Keir waved that off. "I just want to know one thing." He turned to Torian. "Why thefuckdid you let us think you were a monster?"
"Ms. Rhodes said we could not discuss our titles or ancestry." He glanced over at Aspen. "I agreed as long as keeping my silence did not cause my sister to suffer in any way." Then he looked back to Keir. "And since I'mnota jevadu, there was no reason I couldn't fight my best friend's battles for him." He tapped his chest. "Idon'tcareif people call me a monster. I already know I am."
"You're not," I hurried to say.
He just turned his fae eyes on me. "Haven't you figuredit out yet, Rain? You've had enough fae history to know this. If Aspen is the Winter Princess, and we share a father, then that only leaves one option. I was bred to inherit her throne. I was designed to take that power and funnel it to my mother."
"When the Mad Queen began killing the Winter nobility," Aspen explained, "our father cast a very strong enchantment. The Mad Queen would not stop until she was with child. My father needed a fertility spell, and it worked. His power was strong enough to create us both within days, and tie us together forever."
Torian glanced at her and smiled. "I told her."
"Oh," Aspen breathed.
He nodded. "No one else, though."
Ms. Rhodes just lifted a hand. "I do not want to know. Decide for yourselves if your friends need to." Again, the woman sighed, sounding like she was carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. "All of you need to understand that this? It is a mess. Many people - like the Valentinas - want to see all Winter fae exterminated. They think it will make Summer magic more powerful. And this? If they hadanyidea who Aspen was? Or Hawke?" She shook her head. "They would make sure the pair died."
"And Torian?" I asked.
He scoffed. "They would worship the ground I walk on. I am the Queen's only begotten son and heir."
"Explains the bad attitude," Keir teased.
Torian huffed, but one side of his mouth had curled higher. "Fuck off."
"Look," Bracken said. "All of this is dangerous, and with Aspen being the oldest living heir with a tie to inheriting the crown? People will want her dead if they know. Wilder's power is enough to put him at risk, but Aspen? If she survives long enough to - "
"I'm eighteen!" Aspen broke in. "I'm an adult, and now I can claim it, and I do! They're not going to stop just because I never wanted this. They don't care if I would rule well or horribly. They only care that I exist and that I could. I didn'taskto be born, but since I'm here? Since Torian's helping me? And Rain?!" She looked at me almost desperately. "I have to. I said it, and that may have been in a panic, and because I was scared Rain would die, but..."
"Say it," Torian told her.
"Iamthe Winter Queen!" Aspen insisted, lifting her chin slightly. "And I can still learn. I can still have fun with my friends. I can also change thingsfor the better, so I claim the crown. I am my father's first-born child, which means I am the Queen!"
The darkness in front of me popped, and an even darker shape unfurled, grew, and moved before me. Torian spun towards the sound. Keir's hand filled with swirling iridescence. Wilder shifted between it and Aspen. Hawke and I just flinched.
"Shadow!" Jack announced.
"Fuck!" Keir muttered as he shook his hands clean of magic. "Rain, you have got to - "
But my shadow grew a little taller and a lot more solid. The eyes appeared, but this time they were glowing with the same purple shade my stone often had. It looked at Aspen, turned to Torian, then back to Aspen and knelt.
"What?" Aspen asked.
I shook my head, as confused as she was, but the thing reached into its chest to reveal something that glistened. My mind couldn't even make sense of it at first, and then I realized the sparkle came from gems. So many gems! White, clear, blue, and even black sparkled in a setting that reminded me of a cluster of inverted icicles. In the center, right at the front, was an ornate silver snowflake, with a perfectly white orb in the center.
"The Winter Crown?" I asked.
"May I?" Torian asked his sister.
She jiggled her head in a nervous nod, so he reached for the crown the shadow was holding, but the glowing eyes narrowed to slits, and the shadow shifted the crown away. Torian paused, tilting his head slightly.
"I am her brother, and the spare to the throne. My goal is to coronate her, nothing more."
The eyes widened again, and it offered him the crown. Lifting it from the sides, Torian turned to Aspen and gently set the diamond-and-jewel-encrusted thing on her head. Then he caught her hands, gripping them tightly.
"For lack of a higher authority, since our father is dead, I am honored to coronate you as Ildilyntra Siel Zylfine, the Queen of Winter." And he dipped his head.
Around me, everyone sank to a knee. I looked from my zez to Ms. Rhodes, and then at all of my friends. But just as I shifted, intending to do the same, Torian's arm shot out and he pointed at me.
