Sera had both hands pressed over her mouth, and above them her eyes were shining and enormous, because the healer bought from a slave block with zero rights to her name was standing on a balcony listening to her people rename themselves after the man she loved.
Myrasyn lifted a hand and the square hushed by degrees. Her voice gentled at last, and she let it shake.
"Quinlan Elysiar. Son of Luminara." She turned fully to face him, the sunset behind her, her back to her whole people. "We are not offering you a throne. Thrones are things men take, and you are no mere man. You fed our refugees and freed our slaves and put my crown back on my head when its own council had thrown it in the mud, and you never once asked us for anything at all."
Her hands gathered her robes.
"So we are not granting. We are asking." Her eyes were bright and level. "Please. Accept us."
And the last Queen of the Elves knelt to Quinlan.
