“Thank you,” she managed.
He took her palm off his cheek and kissed it, closing his eyes just for a moment. His weight shifted, and he held her hand in his. “I know you need time,” he started. “I know this is all new, and you’re possibly overwhelmed with all that’s happened, but—”
“Draven, I love you,” she blurted.
His words stopped at an instant, and he swallowed hard as his weight shifted again, a great inhale filling his lungs, the same look on his face that he’d had in the castle when she told him spreading across his features. His jaw tightened, and she watched the glisten take over his eyes.
She squeezed his hands before he could speak. “I love you,” she repeated. “I’ve known it for a while now, and I should have told you so many times before, but… I didn’t want it to come across as my saying it out of a darkness I knew my core had settled into. I wanted it to be when I knew it would mean more than just the words. I had to be sure you didn’t just love me for the reasons I’d said before. After these last few weeks, after… everything… I realize I was wrong. It wasn’t just circumstance. It’s real. More real than I truly think I understand.”
She reached up to his face, and his weight shifted again. “Draven you… you see me. The real me. Crown or no crown. Queen or civilian. You see me for who I am, not who I am supposed to be. You fill me with a strength and trust I’m not used to.”
He kissed her hands, allowing his lips to linger against her skin. “So, to be clear, you love me because I’m everything Magnice isn’t.”
Her heart sank, and she felt the color drain from her face. “What? No—I mean—what?Draven, I love you because… because you don’t treat me as though I’m some child. You never have—”
“So you’ve loved me since we were kids?”
Her eyes narrowed, and her core froze. “I just told you Iloveyou, and you’re asking for reasons? Why— I told you. You actually see me—”
“Yes, you’re standing right here,” he mocked.
“I mean—you know what I mean!And when we’re together, you… I feel safe with you—”
“So I’m just another safety precaution for you?”
“What—no—Draven!” she practically stamped her foot in frustration at the questions he was drilling her with. She did a circle, staring at the moons with words stuck in her throat. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I love you. You… you challenge me, you trust me, you don’t try and change me, you know when I need time to get myself together, you… you make me laugh, which is actually quite a feet if I am honest, I—” she did a double-take at him standing there with his hand clapped over his mouth “—is this funny to you?!”
The amused glint in his eyes make her fume. She smacked his arm hard, causing his hand to fall from his mouth, revealing the broad smile on his face. Laughter spewed from his lips, and she hated him for it.
“I hate you,” she muttered as he cackled in front of her.
“Oh—Oh, I’m sorry, Aydra,” he said through his laughter. “I’m sorry, it was too good of an opportunity to pass up—”
She hit his shoulder again, nearly pushing him backwards this time.
“You are such an ass, Draven Greenwood,” she mutter as she pushed him back again.
He caught her hands in his and pulled her flush against him, his laughter still radiating through his core as he wrapped his arms around her. Her frustrations waned with the press of his lips to hers, and when he pulled back, she avoided his eyes and bit back the smile threatening her lips. He pushed her hair back, tilting her chin up to meet his eyes. The smile in his gaze made her stomach flutter.
“You’ll be the death of me,” she muttered.
“We’ve been planning how to kill each other since we were eight. Of course I’ll be the death of you,” he grinned.
She laughed under her breath and then sighed into his embrace. For a few moments, she simply hugged him into her, closing her eyes and relishing the feeling of his body against hers, the lift of the weight on her shoulders now gone.
“What do you say we go back? The boys were working on a feast when I left,” he whispered in her hair.
She pulled back and looked up at him. The noise of the phoenix sounded in her ears. It sent a shiver down her spine. “Anywhere with you.”
Dinner was potatoes with rosemary and freshly caught rabbit. Aydra wasn’t keen on the rabbit. She quite enjoyed the potatoes, but mostly… it was the laughter and stories filling the table that she craved.
Draven pulled her a chair up beside him at the table. But by the end of the meal, her head was lying in his shoulder, and he had an arm pushed around her. The smell of black herb filled the air as they passed pipes between them. They all relaxed as Draven did at banquets: legs thrown over the sides of the armchairs, relaxing with their hair down, slumped into the backs of the seats.
Aydra inhaled the herb from Draven’s pipe and let her eyes close at the swim of it. His hair fell over her face each time he would look down at her, nudging her cheek with his nose when he would laugh, entwining their hands together as their eyes dazed and the voices around them became distant echoes. It was some time later that she found herself lying beneath the stars on his chest, the warmth of the fire at their feet, cool of the dirt on their backs.
“They dance,” she whispered as the herb went to her head.
He chuckled under his breath, his fingers delicately drawing circles on her hip. “Occasionally,” he replied.
