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“To them, I am King,” he whispered, lifting a grape up to my mouth. “To you, I am Gale. Your husband. You are my wife. I will get on my knees. You will get on your knees… We will bow and do all sorts of unroyal things to each other, as often as possible, I hope.”
I chewed slowly, watching him, and he watched me back. “Sometimes with you, it feels like this sweet, PG Disney fairy tale. Other times it’s…”
“NC-17,” he shot back and fed me another grape.
All I could do was nod.
He brought me closer to him until I was basically lying on top of him. “I wish it could always be a fairy tale. But I’m not sure I can promise you that. What I can promise is that I will always love you. I will always be yours and yours alone.”
“I know,” I whispered, running my hand over his bare chest. “I know it won’t always be sunshine, rainbows, and magic. I promise all the same back to you…forever and ever…and ever.”
He chuckled and tapped my nose.
“Her beauty is not just in the night.
For even in the daylight, my lover shines bright.
So much more than the sun.
She warms even the hardest hearts at first sight.
God-given,
Divinely made,
With a voice that envies mermaids.
Oh, my lover, how I love her.
There can be none other.
For I am set on the one called Odette.”
I grinned. There went all those giddy feelings in me again. “Forever and ever?”
“Forever and ever,” he said and kissed me again.
CHAPTER 2
November 28
I am King.
I knew there was so much more to write. The most important should have been the beautiful woman who was now my wife, now in my bed, exhausted by all of the day’s celebrations…and me. I couldn’t help but smile a bit at that, glancing over to where she lay naked under the sheets, her curly, brown hair a mess across the pillow…both of our clothes from the night before still littered across the bedroom floor.
Yesterday was perfect.
Our wedding and coronation had gone exactly as planned. Celebrations had broken throughout the nation all day and night; the fireworks of our names could be seen all across the sky. I could still hear the cheers, the screaming, ringing out in my ears. Never had I been so happy…in fact, I was so happy I was exhausted by my happiness, but I could not sleep due to the three words that replayed over and over in my mind.
I am King.
How could three words be so heavy?
I stared back at them in my journal and felt my chest tighten, unable to write anything more than that. Today was the first anniversary of Arthur’s death…that was why I was King. King by tragedy. King by mistake. It wasn’t supposed to be me. And yet it was…so now what? Was I really ready for this? Over the last few weeks, I had convinced myself that maybe I’d grown, that maybe just maybe I wouldn’t tremble at the thought of this great reasonability, and yet…yet here I was shaking in my robes.
Like a coward.
“Gale?”
