Chapter 33
Flashbacks
Raewyn
Just before seven, I left my suite to head downstairs.
“Wish me luck,” I said to Kem.
She giggled and waved from the doorway. “Good luck, my lady! I’ll see you soon.”
“Please. Just call me Raewyn. I’m not a noble, I’m your friend.”
“Good luck, Raewyn,” she said warmly.
I had a sneaking suspicion Kem wouldn’t be a ladies maid much longer but the wife of a prince. One very kind, very charming prince who had been through far too much because of me and had definitely earned a happy ending.
As for my own, I could hardly stand the wait as the lift took me to the mezzanine where the ballroom entrance was located. That was where the new King’s clever invitation had instructed me to meet him, and I was pretty sure I knew why.
Sure enough, before I reached the ballroom doors, Pharis stepped through them and offered me a dazzling smile.
Just as it had the first time I’d seen him, that beautiful, scandalous smile stole my breath and set my heart dancing.
“There you are, darling,” he said.
Though there was no one else present, he repeated the words he’d spoken to that haughty butler the night we’d met.
“I’ve been waiting on this one’s arrival.”
Tucking my hand into the crook of his arm, Pharis escorted me onto the viewing platform that looked out over the empty ballroom and down the curved staircase to the dance floor.
Sea creatures swam beneath the transparent floor, seemingly in time to the music being played by a full orchestra on one side of the room.
Overhead, candles blazed in the crystal chandeliers illuminating the ballroom as if this were a spectacular full-Court occasion.
“It’s beautiful,” I said. “All this just for us?”
“All this just for you,” Pharis said.
Releasing my hand from his arm, he turned to face me and gave me a little bow. “My esteem shines upon you, my lady.”
I laughed, feeling giddy. He was reenacting our entire first meeting. “And mine upon you.”
Pharis waved toward a table laden with food near the large windows that looked out over the ocean.
“May I offer you some refreshment?”
I put a hand over my nervous stomach. “Perhaps later. I don’t think I could eat anything just now.”
Pharis’ smile dropped.
“Uh oh. This isn’t going very well. I’m getting flashbacks of ego-crushing rejection.”
I laughed out loud, recalling how I’d rebuffed all his initial attempts to spend time with me that night, but only because I was terrified he’d figure out my secret identity and expose me.
“It’s going fine,” I assured him. “Ask me to dance.”
Pharis blew out an exaggerated breath and gave me a brilliant smile, holding out his hand.
“Would you care to dance, my lady?”
I placed my trembling fingers in his. “I would love to.”
Leading me in the slowest and easiest of Elven traditional dances, he rested a large hand on my back and pulled me close to him. He looked down at me like a man who’d just discovered a treasure chest and opened it to find it overflowing with precious jewels and gold.
It gave me shivers in some parts of my body and had others tingling in anticipation.
“You are so beautiful,” he whispered.
You… are magnificent, I said mind to mind.
He grinned, making him even more handsome. Magnificent? Good word. I like it.
“I believe you promised me a story,” I reminded him.
“That I did.”
As we moved together to the enchanting Elven music, Pharis began telling me about the night we met from his perspective.
“As I’ve mentioned on a couple of occasions, Stellon asked me to help him that night by gleaning the matchmaker’s glamour.”
I nodded. “Right. And it told you I was the worst match in the entire assembly.”
“For him,” Pharis clarified.
He inhaled and swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple traveling visibly up and down his throat.
“And I’ve already told you how overwhelmed I’ve always been by your beauty and other charms, in your Elven and human forms.”
“Overwhelmed. That’s a good word. I like it.”
“Don’t even pretend to be surprised,” Pharis said. “I’ve made an absolute fool of myself, following you around like a puppy since practically the moment we met.”
“I like puppies, too,” I joked. “Please, do go on.”
“The part I didn’t mention, was the matchmaking glamour told me… you were my perfect match,” Pharis said.
I sucked in a shocked breath, and a strange tingling sensation spread throughout my body.
“Why did you never tell me this?”
Pharis gave me a sad smile. “For starters, I didn’t know what to make of it. It was actually rather disconcerting. And my brother was hopelessly in love with you. For a long while there, it seemed like you felt the same for him.”
“He was so nice to me,” I explained. “And he took care of me. No one had ever done that—not since my mother anyway. But it wasn’t really love I felt for him. Not like…”
For some reason, I felt my face flush. “Not like this.”
