Revenant Eve (64 page)

“Both, I expect,” I said, grinning.

After that, things became a whirl of activity: fittings, inspections, shifting belongings, tastings with Mom presiding. Everybody wanted to talk, and I rejoiced in all the details of daily life, from brushing snarls out of my hair (my ordinary hair, that needed some serious conditioning) to smelling wet grass after a rain. Even tired feet made me happy, because I was me again, and any time I wanted a hug and kiss, I could find Alec, and he dropped everything to offer them.

So I woke up on my wedding day, glad to find myself in my body, and in my time.

The problem with a perfect wedding is that superlatives seem to cancel one another out. The intensity of bliss was so poignant it was almost painful when I walked into the cathedral on my father’s arm, his wild hair actually combed, and his usual aging-hippie clothes replaced by a tailored tux. “Look like Cary Grant, don’t I?” he muttered out of the side of his mouth as we started down the aisle, which was decorated with flowers from the palace garden.

“Better,” I whispered back. “A better Cary Grant. With a beard.”

Alec looked fantastic in his elegant suit with the vaguely Edwardian line. My gown was a copy of my great-grandmother’s, taken from her portrait: lace over silk, with white pearls embroidered at the neck and tight sleeves.

Memory comes in shards after that: Alec’s tight grip on my hands, as if to keep me anchored; Gran wiping her eyes; Tony flashed his challenging grin from the first pew. Tania, wearing sea green velvet, in the first row with her younger sister Teresa and her best friend Miriam. Those
teenage girls had been a great help to me, and I’d insisted they sit up front. Next to Tania was Natalie Miller, giving me a private thumbs up when our eyes met.

Then the choir began one of the songs that Mord had adapted, and flash! I saw the past. They were all there, not just Jaska and Aurélie kneeling at the altar side by side, but faint and shimmering Queen Sofia, who was the first ghost I had ever seen. She seemed to be looking right at me, her smile benevolent.

But I did not want to slip into the past. I blinked, willed them back into their time, and I was safely restored to mine.

After the wedding came the coronation part. It was a simple ceremony, involving hereditary crowns for Milo, Alec, Gran, and me, worn only for the duration of the ceremony. We each had vows to make, echoed back by the nobles, the Council, and then representatives of various professional guilds. The vows were much the same as they had been for many years. Probably Jaska had said the same words. Though monarchy was officially re-established after all those years of occupation, the agreement by the citizenry was an active thing, not passive: it was a conspiracy to invent the fiction of nobility, with all its constraints and obligations as well as the perks.

And then it was done.

We exited following King Milo, who walked with straight back, his hand tight on his cane, Gran at his side. Alec had gone in as Statthalter, but walked out as Crown Prince, arm in arm with me in my newly minted Princess Aurelia persona.

We stopped in a side room and shed the crowns, which would go back to live in their vault until the next special occasion.

Then came the parade. Mom and Tony had gotten the Bugatti cleaned up and running, and there it was, second in line, a dashingly handsome car. You could only call it archeo-modern, as it was so old-fashioned it was cool.

Milo and Gran led the parade in the huge car I thought of as the Kingmobile, a ’36 Mercedes-Benz Special Roadster. We drove in a circle along Riev’s four biggest streets, which had been decorated with flowers
of every hue by the citizens. People flung flowers into our open car until Alec and I sat in a sweet-smelling moat of blossoms. At various streets, representatives of guilds—mostly little kids in their very best clothes—presented us with symbolic gifts, and we gave them symbolic bags of coins, the speeches pretty much the same over and over, but at least they were short.

We started off from the cathedral going south, so we did not reach Xanpia’s Fountain until near the end of our loop. It was then, with the light just so, and the angle one I seldom took, that I happened to glance up at the statue itself. Usually I paid attention to the ghost shapes of animals and figures dancing in and out of liminal space around the fountain. Now it was Xanpia who drew my attention, though she didn’t do anything unnerving. The stone was just that, a carved smiling face, the lines blurred by ten centuries.

“What is it?” Alec asked, instantly concerned. I hadn’t been aware until that moment how intently he’d been observing me, and it struck me again that my long absence had been much harder on him than on me.

“Xanpia seemed really nice, but I hope I never meet her again.”

He reached for my hand. Our fingers laced, and tightened.

When we got back to the palace we changed out of our wedding clothes for the reception for the Five Families and the Council, after which everybody took a break to change into their evening clothes for the grand ball.

It came off brilliantly. The weather was perfect. I couldn’t help remembering the last time I’d danced on that marble floor, and of course Tony had to tease me about it. I made sure (from a distance) that Cerisette, looking impossibly elegant in her favorite Balenciaga, got the compliments she deserved for masterminding the entire day. At least we could work professionally, I thought, which was a step in the right direction. When she arrived home after the ball, she’d find my thanks in the form of a trip for two to Paris, a stay in her favorite hotel, the Renaissance Paris Vendôme, and tickets to what Phaedra said were her favorite places.

Alec and I danced together six times.

“Not too shabby,” Nat said to us during one of those dances, as she and her current sweetheart twirled by.

I looked across the crowded ballroom, where everyone seemed to be having a good time, to the cluster of teen girls in their new finery. A weed of a boy who couldn’t have been more than seventeen, obviously in his first tux, was tentatively approaching the girls, his huskier best bud at his shoulder. From the way the girls were whispering and poking at red-haired Miriam, she seemed to be embarking on the deep waters of a first dance.

Then we spun away.

An hour or so before dawn everybody started for home. This palace was now to be my home, Milo and Gran taking over Ysvorod House. The restoration work wasn’t completely done upstairs in the palace, but that was okay, because we wouldn’t be there.

I thought about Aurélie and Jaska on their way up to Sedania, the Dsaret hunting lodge back in those days, for their honeymoon.

I had no idea where we were going. This was Alec’s surprise for me. We changed one more time and then climbed into his new Daimler, suitcases already in the back. Alec slid into the driver’s seat and I next to him. I looked at him. He looked at me.

Next thing I knew we were in each other’s arms. For a while it seemed like we weren’t going to get out of the driveway, but eventually we pried ourselves apart, and he started driving. “You’re going to like this,” he said, grinning.

“As long it doesn’t involve ghosts, powerful artifacts, portals, or duels, I’m easy.”

“Maybe a duel. But only one.”

“Oh, well, I can handle that. Did you remember to pack swords, or is it dueling pistols?”

“Trunk is an arsenal. You can take your pick.”

It was going to take a while to extricate my thoughts from the past. “The truth is, I kind of liked popping demons. I totally agree with what Aurélie said, and I’m glad she freed them, even if they didn’t seem to
know what to do with freedom. But…the cause seemed so right, and fighting them was fun. Does that make me a bad person?”

Alec said, “It means you are human, with all that implies, good and bad. I have to confess that when you told me about it, my strongest reaction was the wish that I could have been fighting demons at your side.”

“Oh, I love that image.”

“Fighting demons?” He cast me an amused glance.

“No! Us. Side by side.”