Pushing the fallen hair back from Raewyn’s face, I kissed the tip of her adorable nose and then the space between her gathered brows.
“I won’t track him down,” I said.
I didn’t need to. I already had him in my dungeon.
“Now go and get some sleep. You’ll be waking early tomorrow to start preparations.”
“Preparations for what?” Raewyn asked.
“Tomorrow is our wedding day. I’m going to make you the happiest bride who ever lived.”
Chapter 21
Entertainments
Raewyn
My wedding day. It didn’t seem real.
And something about it didn’t seem quite right, though it was what I’d always wanted.
Perhaps I was just tired. Since early morning, my chambers had been a flurry of activity.
It started with a dress fitting.
A gorgeous dress, which I could only assume had originally been meant for Lady Helina, arrived at my door along with a seamstress and her assistant. I stepped into it and stood patiently for hours while they altered it to fit me.
A series of beautification treatments followed. Every woman who came to my room to administer them and prepare me for tonight’s ceremony asked the same question.
“Aren’t you excited to be marrying the King?”
Every time, I answered with some variation of, “Yes, very excited.”
But I wasn’t certain the sensations coursing through my body were the result of excitement exactly. Tightness in my chest, shivering and nausea, an empty feeling in my stomach though I’d been well fed.
Everything was happening so fast. Yesterday I was on a horse, escaping from Pharis. Tonight I was leaving my chambers at Seaspire to go downstairs and marry his brother, the new King.
My attendants had been chattering all day about what the evening would hold. Apparently a great feast and several entertainments would precede the actual wedding ceremony.
Back in the village where I’d grown up, wedding events happened in the opposite order, but the Fae did things differently. I wasfarfrom that human existence now, in every possible way.
It felt almost like I was living a different life. I was about to become the Queen of Avrandar.
I was about to be Stellon’swife.
Again the nauseous sensation stirred in my belly. Though I’d just left my chambers to head for the mechanical lift, I wondered if I should turn around in the hallway and run back inside to the washroom.
Then a thought floated to the surface of my mind and settled my stomach.
I love Stellon.
Right. Yes. Of course.
I loved him, and this was what you did when you loved a person the way I’d always loved him.
I mean, look at what I’d done to get back to him.
I’d escaped Pharis’ castle, stolen a horse, and managed to navigate hundreds of miles of roads from Stormcrest here to the royal city. Somehow.
