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Having them around was almost like having a family. It was almost like I was not really alone.
I have to steel myself and take a deep breath before entering Diane’s room. I am not sure why the door seems so imposing now. But I need to see her.
She is asleep when I walk in. Curled up in a ball underneath the silk sheets. I can hear her moaning and murmuring from where I am. I stay in the doorway for a moment. Then, taking a breath, I walk forward.
When I sit down on the bed next to her, she is shivering. Her skin is pale, and her brow is furrowed. She is frowning in her sleep. Then I notice them.
Tears. They stream steadily down her face. Her eyelids twitch as she cries mostly noiselessly. But every few seconds I hear an audible murmur. A cry for her mother. For her brother.
She has changed in the time since I last saw her. Since I have been ignoring her.
She is thin, her skin stretched tight over her body. Like she isn’t eating.
The instinct to heal her cannot be fought. I am reaching for her before I am conscious of it. My hands go to hers, and I clasp her smaller ones in mine. Then I murmur the words to an old healing spell. My own eyes close as her body goes still.
I can feel her pain like it is my own. I am not sure if it is the mating bond that connects us. It might be the spell. Or maybe her pain is just that palpable.
But just like I can feel her pain, I also feel her relax. The tension leaves her body, but she remains asleep. My eyes open, and I watch as the tears dry up. But I only exhale with relief when the shivering stops.
She turns onto her back, pulling the sheets with her. Her forehead is smooth instead of furrowed. Diane looks almost peaceful. Almost happy. Her breathing is also less erratic as I lean down and kiss the palms of her hands.
The only thing that has not returned is her color. She is still deathly pale. But I can handle that.
When she wakes, her entire world will be different. And I am quite sure her color will return. She will regain the weight she has lost. And her stress will vanish.
I refuse to accept anything less for her.
“I am so sorry.” The words slip from me involuntarily. I seem to have no control over myself around her. Around my mate.
“I am so sorry for making you suffer. But I know what to do now.”
The Kingship has fallen away from me. The power does not matter any longer. The hard work was for naught all along. I will remain a simple Duke as long as Diane is by my side.
This has been the future from the moment she was chosen as my mate.
She is the only thing that matters. The only thing I can care about.
Nothing else.
17
DIANE
The dream I’m having suddenly shifts, in line with the absurd illogic of sleep, augmented by my fever. In the dream, a wormhole rips me out of a flashback from the Winter of Woe, as they later called it — the year we survived on a thin gruel made from the paste of our stripped wallpaper.
Now, I’m somehow in a room tinged with golden light. The gauzy halo illuminates my mother and James, whose faces are right next to me.
I’m dead. I must be. My family must have died, too. I guess this is what heaven looks like. But it can’t be heaven. I know this because Dad isn’t here.
I wipe the sweat from my eyes and recognize the sumptuous four-poster bed and a wall-size tapestry chronicling the military victories of a noble elvish dynasty.
I am not dead. And this is not a dream.
The angels of my life, the precious family I had rented out my body to save — they’re really, actually, here. Flesh and blood, in person.
Is this real life? Somehow, miraculously, it is.
I choke on my words. All I can manage to croak out is, “How?”
