Page 37 of The Forgotten Throne

I could hear the echoes of their laughter as I continued to lead Gavin away from them and the topic we’d just been discussing. “Love where are we going?” Gavin asked after a minute.

Stopping quickly at the realization that I didn’t know he knocked into me and we both stumbled. We ended up in a heap on the floor with me sprawled out on top of him, his face in the middle of my chest. It took him a moment to figure out where he was and I didn’t know what to do so my hands just seemed to flutter at my sides unsure of what to do.

“You know there are plenty of bedrooms to use if you guys want to get frisky right?” Paxton asked as he peered down at us.

“Help me up will you,” Gavin asked, resting one hand on the floor and holding the other up to Paxton.

He just grinned at the hand for a moment. “Sorry man I’m not really into guys like that but you might want to ask one of the others if you’re having a hard time getting it up.”

“That’s not what I meant at all Pax and you know it,” Gavin muttered as he awkwardly rolled off of me to lay on his back beside me instead.

“You know for a prince you’re not very smooth with the ladies are you. I would have thought with a title and all you’d been slipping them into your rooms since the day you sprung your first salute. At this point the grim reaper is beating us all and I can’t say I’m thrilled with that conclusion,” Paxton rambled as he dropped to sit on the floor between us. “You guys seen the indoor garden they have up here? Talk about cool things you don’t really need but are impressive. I think I picked out my room too, it was used by the king’s brother and he had a thing for hidden compartments. In his letter he told me that he hid a bunch of cool stuff in the room but I would have to find them using only two simple clues.”

As Paxton rattled on about things I sat up and shifted so I was sitting against the wall trying to get my heart rate under control. The feel of Gavin’s body and knowing that the hard length I felt in his pants was caused by me made my blood heat and rush through me. A tension in my body that I hadn’t felt before until these men started to be more forward in their attention started to ache deep in my stomach. Having just been talking about things with May and Becka didn’t help matters either.

“What do you think, spitfire?” Paxton asked, snapping my attention back to them as they both sat there waiting for my answer.

“I think that you taking that room is fine, you’ll have to let me know what you find,” I answered hoping that was what he’d been asking.

Paxton gave me a smile and rested his head on his knee. “While I’m glad you’re interested in finding that out as much as I am, that isn’t what I wanted to know…”

“Don’t be an ass and just ask her again, clearly she got bored with you rambling about your room since that’s when she checked out,” Jade pointed out from where he leaned against the wall near me watching our interaction.

“When did you show up?” I demanded, a little worried that someone could sneak up on me so easily.

“A little after Paxton, but unlike him I didn’t need to inject myself into the moment to steal your attention away from Gavin,” he answered, offering me a hand which I took and let him pull me to my feet. “The question he was asking is if you wanted to stay the night here since it has everything we need or if you wish to return to Marta’s home. The sun is setting so if we are going to head back now would be best.”

I mulled the options over but even though we could sleep here, we didn’t have everything we would need. “Let’s head back for tonight then we can work with the villagers to gather what we need. The stables need to be set up along with other supplies for us such as food and firewood to heat the rooms. Living in a stone palace will be much colder than the wooden ones you’ve been living in. Plus I think it would be wise to let the viceroy know what happened here and see if we might be able to diminish the amount of things we need to do for the coronation.”

“Do you think they will really let you skip things?” Paxton asked, hopping to his feet.

“Seeing as I already have this on my head I don’t think they can argue with the fact that I’m their queen,” I said, pointing to the crown on my head.

“True and we all bear your mark now so maybe they will let you do things at your own pace instead of the traditional way,” Gavin suggested. “It was one of the things that I was really dreading about my wedding. Who wants someone in the room with them to check and see if you were able to do what was needed to make a baby.”

“I was going to have a talk with them about that anyway, there is no way that I could even entertain the idea of having a child right now. It would put me in a position where I couldn’t help our people or fight in the battles that are to come.”

“Do you want them—kids I mean,” Jade asked, his light green eyes watching me with curiosity.

“I wasn’t sure but I think that with the right people in my life and knowing I made the world a safer place once the Lost King is gone will make me change my mind,” I answered with a soft smile reaching out to take his hand. “There are eight men who would make sure that any child I had would be the safest child in all the kingdoms.”

“Damn right we would,” Jade said under his breath. “Come on, let’s find the others so we can make our way back.”

We returned to the village and once we shared a small portion of what we found in the castle, they suggested we have dinner with them and Alsten. This way we could start dealing with matters of security and getting workers out there to help us turn the castle into a livable place once again.

“So you say that everything is just as it was?” Alsten questioned sipping his glass of wine. “How can that possibly be? I’ve never heard of magic stopping time like that in only one place or for that long.”

“There is so much to go through that King Cardon left behind, I’m sure I’ll find some answers there to a lot of our questions. Really this makes things so much easier for us though, it’s just a matter of restocking the castle than starting from scratch. If we had to build all new furniture and things like that it would be crazy,” I pointed out.

“You make a good point, but you mentioned when you first came back that you had bigger news to tell us,” Lawrence inquired.

As we traveled back down, I’d packed away the crown not wanting to announce what happened before I talked it over with the viceroy. Who I might add inducted Sal into their ranks and he now worked and lived with them in their quest to preserve and uphold traditions. I pulled the bag from the back of the chair and unwrapped the crown holding it out for them to see.

“It would seem in order to complete the release of the spell on the castle it needed to crown me queen of its own accord. I have been blessed by the gods and the dragons as the new queen of the mercenaries. They also took care of marking me and my consorts as the power settled throughout the kingdom,” I explained, pulling at the collar of the shirt I was now wearing. The guys showed theirs as well proving that they matched with mine.

The viceroy stared at us with open wonder.

“Well that certainly makes things far more interesting,” Mathew said, grinning at us.