“Thank you. You as well. I still remember you kicking ass in the Crown Tournament. That was inspiring.”
“Kicking ass,” she repeated the term slowly, then grinned at her husband. “I like that. Even though my ass was the one that ended up on the ground in the end.”
“Are you going to torment me with that imagery again, my love?” Ruari whined. “You know how it haunts me.”
“Oh, but you're always so attentive after I bring it up.” She winked at me. “Entering that competition was the best decision I've ever made.”
“What about deciding to marry me?”
“Oh, yes, that was a good one as well.”
I burst out laughing. This woman was more like me than I knew. And yet, there was one more question I still needed toask her. “So, are you two thinking about having children anytime soon?”
Ruari stiffened.
Oh, damn. Maybe there was an issue here.
“He wants to,” Queen Bronagh said to me as she casually patted her husband's arm. “But I'm not ready. Now that we have our fertility back, it's as if the men think we women are all eager to get pregnant, but some of us have been happy as we are. We don't need children to complete our lives.”
“But we are royals,” Ruari said.
“Yes, and I am not opposed to having children. I do want them. Someday. I get moments of wistfulness, you know that. But we need to settle into our roles as monarchs first. You promised that we would rule together, even if you won the tourney.”
“Of course, we rule together.”
Oh, wow. This sounded like an old and personal argument. I backed away. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have pried.”
They didn't even hear me. They were too deep into their personal stuff. And that made it clear to me better than anything else could have. Their biggest issue was children, but it had nothing to do with me or Azrael. These two were not behind the mischief in the God Realm. I don't think they'd know how to get into Heaven, even if they wanted to.
So maybe it wasn't a faerie. The manacles could have been taken from the Golden Citadel by a god. Hell, they could have been taken by a human. We had enough of them running around the place these days, what with all the human familiesmoving in with their Wild Magic babies. But then again, those families stayed in the neighborhood outside the citadel wall, in the buffer zone between the wild land and the rest of the world. There weren't a lot of humans allowed into the Golden Citadel itself. And a human didn't have the power to sneak into the God Realm.
Hold on. I had done it when I was only human. With the right chant, anyone with a little magic could get through a ward. And some humans had magic. Even more of them these days.
But a human? Could this trickster really be human? Maybe I shouldn't rule anyone out. A human would have reason to be angry with both Azrael and me. Although, a human, even a witch, wouldn't remember the stuff I'd done as the Dark Star. I had erased all those human memories.
If only I'd done the same with the Gods.
But hey, I'd done what I could, and that had been a lot, all things considered.
I found Azrael and Arach and sat between them. They were opposite Isleen and Lugh, all of them holding plates full of food. A laden plate was also waiting for me.
“Thank you,” I said, casting a questioning look from one husband to the other as I settled my plate on my lap.
“We both filled it,” Arach said magnanimously.
Azrael snorted. “No, we didn't. He made the plate for you. I wouldn't dare pick your food, Carus.”
I chuckled. Both men knew me well, but one of them had touched my soul. My Angel of Death proved wiser than my dragon in this instance.
“I thought it better to have something waiting for you,” Arach said. “Whatever you don't want, I'll eat. Then you may fetch more for yourself if you wish.”
Then again, my Dragon King had some damn good instincts.
Chapter Twenty
“What are you doing?” I asked Arach as he pulled me down a corridor, away from the dining hall's curved wall of woven branches.
“Our children are at home.” Arach grinned. “I thought maybe the Fire Garden.”
