Let the humans think what they will. This elf is hers.
“Whereareyoutakingme?” Viala asks as Stardust gallops on and on, and Tharios doesn’t rein her in.
“Far from everyone and everything, where my only thought is you,” Tharios says over his shoulder, and warmth fills her.
He eventually slows the exuberant unicorn to a walk and crosses the border into Lostariel and the Wildthorne Woods, which Viala wasn’t expecting.
“I thought it might be wise to choose a more isolated location to tempt you to fall in love with me all over again,” he says.
She smiles at his words, resting against his back. Who knows what prompted this behavior from him tonight, but she won’t question it. She’ll just enjoy this uninterrupted time with him.
And a unicorn.
Tharios pulls Stardust to a stop in a small clearing, and Viala looks around. He must have been feeling the terrain with his air magic to locate this spot. He doesn’t have the forest memorized the way Cerian does.
Tharios’s head is full of far too many other random bits of knowledge to make room for all the maps Cerian holds in his head.
Reaching back, Tharios helps Viala off Stardust before climbing down beside her, and he immediately sweeps her into a kiss.
Before she has time to react, he groans and pulls away. “I wasn’t going to do that. I was going to wait to kiss you. Spend the evening talking and laughing and gazing into your eyes first.”
“You really do mean to romance me. Tharios. I’m already desperately in love with you.”
“And I would like to keep it that way, faerie.” He presses his forehead to hers, and memories of the first time he did that warm her heart. How much it meant to him to share that with her. How terrified he was to admit he had fallen in love with her.
How hard she fought her own truth. That her heart already belonged to him.
And when he rests his forehead against hers now, she feels what his words don’t say.
That whatever twist of fate dragged them together, kicking and screaming, he’ll spend all his days fighting to keep them together. That he still wants more than a binding based on convenience. On alliances. On fixing mistakes between them and their kingdoms.
That he wants her. He wants them.
Just as he did that day when he said he wanted love to go with the passion. And he’d do whatever it took to win her heart.
The heart that was already irrevocably his.
Her heart is still his.
And it always will be.
“This is me fighting for you, Viala,” he says softly. “For your heart. For every part of you. Forever.”
Her eyes prickle as she blinks back tears and clings to him. And he holds her in the quiet of the forest, leaves scattered on the ground around them to mark the changing seasons.
Soon, winter will come, as it always does. But eventually, flowers will bloom again. Birds will sing. The beauty of change surrounds them on every side.
It’s one of her favorite parts of this life above ground he introduced her to.
But through it all, her constant is him.
“Dance with me,” he whispers near her ear as the sky grows dark above them.
An elven dance, with its perfectly choreographed steps? That seems out of place here in the forest. And the human dances are so formal. Proper and perfect.
She knows what he’s asking. And her heart pounds at the request.
“Forgive me,” he says. “I promised myself I wouldn’t bring up your magic.”
