Chapter 32
Three days too soon,the coach returns.
We packed our bags the night before and, at my insistence, stacked them by the door. Eldas refused to let me help the footman load up. So getting them ready to go was the least I could do.
As the footman begins loading the bags I wander back out through the kitchen, already like the ghost of another forgotten queen—one of many to float through this world, enjoy its pleasures, and then be swept away. I grab my elbows, looking out over the pool, remembering Eldas floating in it the afternoon prior. The sun glistening off his perfect, wet, and deliciously naked body. So delicious looking that I had to take a bite…
“Are you all right?” he asks softly. I didn’t even hear him join me outside this time.
“I wish I didn’t have to leave,” I admit.
His hands settle lightly on my hips. Eldas takes a small step closer and plants a sweet kiss in the crook of my neck.
“Duty calls, for now. But we could come back after seeing my brother.” He pauses, grips me tighter, then adds solemnly, “And after you recharge the throne once more.”
The air is already cooling around us. I am stronger than I have been in weeks, thanks to the natural magic living in this place. Strong enough that I can resist the temptation of coming back here. It was a lovely dream, and like all dreams, I have to wake up. There’s still work to be done and three-thousand-year-old cycles to end. I shake my head.
“By then it’ll be too close to the coronation.” Too close to when I will be cemented into this world and all possibility of choice along with the pursuit of truth will vanish. After the coronation, there can be no return and I will never freely explore the feelings I have for him. “We should go back to Quinnar and continue searching for the way to end the cycle.”
“Time is relentless,” he mutters. I’m forced to agree. I had told myself that my time here was a dream and I enjoyed it like one. Now, the dawn is cruel and I wonder if I will ever find another morning kind.
“Thank you for taking me here, for showing me this, for giving me rest—”
“I did not give you that much rest.” He smirks and I can’t stop myself from kissing off the expression between chuckles.
“Thank you for everything,” I whisper over his lips.
“You seem to have enjoyed yourself.” His voice has a delighted and sultry tone. He knows full well I enjoyed myself all over this place. He was the source of the majority of that enjoyment.
“It was all right.” I grin.
He releases me, aghast. “Just all right?”
“Perhaps you should work harder.” I glance over my shoulder and it’s his turn to claim my coy grin with his mouth. Our kisses are still the hungry sort that has him almost pushing me up against the wall and hiking my skirts. Even when they linger, they’re filled with desire deeper than any emotion I’ve ever known.
“Don’t challenge me,” Eldas growls, biting my lower lip and drawing forth a moan. “Or I may exceed your expectations.”
“Maybe I want that.”
“Oh, I know you want it. But can you handle it?”
Even as I look at him, determined, I shiver with delight. He’s a sensual dream of a man. The footman saves us before we give into baser instincts.
“Your Majesties.” He bows and keeps his eyes on the ground. Eldas takes a half step away from me, but his palm still rests on the small of my back. He’s not afraid to touch me in front of others anymore, a fact that I think I might like. “The coach is ready whenever you are.”
“Let’s not delay,” Eldas declares.
A pang of longing constricts the muscles around my heart as I step over the threshold of the cottage. I can imagine the curlicues of the vines wriggling for me, reaching like the hands of children. The land itself begs for me with a whisper I feel more than hear. It resonates through my feet.
With one last look at the queen’s oasis in a desert of wild magic and gray castles, I step into the coach.
We’re silent for most of the way to Westwatch. The silence is a comfortable third companion, someone we met one night while sweaty, tired, and satisfied, and now know well. Eldas’s journal is back on his lap and we spend most of the journey writing and reading. I finally have a few hours uninterrupted reading time when I’m not too distracted by his presence to focus.
“Oh,” I exhale. My eyes are stuck to a page. I know whose journal this is. My heart races. Perhaps this journal was waiting in that desk, holding itself together for this moment. My searching that night was rewarded.
I’m holding the journal of the first queen.
“We’re here,” Eldas says with a note of affirmation. He misinterpreted the sound I made. I jerk my head upward, about to correct him, but am distracted as the coach rolls slowly across a wide drawbridge. Eldas points over my shoulder at a wall that stretches upward into the sky and sprints toward the horizon east and west. “That’s the elf border,” he says. “My great, great grandfather was the one to build the wall to keep out the fae fighting and other agitators from elf lands. There’s the river I told you about as the added protection.”