat.
Cassian stole her cup, drank, and gave it back. Evander's thumb traced a slow circle at the base of her spine. Between them, in the middle of the noise, she felt the bond sit warm and full in her chest like a fed animal.
And then a voice cut across the crowd like a knife through silk.
"Well, well, well."
Mira.
She was advancing through the crowd in a wine-dark silk gown with a neckline that started a fight and ends that gave up, silver hair cropped close, light brown eyes fixed on Violet with the focus of a hunting bird. Aneara glided behind her, fae-elegant in silver gauze, a small satisfied smile on her lips that Violet already knew meant money had changed hands.
"Your Majesty," Mira said, stopping an arm's length away, and dropping into a mock curtsy so deep her hair nearly brushed the ground. "Radiant. Glowing. Walking like you've been riding for a fortnight. Who could possibly have predicted this."
"Mira."
"I could not possibly have predicted this. I bet on nothing."
"You bet on everything," Violet said.
"I bet on a spiral. A dignified,traditional, hour-long spiral, which you delivered in eleven minutes, so honestly, in a way, I won."
"You lost heavily."
"Financially." Mira straightened and examined her with the flat assessment of a woman who had known her for three centuries. "Spiritually I have never won anything so completely. Look at you. You're wearing the glow of eight orgasms like it's couture."
"Mira!" Violet hissed, aware of the wolf standing three feet away pretending to fix a lantern.
"Eight?" Cassian said. "She was counting?"
"Nine," Evander said, at the same moment, thoughtful.
"Oh, that's so much worse," Violet said, and buried her face in her wine.
Aneara leaned in and kissed her cheek, perfumed and cool. "Congratulations, my dear. You look happy."
"I can't walk, Aneara."
"A small price." Aneara's smile sharpened with pleasure. "You'll forgive me if I collect my winnings with grace. Mira was very dignified about it."
"I threw a shoe," Mira said. "Now. Queens." She hooked her arm through Violet's and pulled, and Violet went, because resisting Mira was a technology that had never been invented. "Dance with me. These two have had you for two days. I have had you for none. I'm calling an old debt."
"She dances with her husbands first," Cassian said.
"She danced with you all yesterday. You're owed nothing, your majesty, you've been paid in full and you know it." Mira was already towing her toward the bonfires, over her shoulder, "I'll return her in one piece. Mostly. There might be some teasing damage."
Violet looked back at her husbands. Cassian had his arms crossed and was grinning like a man watching a sport he enjoyed. Evander's mouth had gone thin in the way she was learning meant suppressed amusement rather than disapproval.
"Help," she said.
"No," they said together.
The bonfire circle was packed and blue-lit. Mira pulled her into the outer ring of dancers, took both her hands, and spun her, and the drum caught her body up even with her aching hips, and within a dozen steps she was laughing despite everything, her braid coming loose, wine slopping out of a cup someone had put back into her hand.
"So," Mira said, close to her ear, over the drums. "Married."
"Married."
"Two kings. At once. You, Violet Nightingale, who ended things with Marcus because he left his runes on your table."
"He alphabetized my components."
"And you married a man who alphabetizes an entire kingdom, and his husband, who alphabetizes his husband."
"I like order."
"You like them. It's different." Mira spun her out and reeled her back in, and her expression had gone quieter under the teasing, the real face underneath the performance. "You're happy. I keep checking and it keeps being true."
"I'm happy," Violet said. "It's terrifying. It's the most terrifying thing I've ever done and I once closed a rift in a necromancer's basement."
"And now?"
"Now I feel like I swallowed the sun and it just... lives there." She touched her shoulder, where the golden rune sat warm under the fabric. "I feel like myself. I didn't know I wasn't, until this."
Mira's throat moved. She looked away briefly, at the fire, and when she turned back her eyes were wet and she was threatening violence with her expression. "If you tell anyone I cried at Lupercalia I'll tell the whole pack you counted your orgasms out loud in public."
"You told me to be blunt and loud."
"On specific topics. Not that one."
They danced. The drums rolled. A witch with a wreath of white flowers pressed a garland over Violet's loose braid and kissed both her cheeks, a blessing, old magic humming in the petals. Wolves danced around the fire in their skins and their shifted shapes alike, an enormous tawny wolf spinning past with a laughing girl on its back. The whole festival smelled of woodsmoke and crushed flowers and the sweet, dark spice of the bond, pine and caramel and smoke, and Violet realized with a lurch that the scent was coming from all three of them, threaded through everything, and that every wolf here could smell it.
Which they did. She caught it in glances all night. Wolves watching her with their nostrils flaring, smelling their kings all over their queen and their queen all over their kings, the triad scent braided and unmistakable. It should have been mortifying. It was the opposite. It was a mark on her three hundred times bigger than the runes, and she walked through the crowd wearing it and felt, for the first time in her life, publicly and irreversibly claimed, and her body responded to the feeling with a slow, deep heat that had nothing to do with exhaustion.
"There it is," Mira said, watching her face.
"What?"
"That face. You just got turned on by being looked at. You used to hide in pantries when people complimented your research."
"I did not hide in pantries."
"You hid in a pantry at the Solstice Conclave for forty minutes because a warlock called your ward work elegant."
"That was different. That was a professional pantry."
"Uh huh." Mira's grin went sly. "Heads up. Left shoulder. Your audience approaches and by the smell of you, you'd best decide fast whether to run or surrender."
Cassian and Evander had entered the dance. The crowd gave way to them, laughing, some of the young wolves bowing in mockery and adoration both. Cassian came first, catching Violet around the waist from behind, his mouth finding the sun rune through her dress, and the bond flared so hard she gripped Mira's arm. Evander stopped in front of her and simply held out one hand, palm up, ocean-blue eyes on hers over the firelight.
"May I have this dance, sweetheart?"
"It's a festival. Everyone dances."
"Then I'll say it properly." His voice dropped, and the whole world, or at least the ten feet around them, went quiet. "May I have my wife's dance."
The crowd had heard it. She felt the ears. Three hundred wolves, listening, and her face went up in flames, and the heat in her belly answered, and she put her hand in his.
"Yes," she said. "You may."
It was not really a dance. It was slow, because the drums went slow for this one, an old rhythm for mated pairs, and Evander pulled her against his chest and moved with her in a small dark circle of space that the crowd left around them, his hand spread across the small of her back, his beard against her temple. Around them the bonfire burned blue. Cassian danced nearby with a shrieking Mira, who was making comments about his posture, and the sound of his laughter came through the bond to Violet like warmth through a wall.
"You're staring," Evander said.
"Everyone's staring."
"I mean me. You're staring at me."
She was. At his face, at the unguarded thing in it that a hundred years of estrangement had locked away and one week had broken open. "I'm allowed. You're my husband."
"I am." His hand slid up her spine to the frosted rune and rested there, and she felt the pulse of the bond like a hand on the back of her neck. "I want you to know something. What I feel through it, right now. What you're sending."
Heat. Want, banked and patient and enormous, and underneath it something that had no name, some deep protective gravitational thing, the feeling of a wolf over its kill and its mate and its den all at once. It poured into her and she swayed.
"Evander."
"Everyone can smell it on you," he said quietly. "I want you to know I don't mind. I want every wolf in these woods to know exactly what their queen is to us."
"You're both terrible."
"You married us."
"I did." She pressed her face into his chest, into the smoke and pine of him.