Chapter 22 #2
Wrapping one hand around his neck, I pulled his mouth to mine. For a blissful moment, our bodies melded together. He groaned between our lips before retreating.
Always the gentleman. Even when I preferred him not to be.
I panted out, “I tried sneaking out sooner.”
Dritan retreated to a weathered armchair as I worked to loosen the front laces of my dress. I caught his throat bobbing while he watched me.
He refused to do anything further than kiss me in this dusty old boathouse. Damn his self-control and honor.
We were so infrequently left alone. Once my Aunt El learned of our friendship, she only allowed us to spend supervised time together, despite my lies that Dritan and I were merely good friends. Until tonight.
I assumed her lenience was due to the spiked punch and my birthday.
She had mortifying descriptions of what transpired between young lovebirds when left alone. Her explanations often came with crass hand gestures I wanted to burn from my memory.
A match between Dritan and me? My parents would never support it—at least not for a long time. They may believe in love, but they also believed in tradition, legend, prophecy.
They would tell me I was too young, that I needed to focus on the realm’s well-being. Upon my birth, my mother’s first order of business had been rewriting the laws that required me to marry to keep my crown.
Dritan’s eyes landed on my neckline, where the carcanet rested. My hand instinctually grasped a stone.
“That’s new,” he noted.
I nodded. “It’s one of Isolde’s relics.”
His brows rose. “How do you feel about wearing it?”
“Honestly?” I asked.
“Always.”
“It feels heavy. Not in weight, but in power. We don’t know how I will use it yet, but I can feel it heighten my abilities.”
He put his hands behind his head and smirked, watching me struggle with the ties some more. Finally, I gave up and pulled the sword from the leather sheath at my waist, and cut the laces that had belted the dress with a deep sigh of relief.
“That is also new.” Dritan stood. He eyed the rubies that encrusted the pommel of the weapon with a crease in his brow.
“Also a relic—the sword that belonged to your father for a short time. I wanted to show it to you.” I offered him the blade.
When he took it, he winced.
I had sworn as a child to never betray his trust or slip into his head, yet sometimes it tempted me.
Dritan longed to know his father. Only a memorandum left to him as an abandoned babe held evidence of his paternity; it had opened only once for him on his twelfth birthday.
The story that memorandum had told seemed unlikely—a babe born in the Sources’ in-between plane, to a mother the realms depicted as a villain.
He palmed the hilt and ran his hand over the detailed carvings there. “It’s odd to hold something he once wielded. It’s hard to imagine him awake.”
I stepped closer to Dritan and drew my finger over the marking that had scarred the blade’s pommel. “This here”—I pointed to the three skulls that were cut through with a triangle—“was Caym’s mark. It’s how he once tracked your father’s movements.”
At least my parents hoped that’s all it did. So little could be determined about how the Death Origin last rose.
Dritan’s brows pinched together, and his hands stiffened around the hilt. “I don’t see it.”
My blood ran cold. “Well, it’s dim in here.”
“Lark, there’s nothing there.” He pointed right at it.
I stared down at the death mark. I didn’t know why it would present itself to me and not him. It seemed a bad omen.
Dritan’s expression turned hard and contemplative—he only got that way when concerned. He flipped the blade over in his palm and chewed on his lower lip.
“What?” I demanded.
He sighed.
“If you don’t tell me, I’ll force it out of you.”
He leveled me a look of challenge that was downright enticing. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“I hate that you’re right, but don’t test me. Just tell me what you’re thinking. I should not have to guess with you.”
He offered me a weak smile. “This blade. It feels wrong.” He gritted his teeth and shrugged.
“Wrong how?” My hands found my hips as I cocked one—a habit I’d learned from my mother. It only made him quirk a brow of interest.
“It doesn’t feel like a source of salvation or hope. I don’t know how else to describe it other than wrong. You shouldn’t wield this, Lark.”
I huffed, grabbing it back from him. “What do you know?”
His gaze narrowed. “Don’t be bratty about it. I was being honest, as you wished.”
My shoulders sank. I offered him a faint “hmph.”
Dritan never lied to me or sugarcoated his thoughts—I loved that about him, but his lack of confidence rocked me off-balance.
Sheathing the sword at my side again, I raised my chin. He knew my whims too well, and he’d see right through my show of annoyance.
Especially since the desire to embrace him grew stronger than the desire to hold a grudge.
Dritan rolled his eyes. “Is this about the other night?”
“Hm, let’s see. About me asking whether you would marry me and you saying, ‘That depends’? That night?”
His lips curled up into a devastating smirk—dimpled and captivating.
“That is not how I said it at all,” he challenged. “You knew what I meant—I don’t want you rushing into this. I said, ‘That depends on if you are truly, without hesitation, ready.’”
“I don’t have all the time in the world,” I objected. He laced his fingers through mine and held them between us at his heart. “What better reason for marriage is there than a lack of time?”
“Be serious a minute.” He pulled my wrists up and kissed the inside of each. My knees grew weak. I was not sure when the boy I liked had turned into the man I loved. It’d happened over a thousand tiny moments.
Lust had not bloomed right away for either of us. Then it’d blossomed quickly from the first time he’d kissed me a year prior.
“I’m being serious,” I said. “I want to spend my remaining years with you by my side. Maybe I don’t want to die alone at the hands of Caym when he breaks free from that mirror. I just want you to be mine. Now.”
“I am by your side, and I am already yours,” he said. It was my turn to roll my eyes, but I still longed to protest when he dropped my wrists and reached into his pocket. “Which is why… I am agreeing.”
I started to argue, but paused.
Mischief danced in his eyes.
“Wait. You’re agreeing?”
“Yes,” he said as he retrieved a small velvet box. “I agree to marry you, Larkspur Darvanda. Though, I wish you hadn’t ambushed me with the question before this was ready.”
When he opened the box, a gold band with engraved roses shone in the boathouse’s light, and I squealed, throwing my arms around his neck.
“Are you sure?” I whispered into his collar. “It will not be easy. We are likely to ruffle a lot of feathers.”
“Of course. I wanted to do this the right way.”
I cupped his cheeks and kissed away his worries. Between kisses, I said, “I would travel all the wrong paths with you, and we would still make it to our destination every time. I’m sure of it.”