Pharis kissed my overheated forehead.
“I know that—now. Back then I assumed you were smitten with him, like all women were.”
“I think you started to tell me about the matchmaker’s glamour in Havendor,” I said, remembering our interrupted bliss there.
“Yes, but Stellon came riding into the glen like a conquering hero, and once again, you only had eyes for him,” he said.
“That’s not true,” I said. “I had fallen for you by then, though I felt guilty and confused about it. And then things got so twisted.”
“‘Twisted’ is one word for it. Just before we left Stormcrest to come here and stop Stellon’s wedding, I started to tell you again.”
“But you chickened out and decided to push me away instead,” I pretended to scold him.
“I was trying to do the right thing,” Pharis said, defending himself. “Trying to protect you from getting hurt.”
Then it was his turn to blush.
“And trying to protect myself,” he admitted. “I didn’t think I could stand to lose you—which seemed inevitable to me at the time—so I tried not to care.”
“You chose fear over faith. But it’s okay—we’re not doing that anymore,” I said.
Pharis leaned down so that his lips hovered just over mine.
“No.” He gave me a soft peck. “We are not.”
And then he kissed me again, a real one this time.
Lifting me onto my toes, he crushed me to him in a full-body embrace that promised a lifetime of passion. An eternity of love.
He broke the kiss, breathing heavily. “I had a plan for tonight. You are tempting me to throw it out the window, Wildcat.”
“I’m good either way,” I said, beaming up at him.
When I’d come downstairs tonight, I’d been hoping Pharis might propose to me.
Now I hardly cared about formalities like rings and engagement announcements and titles and balls.
All I wanted was to be with him forever. To never be apart again.
“I’m not,” Pharis said. “I want to do this. I need to do this. There’s something I need to ask you, and it can’t wait any longer.”
Taking my hand, he led me to a velvet-covered bench along one of the ballroom walls. As I sat on it, he knelt in front of me.
He withdrew a tiny silken sack from his pocket and began fumbling to get it open.
Tears came to my eyes when I saw how hard his hands were shaking.
Finally getting the ring out of the bag, Pharis held it up for me to see.
The central stone was Paraíba tourmaline, the exact color of Pharis’ eyes. It was surrounded by a sea of smaller stones, diamonds that reminded me of the stars we’d seen every night during our long ride from Waterdale to Havendor.
“It’s gorgeous,” I gasped.
Of course I wouldn’t have cared if it had been forged from one of Dargan’s melted horseshoes. I wanted it.
I wanted him.
Pharis gave me a tremulous smile, his brilliant blue-green eyes wet and shining.
“You know I love you. You’ve said you love me. I want us to spend eternity together. Will you, Raewyn Hennessey, give me the only thing I’ve ever really wanted in my life? Will you be my bond-mate? Will you marry me?”
A fountain of joy gushed from my heart and flooded my whole body.
I touched his face, stroking my fingertips from his temples over his cheekbones and down to rest on that masculine cut-granite jaw of his.
“When I met you, I thought you were the most beautiful—and most wicked—man I’d ever seen,” I said.
“It turns out you were all of that but so much more. You are fierce and protective and powerful, but you also have the most tender, deeply loving heart I’ve ever encountered.
I can’t imagine an eternity apart from you. ”
I paused to draw a shaky breath, fighting tears. “So yes, Pharis Randalin. I will be your bond-mate. I will marry you. And I will love every part of you for the rest of forever.”
Pharis let out a whoop and surged to his feet, pulling me up with him and spinning me around.
Setting my feet on the ground, he kissed me, and that single act was filled with more love and joy than I’d ever expected to feel in my life before we’d met.
When the kiss ended, I looked up into Pharis’ sparkling gemstone eyes, seeing myself in them. Seeing love in them.
The real kind no spell could ever hope to imitate.
“I want you to know that whether we ever have a child together, no matter how long it takes, I will be happy just to share eternity with you,” I told him. “And I’m not opposed to a few centuries of trying to conceive.”
He laughed and gave me a heated look that was halfway between lust and worship.
“I still think you might have sexual glamour,” he said.
Giving him a naughty grin, I tucked one finger into my fiance’s waistband and began slowly leading him from the ballroom, casting a seductive look back over my shoulder at him.
“Why don’t we go upstairs… and find out?”