“The world is filled with danger, and I will be your strength. Your weapon. Your sword and your shield. I will be your guard. I will be your warrior. I will protect you and preserve you, for my life is yours. And my world is here.”
She was not supposed to believe it. It was not supposed to matter. Not quite to the degree that it did. But oh, how she wished she could. How she wished she could freeze all of this and hold it to her chest.
And when they were introduced as the sovereign rulers of Aillette, King Maximus and Queen Annick, she felt the strangest sense of wholeness. Of unity. She looked at him, and she looked out in the crowd, at the King family watching them, clapping for them. Applauding as if this was a common American affair.
And she felt...part of something. Part of a family. And Maximus had even included her parents. Had spoken vows to their spirits. And suddenly she didn’t feel so alone. And it was that hope inside of her that frightened her the most. That need.
Oh, how could she have ever talked herself into believing she did not love him? This beautiful, broken man who she had spirited away with the aid of chloroform, but who had turned the power around when he demanded marriage. This man who was trying to right wrongs that simply could not be fixed. This man made from lies and vengeance and a deep, unending love for another woman.
She loved him.
She did. There was nothing to be done for it. Nothing that could make it go away. And she didn’t even want it to. Because last night she had revisited that dungeon, and it was isolation. The bars were gone, and Maximus was there instead. Though he might be his own kind of prison. Yes, loving him might be its own kind of hell.
They were swept off to the reception. A large white tent lay out on the lawn. And she had never felt quite so broken or quite so happy in all of her life.
Her people were here, eating and smiling and free. It all made sense then. How she could live for them and herself. How those two things were not at odds. How she could love Maximus with deep ferocity and love them as well. How she could love him and expect nothing in return, but also want it desperately. How she could wish to devote herself to this country, but also wish to be a wife, and a mother to whatever children they had. Children who would also be both property of the country, and property of themselves. It was a difficult life, this. And one thing she was certain of when she stood there watching it all was that it took more courage and more love, and not less. You could not lead if you did not contain all these things. Not well. Not right.
And so it might be dangerous. To care like this. But if she did not, if she held back, if she tried to protect herself, then it would be like living in a dungeon. For then, in that life, she had held back everything that she believed, everything that she felt, simply because she had to protect herself. That had been a matter of life and death, but this was not. She could not hold back these feelings. To do so would make her a lesser Queen. To do so would make her less than Maximus deserved.
He had believed in love at one time. And all that he thought about the world had been destroyed. Cruelly. Could she not give him a piece of it back? She wanted to. Oh, how she desperately wanted to. For her Maximus King. Her King. Her husband.
Her love.
And she somehow knew innately that after today he would try to resist her. Because of course he would. It was the way of him. He drew close, and then away. What was he afraid of?
Feeling. She knew.
He was adamant that he had no heart left, but everything she had seen of him suggested otherwise.
The way that he stayed with his family, even with the issues he had with his father... No, he was not a man with no heart. Not a man with no soul.
He was a man with so much love to give, so bright and brilliant, like the sun that had been hidden from her for all those years. And it was nearly too much for her to bear. But also, she was sensitive to it. More perhaps than most because she had been kept in the darkness for so long. Because she had been kept away from people. And this thing between them... It was magic. It was more than necessity.
More than sex. She was certain of it.
She tried to remember back to when she had thought that sex was merely an appetite, as he had said. That he was a pastry she could go about sampling before she had another, and she realized what a foolish thing that was. There would never be another. Not for her. It was this broken man. With her. All broken. Together.
Yes, life was filled with tragedies, but looking at him now, she felt all of the miracles it contained as well. For he was a miracle to her.
She only hoped that she could be one for him.
And she would not let him pull away. Not tonight. Not on the night of their wedding.
She might have been a virgin only recently, but she was not afraid to seduce him.
She was not afraid to show him what was in her heart.
He had taught her about food, and the pleasure she might find there. His body, and all the joys that it contained. And now perhaps she would teach him about love. In the way that she understood it.
Love after brokenness.
After all these gifts he had given to her... Could she do anything less for him?
The wedding had left him feeling grim. Yes, it had been his idea, and yes, he had made many a bold declaration inside of himself that a wedding meant nothing, but he found it seemed less true than he would like.
By the end of the evening Annick was tired, he could tell. So when all the guests had left, he took himself off to his own chamber. He had a need for distance. His family was still in residence, and interacting with them was always a chore. Being that charming playboy that he was so accustomed to being... It was becoming a chore.
So what are you, then? The soldier?