(jaylor au) clandestine meetings in beautiful rooms

That's The Thing About Illicit Affairs (Epilogue)

Freedom feels different to what you've always dreamed of.
For years, I thought that it was life, outside of the palace. I thought that it was peace and quiet, being able to love whom ever I wanted to, and do whatever I wanted in my life. I thought that it was my family, I thought that it was days without silk dresses and corsets.

But now, as I am sitting with my hand clutched tightly in Joe's, I am aware that freedom is nothing like that. Not in the world we live in. It takes everything in me just to breathe, but the feeling of his skin begins to calm me down. The way he strokes my hand allows me to see that perhaps there is a future, beyond this moment.

Austin is gone. My father is dead, and I didn't even really know him. Did anyone really know my father? Had he always felt like that? Or were they just irrelevant words that he shared under the cover of death?
"It should take us five hours," Alexander tells us from the front. "But that's if New York don't try to come for us first."
"Do you think they will?" Selena asks quietly. She is holding onto Blake and Abigail's hands, and I feel like I should be stronger.
I try to shove my feelings down deep inside of me, because I must remain strong for these people who have turned their lives upside down to find a life far away from the walls of the palace.
"I believe they will," I finally speak. We've only been driving for about twenty minutes - and we haven't met anyone on the road yet. "But it's hard to know what my mother will do. If she's... she's preoccupied with Austin," saying his name brings a fresh layer of tears to my cheeks, "She'll try and use him to get answers. I don't think he'll give them to her. That will slow her down. The fact that they don't know where we are heading will slow us down."
Joe reaches down beside him, and pulls out a handful of pages from a leather bag.
"I got everything I could find from the combat room," he tells me. "They won't find any details down there, if they should so happen to find it."
I nod, glad that he was capable of thinking that sort of thing. Because if he hadn't, we could have led them right to us.

Night begins to fall, and Alexander continues driving long into the night. Eventually it is just me and him awake, and I move to sit with him in the front.
"Do you really think that we'll be free?" I ask him softly, trying hard not to wake the others.
He sighs, and shrugs his shoulders. "We can only hope. But all I know, is that once the rebels find out you've fled - there's going to be a rebellion like we've never seen before. Like, maybe since this whole thing began. It forged these kingdoms all those years ago, and maybe it can tear them apart once again. I mean, eventually, there'll be more than just us. There's a whole country out there, Taylor." He pauses. "A whole world that's been waiting for someone like you."
"Someone like me?" I retort. He looks over at me, and nods.
"Someone exactly like you." He pauses, glancing back out to the open road, at the stars above our heads, at the abandoned, crumbling buildings on either side of us. "A glimmer of hope and the twinkle of light amongst the darkness."

THE END.

book two is published 🧡