She broke, breathing out, “Yes.”
Then he was kissing her and she kissed him back. She murmured to him, unable to stop herself, “I love you. I’m sorry. That’s why. I love you. And I couldn’t do this without you. I didn’t want to do it without you. I couldn’t bear for you to leave me.”
“Don’t apologize. Just say it. Again and again, say it until you lose your voice, and when you lose your voice, scream it just by kissing me until there is nothing else, and when you can kiss me no longer and you are too tired to even lift your arms to hold me, I will hold you and listen to your heartbeat and I will hear your heart whisper in every steady beat.”
“I will—” Hellebore kissed him again and again as his hands grabbed her waist. “I love you. I don’t know how I went so long hiding from it, but no more. Don’t let me go.”
“Oh, Hellebore, if I was able to let you go, I would have months ago, but I cannot. My alchemist, my wife, my heart… You do not know how long and how often I have dreamed of this.”
Hellebore was out of words.
All she could do was prove to her husband how much she loved him with every beat of her full, thriving heart.
Epilogue
The aftermath of the eclipse didn’t just include Taiyo’s newly recovered health and Hellebore’s lengthened lifespan.
In the week following, Taiyo received reports of several Moon Elf attacks that had occurred on the borders. All of them had been wearing plain, nondescript clothes, so they weren’t official movements of their military.
But that didn’t mean Taiyo didn’t swear up and down as he paced their room, ranting about the Moon Elves and their prejudice and belief in their own superiority. He smacked his hand against the reports while telling Hellebore that the Moon Elves they’d caught had to be from the king himself.
Not that Taiyo really wanted it to be an official act from the Moon Elf king, given how much he really didn’t want to go to war.
Hellebore did her best to soothe him, reassuring him that the cured irises had allowed them to send the Moon Elves that had started a skirmish running and their king had easily given Taiyo jurisdiction to do with the ones caught as he saw fit.
Hellebore spent a significant amount of time every day being studied under the guise of checkups by the Sun Elf healers. Shekept her complaints in her head, knowing she probably deserved all of it, given her long tenure as an alchemist being the one who usually poked and prodded.
They were all aglow with the thought that the Sunrise Iris and an alchemist who could perform a transfusion could change a human’s lifespan so any elf who did fall in love with a human didn’t necessarily have to lose them to a human lifespan.
They weren’t eager for that to become common knowledge amongst the alchemists, and Hellebore agreed it should be a closely guarded secret. If her aunt had known she could have doubled her lifespan… There were plenty of alchemists who would abuse that information.
Without the desperate need for a cure and finally being dismissed from the healer’s purview, her days were shared with Haruko and Taiyo, who began teaching her and letting her take on some of the duties that came with being queen.
It turned out saving her brother’s life really did wonders for Haruko warming up to a person.
She kept her lab and was able to run studies and experiments there, but Hellebore was tired of plants, so until something else caught her interest, she was ready for a break from being an alchemist and happy to be a queen.
Taiyo certainly loved the fact that she’d begun actually wearing all the beautiful, elegant Sun Elf dresses he’d had her wardrobe stocked with. He made no secret about it. Hellebore had warmed up quite a bit to the more elegant and less practical clothes, purely for the look in her husband’s eyes every time the sun began to set and it painted her in a golden glow.
She’d never cared before about being beautiful, and while Taiyo assured her he loved her in any of her clothes, elvish or alchemist or neither, for the first time in her life, she found herself pulling out nightgowns based on what she thought Taiyo’s reaction would be.
She’d never believed marriage could be anything quite like this. Or that she would have a husband who loved her the way Taiyo did.
It was so much better being his wife and not just his alchemist.
Three months after the eclipse, Hellebore rushed out of the castle one afternoon and into the courtyard, ignoring everyone but the brunette climbing off a horse. She didn’t stop until she ran right into Callahan’s arms as he crushed her to himself.
He laughed. “I told you I’d be coming back.”
She pulled back and swatted at his arm. “I didn’t expect it to be so soon!”
Callahan shook his head and looked her over. “Hels, what have they done to you? You look like a Sun Elf!”
She reached up and touched her rounded ears. “Don’t worry, Cal, it’s just a dress.”
The door opened behind her, and she turned to see Taiyo following her out after she’d left him in the dust the second Phoebe told her in a stammering voice that her brother was in Auror.
“She looks like the Queen of the Sun Elves, Prince Callahan,” Taiyo said, coming down the steps and to Hellebore’s side, looping one arm around her waist. Hellebore leaned into his embrace instinctually. Taiyo continued, “We’re glad to have you here.”
