28. Aurelio
I’m still fairly out of it when my eyes flutter open. My vision is a little blurry, and my mind is foggy, but something feels…strange. About the ground, I mean. It’s much softer than I remember the dirt being before.
“Hey, you. Took you long enough to wake up.”
I blink, then Alessia’s face comes into focus. She’s incredibly close to me. Is she leaning over me while I’m laying on a bed of moss? No, the ground is far too soft for that, and I’d be soaked to the bone by now. She blinks down at me, a warm smile on her face, and reality suddenly sinks in with the force of a lightning strike.
“Am I…in your lap?” I question.
“Yes. Why do you ask?”
I feel my face go from cool to boiling lava in the span of five seconds. “Uh…Alessia? Why am I in your lap?”
“Because you looked uncomfortable. And I wanted to keep a close eye on you.”
“Ah. Right. Of course,” I chuckle nervously.
I go to sit up, but my shoulder spasms, and I have to bite my tongue.
“Ouch. Forgot about that,” I mutter.
“Idiot,” Alessia snorts. “Let me help you.”
My stomach flips as she picks me right up off the ground and carries me a short distance. I freeze up, unsure of this sensation, as I’ve never been carried like this before. I feel like the roles have been reversed, and my queen is treating me like a princess. It’s unsettling, but strangely wonderful all at once. Alessia’s not even struggling with my weight.
“You don’t need to move today. I’ve got you,” she promises.
“I can walk. I’ll just need help getting to my feet,” I insist.
Alessia looks down at me with a smirk. “Yeah, right. You could open your wound. Plus, what if I want to treat you like a king?”
Treating me like a king sounds a lot better than treating me like a princess. I’ll take it. I smile in reply, and Alessia looks ahead, seeming satisfied with the situation.
I can hear the crackling of the fire and smell the calming fragrance of burning oak wood before Alessia sets me down by the edge of the firepit. She takes extra care to prop me up by a rock so I can just lean back and relax. I’m starting to like this treatment more and more by the minute. She even serves up the roasted deer meat on one of the fancy plates she brought with her, one made from a special lightweight material that won’t shatter when dropped.
“Here. I reheated our leftovers from yesterday,” Alessia says, placing the plate in my lap. “Oh, and use your right hand before you forget, dummy.”
“I was going to use my right hand!” I protest.
“You are now,” Alessia says, smirking.
She walks back to the campfire to tend to her own reheating slab of meat, giving me no chance to plead my case. I sigh and accept my fate.
“Thank you for saving me, by the way,” Alessia says.
I look up from my breakfast mid-bite. “What?”
“You heard me. I appreciate you saving me last night,” Alessia repeats. “It would have killed me after I hit that tree if you hadn’t stepped in and saved my butt.”
“It’s really no big deal,” I say, shrugging, only for pain to explode in my shoulder again. “Gods, why do I keep doing this to myself?”
“I’m not sure, but it’s entertaining, I’ll tell you that,” Alessia laughs.
I roll my eyes. “I’m glad me being in pain is of great entertainment value.”
“Oh, don’t give me that. You had me worried sick. I had to use the last of my magic on that shoulder to keep you from bleeding out. Dummy.”
I glance at my shoulder, noting that it has, in fact, healed significantly faster than it should have. What should be inches-deep gashes are only surface cuts that will heal with time. I’ll just have to keep it clean and covered, and the healing process will run its course. That leaves me down for the count in terms of fighting off monsters, though, at least until I can move without reopening my wound.
“Thank you. I’m sorry I caused you trouble,” I say.
“It wasn’t any trouble. It was annoying passing out and all, but I got to watch the sunrise when I was stuck immobile for a few hours there.”
I nearly drop my meat. “Immobile?”
“Oh, yeah, that happens sometimes.” Alessia looks over her shoulder at me. “Did you not know? When I overextend my magic energy, passing out is just the first stage, like I did in the Lihra. The second stage of using too much energy, usually after I wake up from passing out, is being completely immobilized. My whole body will go numb from head to toe and force me to rest until it finishes replenishing my magic energy. If I still try to get up and do too much after that, I can just drop dead, like I’ve been struck with lightning or something.”
“Oh, hells no, that’s an image I don’t need in my head,” I say, shuddering.
“Relax. You’d have to be an idiot to push yourself that far. Clearly, I overdid it last night, but I let myself lay there as long as I needed, and the most I did after that was start the fire and watch over you while the sun rose. I was careful.”
“Well, be a little less reckless on the healing magic next time,” I mumble, taking another bite. “I don’t need you dying on behalf of me.”
Alessia continues to look on as I sit there in silence for a moment. She frowns, then all of a sudden, her face lights up.
“Oh my gods, Aurelio, are you embarrassed that I saved your life?”
I nearly drop my meal. “No! Not at all!”
“Liar! Your face is red as a tomato!” Alessia walks over to me just to cup my face in her hands. “See? You’re burning up!”
“Please leave me alone,” I groan.
“There’s no need to be embarrassed,” Alessia encourages, poking me in the chest. “Just because you’re a man doesn’t mean I’m your responsibility. I’ll always have your back, just like you have mine.”
Alessia kisses my forehead, then goes back to tending to the fire. If my face was red before, then I don’t want to imagine what color it is now. It’s got to be hotter than the fire by now.
I know she’s not my responsibility, but I should at least be able to take care of myself without dying, I think miserably.
Being married to a queen is hard enough, but being married to an imperial human is ten times harder. Every time I think I’ve managed to reach a level where she can rely on me, I end up relying on her to save my ass in the fallout, and that goes beyond adventuring. It happens during everyday administration duties, too. The worlds of adventuring and politics have no end to their intricacies. I’m floundering just trying to keep up.
As I watch Alessia tend to the fire, though, humming quietly to herself as she eats beside me, I realize the situation isn’t as cut and dry as I’m making it out to be. There was no one person who saved the other last night; Alessia blocked the initial attack, and I sacrificed myself trying to kill the Oni, and she healed me in time to prevent my death. This was a team effort, a feat neither of us couldn’t have pulled off without the other.
And now, in the end, I’m getting king treatment because I almost died.
Positives? All of them.
Negatives? Absolutely zero. This is a win-win situation all around.
“Alessia…I’m really enjoying adventuring with you,” I admit.
She pulls my head back into her lap, stroking her fingers through my hair. Her smile is intoxicating.
“I’m enjoying this, too. We should do this more often, after everything is over between Krasta and us.”
“Agreed.”
I close my eyes, listening to the birds chirp to one another overhead, the whistle of the wind through the trees, and the crackling of the fire nearby. Between the sounds of the Earth, the feeling of Alessia’s fingers through my hair, and the taste of seasoned, fresh meat still lingering on my tongue, I can’t imagine a more perfect day in all my life. I wish we could stay like this forever.
Maybe one day, when our kids are old enough to take our place. We can adventure as much as we want, see the world, and live a peaceful, happy life, just the two of us.
Even though we have many more quests to go, I’m looking forward to them all. As long as I’m here with Alessia, what could possibly ruin my day?