Chapter 195: A Proper Entrance

Luceriel

He had agreed to the marriage without a single word of complaint, and that fact alone unsettled him more than the marriage itself.

He should not have believed a human. A human could lie. A human could be manipulated, or mistaken, or simply mad with grief.

Every instinct Luceriel possessed told him to doubt every word that had come out of Seraphel’s mouth in that council hall.

But he had seen a fragment of the future himself, and in it he had watched his own sight consume him. He had felt the cost of it building behind his eyes for weeks now, and no amount of pride made that untrue.

So he agreed.

Now he stood at the altar barely a handful of hours later, wondering whether he had made the correct decision, wondering whether he had allowed fear to do what centuries of persuasion never could. He turned it over and over in his mind and arrived at the same place each time. He had not been afraid of dying. He had been afraid of dying uselessly, of leaving his brothers unguarded and his kingdom burning, and of Seraphel’s account being true in every detail while he stood there insisting it was not.

Luceriel had always wondered how it would be if he wasn’t there around his brother, especially since they relied on his leadership as the first child.

Whatever this was, it was not a weakness. He would not permit himself to call it weakness.

"I did my very best to make certain you look presentable, dear brother," Raizel announced, fanning himself with slow, satisfied strokes.

The Sin of Greed had dressed himself entirely in gold for the occasion, from the heavy embroidered robe draped across his shoulders to the gilded fan he kept flicking open and shut, and he wore the expression of an artist standing before his finished masterpiece. He tilted his chin, studying his own work, and then gestured toward Luceriel with the fan.

"Emerald was the only sensible choice for you. Anything paler would have washed you out entirely." He stepped closer, adjusting a fold in the fabric that did not require adjusting. "And the phoenix took my people eleven hours."

It was, Luceriel admitted privately, magnificent.

The robe was deep emerald silk, so dark in the low light that it verged on black, and stitched across the back and sweeping down one sleeve was a phoenix worked entirely in crimson thread, its wings spread wide, its tail feathers trailing all the way to the hem in long licks of red.

When he moved, the stitching caught the lantern light and the bird seemed to shift with him, as though it were about to lift away from the silk entirely. His hair had been drawn up and pinned with a clasp shaped in the same design, a phoenix in flight, its small ruby eye catching the light whenever he turned his head.

"Dear brother looks so pretty, even while he continues to frown," Taizel observed, clapping his hands together twice.

Luceriel frowned harder and did not look at him.

He was fidgeting with his own fingers. He noticed it, stopped, and then caught himself doing it again a moment later.

Pazuzu was late.

It had been several minutes already. The ceremony was to be a brief one, stripped down to the essentials, because none of them had the luxury of anything more elaborate. Pazuzu should have arrived, spoken the words, and been done with it by now. Instead the altar stood empty across from him.

"Why is Pazuzu late?" Seraphel asked, voicing the exact thought in Luceriel’s head. "We have a few hours at most before the Demon King arrives."

Sariel scoffed loudly. "Perhaps the demon prince finally came to his senses. It would be quite something, would it not? Days of chasing after a man who despises him, an entire kingdom assembled, and the mate left standing at the altar in a robe that cost eleven hours of embroidery." He examined his own nails. "Though I suppose that would at least spare us all the indignity of the reception."

"Silence," Luceriel growled.

Azriel cleared his throat, cutting the argument off before it could properly begin. "I need all of you to calm yourselves. There is no reason to fight here. It is only us. My brothers, Luceriel’s second in command Rona," he nodded toward the woman standing at Luceriel’s side of the altar, her red hair pinned back and her monocle catching the light, "Anomas and Thamiel, who are used to us by now, and one uninvited guest from Elysium."

"Tobias is with me," Uriel interrupted as Azriel’s hand drifted toward him. "He is my mate, and he has already given up more for us than any of you—"

"Nobody cares about anyone from Elysium," Sariel cut in.

"Is that so? Then perhaps we should discuss Zephyrus and where exactly you have been keeping him—"

"Enough!" Luceriel snapped, unable to bear another moment of it. "Stop this ridiculous bickering. We have far more pressing matters before us."

That silenced them, which was the only mercy the evening had granted him so far.

And then the sound began.

It started as a single deep drumbeat that rolled through the courtyard and up into the darkening sky, and then another, and another, until the rhythm settled into something steady and ceremonial. Trumpets joined it from somewhere beyond the walls, bright and clear, and beneath those came strings and the high thin call of flutes, the full arrangement of a Verolonian royal procession, the kind of music Luceriel had ordered played for coronations and nothing less.

He had not arranged any of this.

Flower petals came next, thousands of them, violet and white, spilling down through the air in slow spirals as though the wind itself had been instructed exactly where to place them. Fireworks cracked open across the darkened sky in bursts of purple and gold, throwing colored light across every upturned face in the courtyard.

And through all of it came the sound of wings.

Pazuzu descended out of the fireworks with his black wings spread to their full span, slowing as he approached, landing at the far end of the aisle with a grace that made the entire display look effortless.

"I do apologize for the delay," he called out. "One does not marry the Sin of Pride without a proper entrance."