Chapter Eleven #3
“Yes, and you know exactly how we dropped the ball,” she said.
“I’d hardly hold us up as an example of anything.
We got along very well. I will miss him the rest of my life.
But when it comes to executing our duty to the principality?
You already know that we were in a lot of trouble there. And that we didn’t even know it.”
“Aikaterini.” He moved his hands to take her face between them.
“There is nothing I want more than to be the husband you imagine it’s possible I could be.
But I think that will be an exercise in disappointment.
And I’ll be honest with you. I know that one way or another I can muddle through this Prince thing.
Far worse examples are littered through the history of this island.
But if I dropped the ball on being your husband, I don’t know if there’s any coming back from it. ”
“There will have to be,” she told him, in the same sort of quiet tone, though she could feel that her eyes were shining with all the feelings inside of her. “It is the only choice we have.”
“Because we’re bound together by law, yes, and there’s never been a divorce—”
“Because I love you,” she corrected him, gently.
“I love you, and I’m not entirely convinced that you don’t love me too, whether you know it or not.
I have to believe that there is happiness there.
And when there’s not, we will use that love to find a way back to each other. I have to believe this, Kyriakos.”
“But how can you believe this?” he asked, his voice turning urgent. “What evidence have you ever seen…?”
Aikaterini tapped her finger against his chest. Right there, where there was a heartbeat.
Right there where there was life and love and him.
Everything she’d ever wanted.
“I feel it,” she whispered.
And Kyriakos let out a breath that seemed to make every part of him change. All of that hard, angry tension left his body. It was like the sea air scrubbed him clean, and he leaned in and put his forehead to hers.
“I want to promise you the world,” he told her fiercely. “I would do anything for you, I hope you know that.”
“Including track me down to the lawyers’ offices and threaten me?” she asked, but she smiled at him. “To be clear, I’m perfectly fine with that.”
“I don’t want you to leave me,” he said then, all of that dark hazel intent on her.
“Not because of what people say or the good of the principality or any of that. I never expected this, Aikaterini. I never saw this coming. I find it impossible to imagine a way forward in this life without you. I don’t know what to do about that. ”
She held his gaze solemnly. “You do,” she assured him. “You do know.”
He let out a shuddering sort of breath.
And when he looked at her, his gaze was still fierce. And clear. “I vow to you here, where there are only the two of us, that I will do the best that I can to be the husband you deserve, and to figure out how to love you so well and so completely that you can’t see straight.”
Aikaterini thought her smile might tear her open, and she wouldn’t have minded if it did.
“And I vow to you that I will be a remarkable wife in every possible way, and I will see to it that we find joy no matter what else is going on in our lives. That we will celebrate it when we see it, and never lose ourselves in the machinations of pawns on chessboards and all the rest of these things we cannot control.”
“As long as I have you,” he told her, “I don’t care what else happens. And it hasn’t stopped hurting since we married, Aikaterini, so I think it must be joy after all.”
“That’s one word,” she said, and she kissed him.
And kissing him made her think that there weren’t a whole lot of things she wouldn’t do to keep right on kissing this man forever.
He kissed her back, and he smoothed his hands over her hair, and he didn’t let her go.
Aikaterini thought that was a good start.
“There’s another word,” he said when he pulled his mouth away. “Love.”
She felt the shine in her eyes tip over. Kyriakos shook his head as he looked at her, but there was that blaze in his dark hazel eyes. There was that intensity that wrapped all around the both of them and held them tight.
The way it had from the start.
The way she knew it always would.
“I can’t say that I know what it is,” he said, in that fierce, intense voice that she knew was only hers, “but I can swear to you that I will spend the rest of my life making sure that it always feels like this for us. And better. Because as far as I can tell, you are love.” He kissed her.
Once, then again. “And I have no intention of letting you go, Aikaterini. No matter what happens. The island will sink first.”
“I love you too,” she said, and when he swept her up into his arms and carried her back into the palace, neither one of them cared who saw them breaking protocol in so shocking a manner.
Because when they closed the door behind them and found themselves alone, they knew that the only thing that really mattered was this.
Them, together. Them, full of joy.
Them, in love.
Forever.