Chapter Twenty-Six #2
“We should wait for that,” he said, sounding strangled, but his arm had slipped around my waist, fingers teasing under the edge of the corset.
“Remi, a few minutes. I want to do this the way you deserve, but you’re killing me.
Oh, thank the gods.” The carriage had stopped, and he shoved the door open, all but dragging me out after him.
I stopped, gazing around in disbelief at a familiar high wall overhung with flowering trees, and a discreet side entrance into a building that looked like…
“The palace? Stefan, this is where the carriage was waiting for us after we were married. What are we doing here?”
“The opposite of what we did then,” he said briskly, and tucked my hand through his arm. “Come on!”
The opposite of what we’d done that day?
We’d been married that day! Dread twisted my stomach into knots as he pulled me through the door and along a warren of passageways, the same ones we’d traversed after our wedding, though I’d never have been able to find my way back without Stefan.
The pace he set kept me too breathless to speak, and I was still trying to gasp out my many questions as he opened a final door and brought me out into the broad hallway that ran by the chapel door.
Its golden figures and crimson curlicues gleamed in the midmorning light.
Stefan stopped, staring at the doors with me, the frantic energy that had carried us both here seeming to desert him, leaving a strange tension in its wake.
Through the gap between the half-open double doors I glimpsed the brightly painted ceiling and the ornate stained glass above the altar, and Ennolu’s golden statue, his shining face stern and beautiful.
A murmur of voices from within told me that we weren’t the first arrivals for our mysterious appointment.
I thought I recognized the High Priest’s distinctive soothing cadence, and my heart gave a painful squeeze.
Nevaian aristocrats would usually go directly to the High Temple for a divorce, but someone prominent enough to summon the High Priest to a more discreet location might have the wedding ceremony undone in the palace’s chapel.
“Stefan?” I looked up at him, terrified of what I might see in his face. Had he really changed his mind?
He turned and let go of my arm, the loss of his touch sending a chill all the way down to my toes. Stefan drew a deep breath, standing up straight as if braced for bad news.
“I know you said you didn’t want to divorce me, but there’s a wide gulf between remaining married to me and wanting to be married to me,” he said. “I wish I’d had the chance to choose you for myself without my fucking father’s interference—”
“Stefan, someone will hear!” I glanced around guiltily, caught between a breathless longing to hear what he had to say and the horror that someone might overhear, especially right in front of a chapel! “The High Priest is there, and Ennolu—”
“If Ennolu’s listening, let him be shocked,” Stefan growled, leaning in, eyes blazing.
“I need you to listen. I’d choose you today and tomorrow and always.
Choose me. Marry me again for no other reason than because you want to.
Let me promise to make you happy for the rest of our lives and mean it, sweetheart.
I don’t want those fucking vows that neither of us meant to be our memory of our wedding day. ”
No, I’d been wrong. I didn’t want the hero of Dignity & Desire, because he had absolutely nothing on the man standing in front of me and…begging me to allow him to make me happy? I caught at his shoulders, needing the support as my legs tried to give out from under me.
“Marry me, Remi,” he said, very low, his hands sliding around my waist. The corner of his mouth quirked. “The vows don’t have to have any fucking in them if you don’t—”
“Yes,” I choked out, halfway between tears and laughter. “Yes, I’ll marry you, just please stop saying that in front of the chapel!”
Stefan bent down, wrapping one of his arms around me so tightly that I squeaked as he yanked me against his body, putting the other hand to my cheek and cupping my face, stroking the corner of my mouth with his thumb, his eyes alight.
“I love you. Marry me because you love me. And I’ll love you all my life, and try not to curse in front of chapels. Anything for you, Remi.”
“Of course I love you,” I whispered, because my throat had gone painfully tight. “All I want is you.”
“Fuck it—no, I’m sorry, I take it back,” he said hastily. “I mean, the hell with—gods, I’m sorry. I was going to wait until after the wedding, but I’m afraid I simply can’t.”
Stefan swept me over his arm and kissed me, a deep, endless kiss that was entirely inappropriate under Ennolu’s disapproving golden glare.
And I didn’t care. I didn’t care at all.
The End
Thank you for reading The Consort’s Curse!