Page 15 of Crowned for My Royal Baby

I moved to my position at the front of the church, and I looked around. It was amazing, the number of people that had come for this. Who were looking to the future of Pelion. We were all done with business as it had been conducted under my father’s reign. So many of the people in my country didn’t even know life out from under his thumb. But it would change.

It was all changing today.

And I kept my thoughts on the state of the country as music began to play. As my daughter came down the aisle with her flower petals and a grin on her face to light up the entire church.

And then the music changed, and the spectators stood. And I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that if it had been Vanessa I was waiting for, if it had been Vanessa concealed by those double doors, my chest would not be locked up like there was a rock directly in the center of it. I knew. I knew. I knew.

But as it was, I found that I could not breathe.

That kiss...

Two weeks ago, my lips had touched Marissa’s for the first time in years. And I remembered.

Remembered why that particular spark was an insanity that transcended all else. I remembered why I had been willing to overturn cars, my life, anything in order to get another taste of the passion that was between us. A passion that was unlike anything else I had ever experienced. Marissa. An intoxicating flavor unlike any other. I needed it like none I had ever known before.

And then those doors parted, and it was like the sun had been let into that old stone building.

She was an angel. An angel of light come down into hell with me.

I was going to take her back to that glittering obsidian palace, full of darkness and soaked in centuries of despair.

And I did not even regret it. How could I? How could I win this vision of beauty that was mine to capture? Mine to hold an ethereality just short of heaven that had fallen down to earth so that I might pick her up and conceal her in all that darkness.

The dress was a cloud, falling effortlessly over her body, swirling around her legs with each step she took. The neck was square and low, revealing a tantalizing amount of her beautiful curves.

Her dark hair was pulled back, wisps of curls cascading around her face.

I was thankful that the makeup for the wedding day was more natural than what she’d had the day of the press conference. She had been beautiful—she was always beautiful—but I had missed that familiar beauty.

As she drew closer, she filled my vision, made the edges of the view before me go fuzzy, until it was only her I saw.

For three years I had seen only Marissa.

So this was a familiar state for me.

But not a comfortable one.

And she thought that we would not consummate this marriage.

I reached out, and she took my hand.

It was trembling.

I was cast back to that first time we’d been together on the beach in Medland.

She’d been a virgin, and I had ached with a strange sense of humility.

That she had given her body to me. That she had done so with joy, in spite of her nerves.

I had never known such a feeling. I had never been given such a gift.

I was struck with the parallels between that moment and this. This vision in white walking toward me like a virgin sacrifice.

But she was not a virgin.

And she was not giving herself as a gift.

I had to remember that.

I had not told her about what was to happen after the wedding. She would not be happy.

But the decision had been made, and I had not consulted her. She would have to get used to such things.

The vows felt like they had an especially heavy weight to them. Perhaps because I was promising myself to her for the sake of a nation and promising myself to the nation as well. And to Lily. Because the vows were a tangle of vines around the both of us, and so many other things.

But then, nothing else mattered. Because then it was time for me to kiss her again. And it consumed me.

When the minister gave the command, I was more than ready. And it didn’t matter to me that we were in a church, or that we had onlookers. All that mattered was her.

I cupped her face with my hands, and the silk of her skin made me shudder. I leaned in, inhaling the scent of her. Her beauty. Her perfection.

Her.

And then I tasted her.

Slowly at first, encouraging her to part her lips for me that I might taste her even deeper.

And she obeyed.

I would feast on her, except that I knew I would not be able to gorge myself entirely on her beauty because there were limits to what could be expressed here and now. So I ended the kiss, with much more regret than I care to admit.

We were then pronounced man and wife, and immediately after I took bonding vows to become the King, as she vowed to be consort and, like myself, put the kingdom of Pelion before all else.

It was a funny thing, but as she took the vows, I knew that they were a lie. She would not put the kingdom above all else, because she would always place Lily above anything else in the world. And I found a measure of satisfaction in that. Because whatever my feelings, they would not be hers. She would be the one who compensated for all my shortcomings. And I would rule. As I should. As I must.

When it was done, I bent down and picked Lily up from the ground, holding her, and she clung to me as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

It was not. Not for me, still not. But that it was for her was one of the more revelatory things I had ever experienced.

We would do official portraits later, but for now, these would be the first photographs together of us as the royal family.

Family.

It was one of those words that was thrown around often enough, though in my family, it was more likely that you would hear about blood. Blood, that most important of connectors, that essential component that made a person, and/or Royal, worthy or not in the eyes of my father.

It meant something different to me in that moment, and I could not credit why, which was added to the list of unsettling things I’d been grappling with for the past two weeks.

There were postwedding celebrations planned, but we would not attend t

hem. It was not customary for a royal couple to do so. They would either retire to small, private parties, or they would do as we were about to do.

I set Lily down, taking hold of her hand, and we walked down the aisle together.

Marissa’s mother, who had been seated in the front row, joined us, and when we were in a private room at the back of the church, I knelt down in front of my daughter. “Will you be all right staying with Nana for the next week?”

Lily frowned. “What?”

“We are going to move from the big house into the palace,” I said. “But it will take some time.” Some of that to do with the fact that I was having every piece of my father’s legacy removed from the place.

“And your mother and I are going on a honeymoon.”

Marissa sputtered, “You didn’t say anything about a honeymoon.”

“I know I didn’t, because I suspected you would fight me. But this is not something worth having a fight over, my Queen. It is a tradition among royal families that we retreat to the private island for this period of time away from the spotlight, away from all others. It has been prepared for our arrival, and there is no question of whether or not we will go.”

“You would have gone with Vanessa?” she asked, and I was surprised at how quickly she reversed the immediate spark of rage in her eye.

“Yes,” I responded. “I would have. As tradition dictates.”

“Our agreement stands.”

I cast a glance at my new mother-in-law. “Our agreement stands,” I said, and I wonder if her mother had any idea what that agreement was.

I gritted my teeth, because of course I could not help but imagine demolishing that resolve of hers.

“You might have asked me,” she said.

“Did you have other plans?” I asked.

Perhaps not the best tone to take immediately with one’s mother-in-law looking on, but I was King, after all.

“You know I didn’t,” she said.

“You and Lily will have free run of the house while the palace is being prepared,” I said to her mother. “When Marissa and I return, we will all go together.”

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