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It had felt good and right to plan their futures. Zeph and Astar’s wedding had been a foregone conclusion, what with Astar giving Zeph the engagement ring entrusted to him by the high queen, a ring boasting one of his grandmother’s cabochon bloodred rubies. And, of course, Gen and Isyn had already gotten married during the quest, unwilling to wait lest they hadn’t survived that final battle. Lena and Rhy had no wedding plans, but no one expected that, all of them just frankly relieved that the star-crossed pair had finally settled their differences and were blissfully happy together again.
And then, there was Stella and him. The princess and pirate. Jak hadn’t necessarily planned to get married, but he found himself on one knee, proposing to Stella with a ring Ami had given him, another of those antique rubies, the twin of the one Astar had given Zeph. With an uncomfortable twist of unease, Jak realized that perhaps Stella had accepted because she wanted to do what her fraternal twin did. All this push to have their wedding first… What if it came from Stella keeping up with her brother? Suddenly Jak wasn’t at all sure why they were doinganyof this.
And Stella sensed it in him.
“What did you see?” he asked her recklessly, hoping against hope to divert her. Forcing himself to be charming, he took her hand and gallantly kissed it. “A glittering midwinter wedding and then happily ever after?”
She regarded him so somberly that he immediately regretted being cavalier. With a sigh, she withdrew her hand. “I can’t touch you right now.”
That was a bad sign. A very bad sign.
“You know by now that what I see of the future isn’t always reliable,” she added, before he could think of what to say.
“All right,” he replied carefully. If he’d felt he treaded a dangerous path before, now he felt as if he walked the plank, facing shark-infested waters. “But I also know by now that you can usually sort through the most likely outcomes. What did you see?”
Stella shrugged unhappily, lowering her gaze, fidgeting with the bloodred ruby in her engagement ring, twisting it round and round her slender finger. “Maybe you’re right, Jak.”
“Right about what?”
She hesitated.
Very, very bad sign.
“That this is all too much,” she finally answered, twisting that ring, round and round. “The wedding, getting married, being married.”
Jak took a deep breath, settling and focusing himself. This was trickier and more fraught than throwing daggers at a spinning target with all his money riding on the bet. This was his happiness and hers. “Those are three different things,” he pointed out. “A huge state wedding is not the same as getting married, and getting married isn’t the same asbeingmarried.”
Her gaze flashed up to his, silvery with rare anger. “Don’t you condescend to me, Jakral Konyngrr.”
He lifted his hands in peaceable surrender even as he set his teeth. “I’m not. I want to clarify what it is we’re talking about here. Which part is too much?”
“You tell me,” she shot back. “You’re the one who doesn’t want to do this.”
Flinching as if she’d flung a dagger at him and pierced him to the heart, he opened and closed his mouth, no wit to form words. It was an exceptionally poor moment for his usually glib tongue to fail him, as Stella watched with remorseless satisfaction, completely vindicated in her assessment.
“That’s wrong,” he finally managed to get out, shaking his head as if that might bolster the truth of his words. “Idowant to do this. All of this.”
“Liar,” she replied softly.
Blazing with frustration—maybe denying his own sexual satisfaction had been a terrible idea—he sprang up to pace. Because he had to dosomething, he pulled a dagger and spun it rapidly through his fingers, wishing fervently that he could throw it at something. He wasn’t built to stay in one place like this, facing enemies like seating charts, guest lists, and obtaining tropical flowers in midwinter. He liked an opponent he could see—and skewer.
Stella watched him knowingly, her knees drawn up against her chest, arms wrapped around them, her hair a tenebrous cocoon shrouding her. Never mind that the position also revealed the darkly pink cleft of her sex, a devastating distraction. He wanted Stella with an abiding passion, had felt that way about her as far back as he could remember. Even when he’d resolved to leave her alone as she’d claimed she’d wanted, he’d longed for her on a level that defied rational explanation or all of the very good reasons to turn his attention elsewhere. The simple fact remained that she was the only woman for him. How could she not understand that?
“I feel like I’ve told you this innumerable times.” His words came out somewhat harsh with his agitation. “I want to be with you, Stella. I want to be part of your life, however you’ll have me. How many times do we have to have this conversation? We’re getting married, for Danu’s sake!”
Stella cocked her head, expression intent as if she were listening to distant music. “You didn’t answer my question,” she said, finally and quietly. “I asked which part is too much and now I think the answer is all of it.”
A cold dread shivered through him. “Stella,” he said in warning, “don’t you do this.”
“I’m notdoinganything,” she replied evenly, drawing her knees up tighter. “I’m only trying to ascertain what’s going on here.”
“What’s going on is thatyouare overthinking,” he snarled, spinning the blade more rapidly as he paced. “Which, I might point out, is one of your specialties, my dark star. You say I didn’t answer the question? Fine. No part of this is too much for me because there is nothing I wouldn’t endure for your sake. I’d give my bloody life for you and arguably did on more than one occasion. I love you with everything in me. I don’t understand why, if I’m such an open book to you, I have to keep telling you this.”
Stella sighed, uncurled from her protected pose, and slid off the bed. Walking naked, shrouded only in her glorious hair, she retrieved a robe from the wall cabinet and shrugged into it. “Of course I know you love me, Jak,” she said, her voice and posture remote. “I’ve always sensed it from you, even when I hoped you’d grow out of it as a youthful obsession.” She gave him a soft, fleeting smile he couldn’t make himself return.
He was well aware of how she’d viewed him as too young and impetuous to know his own mind and heart. What worried him greatly is she seemed to think that still.
Sobering, she shook her head. “But this wedding is only a small taste of what being married to me will be like. You talk about sailing the seas and visiting other worlds, but I was born to be a political creature, as my mother never fails to remind me. Dealing withthissort of thing is what lies in my future.”
