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When all was said and done, I pulled Cerri away from the table. We stepped up to the roof to speak privately. I watched my queen lift her face to the sun. The light danced across her freckles and made them glimmer with a rainbow of color, revealing the fae magic just beneath her skin.
Even her aura danced with that same bright array. I touched her cheek and fought the urge to kiss her. She didn’t hold back the way I did. Cerri rose onto her tiptoes and lightly pressed her lips to mine. Though she didn’t open for more, she did linger until my heart thought it would burst.
“I’m not ready,” I confessed.
Cerri dropped back down and stared up at me in betrayed shock.
I swallowed. “Let me amend that. I’m not ready to lose.”
“Then we won’t.” She straightened and raised her chin.
There was no way of knowing that for sure. Her demi-god friend refused to tamper with the threads of fate, and I honestly didn’t blame her. As much as I would have liked to have this win set in stone, I didn’t want to risk anything else, either.
For the first time in my life, I had too much to lose. I cupped Cerri’s cheek and stared into her soft eyes. She was the first person to ever show me affection and consideration. Now that I had a taste for it, I yearned for more. My hunger was insatiable.
And I had a home. I had my own domain, even.
Cerri had given me the chance to have so much more than I ever expected.
“I promise I’ll do everything in my power to get you that throne.” I nearly choked on my words.
I could hear the admission behind them, the fear that I wouldn’t make it out. As badly as I wanted to hang on to everything I had now, I knew what was more important. Cerri’s throne and the safety of her court would have to come first. That way, I would know that she was safe even long after I was gone.
She grabbed the front of my shirt and shook me. The world actually quaked when she growled at me.
“Don’t you dare talk like that.”
I almost laughed. Of course, she’d heard the underlying words. She knew exactly what I hadn’t said. If anyone could hear what I meant, it would be her. There was nothing I could hide from this woman.
I pressed my forehead to hers. She jerked back in annoyance. Clearly, she wasn’t finished being mad at me. I picked her up and spun her around. Anything to chase away the darkness that I’d invited into our conversation. I wanted to hear her laughter, but instead I felt her nails digging into my shoulders like she alone could hold me here.
“You realize I’m friends with a death demi-god, right?”
“Fae don’t have souls, princess.” I set her down.
She glared up at me, and I could almost feel my non-existent soul shaking in the face of her queenly fury.
“I would sacrifice entire worlds for you,” she whispered low, just between the two of us.
I huffed a laugh. “Don’t let anyone else hear you say that.”
Brushing a curl of her white hair behind her ear, I watched her eyes drift closed at my touch. Perhaps without thinking, she leaned into my fingers like a flower turning towards the light of the sun. But I wasn’t the sun. I wasn’t even a lightbulb.
I was the shadow that followed in her shining wake.
Once again, I laughed.
She cracked open an eye to glare at me some more. “What’s so funny?”
“At first, I thought of you like the sun. You shone bright enough to sting my eyes. I thought you lost that light somewhere along the way, but that’s not what happened. You became a star, bigger and brighter than ever before. You just moved to make room for the shadows, too.”
A smile reached her lips. There was no sadness in it; not anymore. I knew that talking about the change in her arcana used to bother her. She missed the warmth of the sun that used to grace her power. Without it, she must have felt alien and off kilter.
But she wasn’t any different than before. If anything, she was stronger. She was the queen of the dreamscape and the seed of life.
I could have gone on forever.
“You are my Seelie Queen, my starlight in the dark, my voluptuous little vixen, my tea drinking maven, my savior and my soul.” I dropped to one knee and kept her hand in mine. “You are everything I dreamed I would never have. There is not one day, one moment, one heartbeat that goes by that I don’t think about you. I would gladly sacrifice everything if only so that I knew you would be safe for every year to come.”
