89. Angélique
89
Angélique
“ H ow do you feel?” Elhyor asks me when we’re finally back in our room.
I stayed under the shower for a very long time, drowning my thoughts under hot water. Not that I really needed soothing.
I feel numb.
I think I don’t realize what just happened.
Or maybe I do.
I killed a tyrant.
But it’s like my brain isn’t really computing that I killed my father and my genitor at the same time.
I still think he would have done way worse to me if the roles were reversed.
So, why don’t I feel euphoric at the idea I finally destroyed my nightmare?
“Fine,” I answer to Elhyor.
It’s true, but I have a niggling feeling that I should either be ecstatic or ashamed that I killed a man, especially if said man was my father.
I’m unsettled by my mild reaction to what just happened.
Elhyor crouches on the bed at my back and circles my shoulders as he nuzzles the side of my neck.
“What is going on in that beautiful head of yours?” he asks me before depositing the softest kiss at the junction between my shoulder and my neck.
“I don’t even know,” I tell him as I gather my arms around me as if hugging myself.
Softly, Elhyor circles my middle with his own and moves me between his legs to the head of the bed. As if I’m fragile, he turns me inside his embrace so that my side is against his chest, making me lie upon his bent leg at my back so he can look at me.
“I’m not a porcelain doll,” I tell him with a bit of snark.
“Here she is,” Elhyor says with a wide smile, “I thought some gloomy person had swallowed my wife and that she didn’t want me to have her back.”
I can see amusement sparkling in his golden eyes.
A small smile appears on my lips and I think he’s going to kiss it when he tips my chin up, but no, he just pauses like this and looks at me like I’ve hung the moon.
“Do you ever regret marrying me?” he finally says, and I’m surprised at how serious his question turned out.
“No, I don’t regret it,” I tell him truthfully.
If anyone had told me that a few weeks ago, I would have laughed in their faces. Well, maybe not so much because I was supposed to be very discreet when I was in Versailles, but I would have laughed, anyway.
How far I’ve come.
“I do,” Elhyor says, “regret it, I mean.”
I’m torn between being sad and pissed off when I hear Elhyor chuckles again.
“You should see your face,” he says. “You’re so red.”
I guess “pissed off” won then.
But he gathers me closer to him and adds, “I don’t mean it like that.”
“What do you mean, then?”
I know I sound guarded, but that seems to amuse him some more.
“What I mean,” he says, as he gathers my hands between his and starts kissing each of my knuckles, “is that I wouldn’t want to take your choice away. What I regret is not the fact that you became my wife, but the fact that you felt you didn’t have any other choice.”
He pauses and then starts kissing my other hand as he moves me so I’m sitting against the headboard, and he kneels between my legs.
He still has both of my hands in his when he looks me in the eye.
“What I mean is, divorce me, Little Devil, so I can ask you properly to marry me.”
“You’re a big idiot dragon,” I say with a thundering laugh. “We don’t need a divorce, but if you want, when everything is back to normal, I’ll marry you again.”
A huge smile spreads on Elhyor’s face and before I can register what happened, Elhyor has me laying on the bed and is kissing me breathless.
“I love you, Little Wife. And I intend to show that to you for the rest of our very long life.”
He kisses me again and I realize it might be the first time he calls me like that while we’re not having sex, and I quite like the sound of it.
Yes, I want to marry Elhyor again.
“I love you,” I whisper against his lips before he proceeds to show me exactly how much he loves me.
All night long.
We have time before we get that second wedding, but I won’t dwell on it tonight. I retrieved Micha?l’s holo so Léandre’s brain is safe, Brice’s team has been found, and everyone is alive. There are still Rapha?l and maybe my brother to contend with, but they’re a problem for another day.
Until then, I’ll just enjoy the little moments of happiness like tonight.
The End