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I’d reasoned he should probably be able to walk at his own wedding, even if I was planning on stealing that ability back off him immediately afterwards. Fucking him until he was limping was always immensely satisfying, in both the gratification of being able to affect and lay claim to him in such a visible way, as well as the inevitable grouching he’d give me afterwards for ruining what he wrongfully maintained washisbody, but everyone knew belonged to the king of Quareh.
Oh, and the thought of marking him in a different way tomorrow, with a ring on his finger and a crown in his hair?
Dios, I could come from that thought alone.
I twisted around so we were facing each other. His eyes glittered in the moonlight filtering through the shutters, full of excitement and adoration despite the clear exhaustion written in the lines of his face.
“It’s a shame your bruises are gone,” I purred, all wicked smiles and vengeful kisses, “for I would have quite liked you to feel me tonight and tomorrow when we stand at the altar together. To know you’re mine.”
Mat slipped a hand down between us and wrapped it around my length, his warm, eager fingers making me gasp and throw back my head. “There’s a solution for tonight,moy dorogoi.”
“And tomorrow?” I asked, breathless.
“Ren,” he whispered in my ear. “If you don’t know that I’m yours tomorrow, then you’re in the wrong fucking chapel.”
*
Chapter Fifty-Nine
A sea of faces gazed at us expectantly, their features beginning to blur into each other, and this was only afractionof our guests. Despite the Márosian palace chapel being much grander than the one inla Cortina, it still only fitted a small amount of those who would be attending the dinner and post-ceremony celebrations.
I swallowed, trying not to fidget under all the intent stares. Ren always said I wasn’t very good at being the centre of attention, and I was beginning to suspect he’d been wildly under-exaggerating, because this was…fuckinghorrible.
The bishop was only halfway through his speech. I would know, having gone over it several times, but on paper it hadn’t seemednearlythis long. What was I supposed to do while he spoke about commitment and cherishment for another three and a half pages?
One face among the crowd caught my eye. Val. He grinned broadly at me from the front row of seats, dipping his head and giving me a subtle gesture of encouragement from where he had his hands folded in his lap. My mother, seemingly as astute as ever despite her declining health, glanced sharply at him, but instead of then admonishing her heir, offered me a very slight smile of her own.
Before I could faint from the shock of it, I dragged my eyes further up the row. There was Petra, Valeri’s wife, who had once counselled me against the exact thing I was doing now, but I only saw wistfulness in her expression. Yiorgos, my youngest brother, who looked like he might have fallen asleep, and Mila who gave him a brutal kick to his ankle to startle him back awake. Aleksi, who had somehow been saddled with keeping both his own children and Valeri’s son quiet during the ceremony, but the sight of my nephew Zahari curled up in Astrid’s arms, sticky fingers twisted in her immaculate dress and her not seeming tocare, was too endearing for words. Across the row, Alondra – now an Aratorre once more – sat with Ren’s other sister and her Onnish family.
My gaze drifted further back, deeper into the gathered crowd and resting on people I recognised. There was Lady Isobella, who shot me a sweetly poisonous look despite risking her own life to stand up for me that day in the throne room. When I’d confessed my confusion to Ren afterwards, he’d laughed and said that just because she wanted to cut off my balls and feed them to me, it didn’t meanshe was a bad person, Mathias.Then he’d proceeded to describe how she’d filled her father’s estate with wounded and deformed animals to save them from the chopping block, until I found it hard to remember why I disliked her.
A couple of rows further back, blocking the view of the people seated behind him, was Jiron’s massive form. He’d protested attending as a guest or wearing dress clothes instead of his guard uniform…right up until the blonde man bouncing in his seat at Jiron’s side had asked him to, and then suddenly it wasn’t even a question.Wyatt was a young Lukian with a ridiculously chipper personality and a bright grin on his face that I’d never once seen fail, and was one of those disgustingly and permanentlyhappypeople. The two of them were rarely found apart these days – Zovisasha could often be heard complaining that Wyatt missed his shifts in the gardens more often than he bothered to show up – but everyone knew that he was doing much more good in Jiron’s company. The guard was still having…difficultiesfrom the trauma he’d suffered,and his episodes were erratic enough that Ren had been forced to name Elías as Comandante in his stead, as much as I knew it had pained my king to do so. He ensured Jiron wanted for nothing, but what did money or luxury matter when the man’s mind might never be truly whole again?
Swallowing, I glanced at the guards on duty, including Luis and El, who were standing to attention at the edge of the room. The bandings on the collars of their coats indicated whether they belong to the palace or mine and Ren’s personal retinue, all Quarehian in ethnicity but for Parvan, yet he stood proudly among the men and women he now called colleagues. Parvan had served me these last few months without fuss, pleasingly defusing any hints of violence with a quiet word before it escalated into something worse, although I didn’t think he’d been such a pacifist that night four months ago. Lord Martinez had seemingly fledla Cortinashortly after Welzes’ death, only for his own bloated body to be fished out of the river downstream from the palace a few days later.
Parvan had only shrugged when I mentioned it, but Dima’s ramblings around that time had made me decidedly suspicious that the Hearken had gotten a glimpse into the lord’s head before he mysteriously disappeared, and wasn’t that a Blessed coincidence, that a man as foul as Martinez should end up dead while my guard was loose and pissed off? I could only pity Dima for what he must have been exposed to in that prick’s thoughts.
Martinez’s widow was near the door, the noblewoman disregarding propriety to sit with commoners, among whom I recognised Consuela, Abril, Camila, and Clementina. Starling was close by, unwisely perched between Lilia and Zovisasha, and I wondered just how tempted the healer was to knock them both unconscious as they alternated between beaming in my direction and hissing what were assuredly insults at each other over Star’s head.
The Lagos had found themselves a row of seats with Lord de la Vega, who had all been instrumental in rebuilding Algejón’s infrastructure and trade ability, and there in the corner were the señoras Hernández, and near that pillar was-
A faint brush of knuckles against the back of my hand restored my attention to the only person in the room who really mattered in that moment. Ren’s lips twisted into a fond smile as he glanced sideways at me through his eyelashes, looking coy and cute and irresistible in that irritating way he always did. It was hard to imagine, now, what my life had been like before he’d come barging into it with ransom claims and improper flirtations and that damn laugh of his.
My lover…my nearlyhusband,was demanding and inappropriate and clever and beautiful, and I was the luckiest fucking man on the continent for getting to call him mine.
How had I ever believed he didn’t have a heart? It washuge,big enough for me and his family and his entire country, and he’d fight for all of us until his very last breath, as I would do for him. Ren may have been a contradiction in his tender savagery, his gentle sharpness, his insensible passion, but it was so perfectly him and I wouldn’t change it for anything, not now I knew him.
And maybe that was the point. We’d grown up in a world where our nationalities defined us and set the course of our fates, and all we’d had to do to bridge the divides between what we were told we wanted and what weactuallywanted, was to listen. Understand. And realise that while it might sometimes strike your heart against that of someone who was impossibly frustrating, devastatingly depraved, and had an ego the size of the fucking moon…love knew was it was doing.
Probably.
The bishop cleared his throat, having finally reached the end of his speech. My heart sped up until I could barely hear him over its noise, knowing exactly what was coming next.
“Do you, Nathanael Velichkov,” he asked me, “third prince of Temar and honorary royal of Quareh, take Renato Aratorre to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
I looked at Ren.
He looked at me.
