" i'd give up half of forever, just to be with you "
in which gardenia and christopher enter an arranged marriage for the sake of their kingdoms, but end up falling in love along the way.
-- oc x oc
(onc 2024 entry)
(prompt 88: You...
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The room was spinning.
Or maybe that was just Gardenia.
"Well done!" her dance partner, a shifter boy from the Enchanted Woods, remarked, causing a smile to break out across Gardenia's face.
She pulled her gloves up a little bit higher.
"May I have this dance?" a male voice from behind Gardenia asked, and she spun around, grinning ear to ear.
"Phillip!" The man laughed, sweeping his sister-in-law up into his arms and spinning her around once.
"Rosamond has finally allowed you to dance with everyone else?" Gardenia asked the dark-haired man, who nodded his head with a smile on his face.
"You know she tires of dancing so quickly," Phillip joked, earning a rightful smack from Rosamond, who hadn't left the dance floor quite yet.
"Keep making remarks like that husband, and you'll be sleeping in your own suite tonight," Rosamond joked, bypassing her husband to hug her sister close. "However, he is right, so dance with him for a little while I rest?"
Gardenia's smile widened, and she nodded her head. Phillip had been the one to teach her all of the newest dances, the ones with the tricky dips and lifts. She loved dancing with her brother-in-law, and she knew it was good for her sister to maintain her rest.
Despite the 100-year nap that the entire kingdom of Tagetes took, Rosamond seemed to be affected the most. She was tired more often than not, and activities that were very physical drained her quickly. It didn't help that she was preparing to rule the entire country, whose borders had just opened for the first time since the kingdom woke.
"Are you ready?" Phillip asked, and before Gardenia had the chance to answer, the world was spinning again.
The fast-paced dance was one of Gardenia's favorites of the new dances she had learned, the jumps and lifts might have been her most favorite part if she had to pick.
Before the curse, you wouldn't have caught her dead dancing, after all, she only had her sister and a few servants to dance with, and Rosamond was too caught up in her own world to dance with anyone, the servants were much too afraid of getting in trouble with the King to even go near her.
But after she woke, it was like a new life had been breathed into her. The energy she had was uncontainable, and often a source of many mistakes and long, sleepless nights. She had slept for 100 years. She was done sleeping.
