"It's been a wild month," he replies, cracking his knuckles. A thick black cuff is tattooed across each of his forearms, a look that he informed me when he got them as a teenager is 'irresistible to women'. I imagine that to Renna we look like we could be brothers, which I suppose in a way we are, being two of the oldest people left on this earth.
"Jokes aside, I've never been so grateful that you taught me to sail a ship. I'm taking her straight back to the mountains to pick up another boatload of people." Pale blue eyes gaze at the stretch of dampened mud that was underwater a few days ago. "It's...is it receding?"
My arm snakes around my soon-to-be-wife's waist. "Rennalya put the stone back."
"With my brother and my friend," she mumbles, and I pull her a little closer, enveloping her in the heat that radiates from my body.
Siddie's eyes widen a little, disbelief written all over his face. "It's back? Holy shit. Thank you, Rennalya."
"For the love of all that is holy, please donotcall me Rennalya," she replies, her sweet hands clasped together like she’s begging. She's so beautiful, dressed in a black hunting trousers and a belt that cinches her waist. I press a kiss to the top of her head, liking the feel of her safely tucked into my side.
Siddie's smiling like a fucking lunatic at her, and I can see a friendship forming before my eyes. "Yeah? Or what?"
"Or I'll takeyourfather intoyourbedroom, intoyourbed, and let him do horrible things—“ I put a hand over her mouth, stopping whatever filth she was conjuring from leaving her mouth. She's out of control. She's known him all of five minutes.
Siddie just throws his head back laughing. "Fair point well made, Renna."
His eyes dart from me to her, then back to me. I know what he's thinking. Firstly, that she's beautiful. Secondly, it's not shocking that I'm with a woman, it's shocking that I'm displaying any affection in public, at all. When you're as famous as I am, you don't give the public any hope for a new Queen unless there is a real chance it'll happen. "So this is more than just a fling."
"Rennalya has agreed to be my wife.”
A dark eyebrow raises, and he looks down at Renna as if seeing her for the first time. "Interesting. And this doesn't have anything to do with the fact that you're claiming the last sorceress as your own? Because that's not very women's-rights of you."
Renna laughs out loud, and I can tell she loves Siddie already. "Shall I blink twice if I need help?"
My son grins, looking at her but tilting his head in my direction. "Please do. He can be an overbearing arse."
She whistles through her teeth. "You said it, not me."
"Are you two quite finished?" I interject, grumpily. They're exhausting individually, and I already know that together they're going to test my patience to its already-narrow limits. Renna smiles up at me, and I fight the urge to kiss her. I want her so badly, but I have to resist until she's better.
"I'll let you old men catch up for a little while," she says, giving Siddie a cheerful smile and heading off to help some guards carry children out of boats.
"She's fucking funny," observes Siddie, watching her sit a toddler on her hip as she holds the hand of a woman who steps out of a small boat. He's envious.
"She is."
"But isn't she an assassin? You don't think that's going to be a newspaper nightmare?"
"She's ahuntress. She hasn't taken an assassination contract in months, but yes, it will be. Everything will be a problem with the newspapers I'm sure, from her height, to her origins, to her job. It's not going to ruin us."
Siddie raises his eyebrows as we walk back up the riverbank and towards the tree line where a group of our friends are jogging towards Siddie. "You really are in love. I'm just surprised, given the fact you hate emotions and all."
"Welcome back, Your Majesty," says Ellatar, as Siddie pulls him into a hug.
"Good to be home, despite the obvious," replies Obsidian, hugging Aanen next. Once he's reunited with our friends, we ride back to the palace and I catch up on half an hour of paperwork while he heads to his halls to wash and change.
He bumbles into my study, opera singing and dancing before spreading himself out across the sofa. I sit at the huge dark wood desk, each of us with a bowl of wild rice and venison salad. Birds chirp in the vaulted ceiling overhead, bushy green branches tumbling down from the beams. I have lost count of the number of meals I’ve eaten with Siddie here. From him being too small for his high chair to too big for a regular-person chair.
“So how did you meet her?" He asks, putting a huge forkful of salad into his mouth, eating like he'd been starved for weeks. Perhaps he has. He's fascinated by Renna, as is everyone who meets her.
"She was trespassing and sneaking around the Vault. I imprisoned her."
“From enemies to lovers. Nice," he says, nodding his head and giving me a suggestive eyebrow raise.I've raised an imbecile. "When was this?"
"About twenty months ago."
"That long?! You were with her when you saw me last and didn't tell me?" A glimmer of hurt flickers in his eyes and I shake my head.
