Chapter 39
The silence is deafening.I could hear a cherry blossom petal land it’s so quiet. I don’t know what everyone’s reactions are. The only person I’m focused on is Eldas. The only person whose opinion even remotely matters to me here is him.
His shock fades into something I’d dare say is warm. After the initial horror at my outburst—at how none of this is in line with his traditions—fades away. There are the eyes I recognize. Eyes I fell in love with and have been longing to see while back in the Natural World.
“And I love you,” he says, finally.
Four words, and things click into place. I have a lot I need to figure out here. There are a lot of unknowns surrounding what I will be to this world now that a Human Queen is no longer needed to make the seasons turn. But I’ll figure everything out, because the man standing before me is every possibility I want to embrace.
“If—” Eldas clears his throat “—if you will all excuse the queen and I for a moment.” Eldas holds out his hand and I cross the room to him, trying my best to glide and hold my head high.
I might not look like the queens they know. But maybe in time they’ll embrace the different sort of queen I already am. I slowly ascend the stairs and Eldas’s fingers curl around mine. My magic calls out to his and invisible sparks fly between our skin, leaving me breathless.
He escorts me up the stairs and into a side room, closing the door quickly behind us.
Eldas rounds on me. I might have expected him to be slightly cross for how I handled things, but there’s a fire in his eyes that isn’t angry in the slightest. His hands are on my face, cupping my cheeks. “Say it again,” he whispers like a sigh of relief he’s been holding ever since I left.
“I love you,” I repeat from earlier, but this time only for him. “I’ve loved you since the cottage. Since…I don’t know when. Somewhere along the way I fell in love with you. You and I…these circumstances we met under have been a bit of a mess. But I love you despite them all.”
“Then why did you stay away?” he whispers. “Why didn’t you tell me before you left?”
“Because I was a coward,” I admit aloud for my sake and his. “I was afraid that I only thought I loved you because I had little other option. I thought the love was fabricated for my own survival, since I thought there was no other way out—that I would be stuck here forever. I was afraid of a love that came from a lack of choice. I was afraid I didn’t even know what love was because I don’t think I’ve ever felt it before.”
“But when you had your way out…when you had the choice you desired…you came back.” Eldas trails his eyes over me now and I tingle with delight. A look has never been more intimate. I’m stripped with a gaze alone.
“I had to come back. I found my answer while I was in Capton—I love you for all you are and all we are together. It is not my imagination; it isn’t survival. Yes, Eldas, I had freedom and choice and I choose you. I know none of this came about in a conventional way, but it’s genuine. And I thought that, maybe, we could give this another try.”
“A try?” He arches his dark eyebrows and I laugh softly.
“We went about this backwards, you know. We got married, tumbled into bed, fell in love. Usually it’s the other way around.”
“I liked how we went about this,” Eldas says. His voice is auditory silk. It brushes over my skin and my body tenses. “Because it led me to you.”
“I think I can agree with that,” I breathe.
He crushes his lips against mine with a restless kiss of pent-up desire and longing caresses. He presses me against the door, groping at my rear, pulling at my hair. For the first time in my life, I hate that I wore trousers.
I kiss him with equal fervor. I run my fingers through his raven hair, shamelessly spilling it over his shoulders and curtaining it around our faces. I caress his cheek as his mouth moves against mine. I taste his tongue over and over and hope it is merely the first taste of many I get of him today.
And when he pulls away, I am weak in the knees and relying on the door behind me for support. I am ready to tumble on the floor with him naked. I am ready for that whole room to hear my cries of ecstasy so long as it means I would have him moving within me once more.
“So what now?” I breathe, glancing between him, the floor, and the door behind me.
Eldas pulls me to him and his other arm slips back around my waist.
“Now,” he growls over my lips. His fingers have slipped into my hair and I tilt my head back to give him full access. “Now, my queen, my wife, I will take you to bed.”
“But the people—”
“Let them wait. We are the king and queen, after all. Our coronation will occur when it is meant to.”
* * *
Two days slipthrough my fingers like the ease of Eldas’s fingers through my hair when we’re in bed. The outburst has been the talk of the town and speculation has been firing left and right about why the Human Queen came rushing in, what it had to do with Eldas’s announcement about the seasons, and why the Human Queen was wearing such plain clothing. There’s even been some speculation that our love itself was what broke the cycle of the Human Queens.
That is a history I will be certain to rewrite. Love is powerful, but so is the hard work Eldas and I have put in. The hard work we will continue to do to be good rulers for this land.
If it were up to me, we would’ve stayed in his chambers for eternity. But duty calls eventually. Sooner rather than later the coronation must happen. We could stall for a day or two, but any more would blow past scandalous into lewd behavior.