Robber Royale: Fairytale of a Thief and a Scoundrel

Happily Ever After (Epilogue)

Gaelian's father didn't kill Prince Daeris, confused and relieved as he was all at once. He and Daeris' father did insist they marry right away though, but not more than they themselves insisted. And, since the exchange of the dowry was already...taken care of...there was really nothing left to deal with.

This time however, their wedding was a much more quiet affair, taking place at night in her father's private churchyard. Daeris' father was sent for by urgent messenger and arrived only days later, the ceremony taking place the second he arrived; despite the lateness of the hour and the priest's barely concealed displeasure and yawning. Only the Kings, the priest, and a few random servants, who happened to be on hand, were there to witness; one of whom Gaelian only saw as she slipped quietly out through the door directly afterwards, her black hair floofing out from beneath her hood.

The real celebration took place a couple days later at Quarters, Gaelian and Fox, for she could only think of him as Fox anymore, riding there directly after the ceremony, only taking one detour on the way - to properly bury the man who had been both cherished friend and hated enemy.

As the rains had come full tilt by this time, the festivities at Quarters took place in the great house. The inhabitants, like the rest of the country, celebrating the true and lasting peace ahead of them, but also celebrating their successful raid, now proved a little moot as their best friends turned out to be the princess and prince! Who'd have thought? And then, of course, they were celebrating the joining in marriage of not just one, but three couples!

Besides Fox and Gaelian, Trake and Janna had also shown up at Quarters already hitched.

It had been Trake's idea, well...really, though Janna hadn't outright suggested it, it had still been her doing. She was just so beautiful, so clever and sweet, and so very obviously infatuated with him, it was enough to drive any man to distraction.

And yet, though she had innocently expressed her own frustration over the fact, in the midst of their many heated moments as they'd made their way back home together, she had stubbornly drawn a clear line as to how far she could go with a man she wasn't married to. Resulting in his desperate declaration, on only their second night together, "Well, what if we got married then?"

To which she responded with an innocent, "Oh!" As if such an easy answer to their quandary had never even occurred to her...

Which is how some unfortunate priest, in the very next village, ended up performing the shortest marriage ceremony of his life, at 2am, in his cold, dark, empty church. Usually he would have refused such a request, but as he was pretty sure this poor sweet creature was getting swept away against her will, he had made an exception; telling himself that though he could not save her, he could at least save her soul.

Gaelian, on the other hand, had no doubt that Janna had managed to get absolutely everything she had wanted from the second she'd left that library...Though was also happy to note that it seemed Trake had as well, so far as she could judge from his grinning ear to ear every time she'd seen him, which lately, wasn't very often...

The third couple was actually Clyde and Kierra who, though she had accepted the fact that they were married in all ways but one for years, after a full day of agonizing labor for this their fourth child, became convinced she was going to die; pleading with Clyde that he not let her die an unmarried woman, her children bastards in the eyes of the cruel world she'd be leaving them behind in.

Which is how yet another priest was pulled from his warm bed in the middle of the night, this one having the hardest go, as he was blindfolded and thrown unceremoniously over the rump of a horse for a full speed charge through the forest, unaware of what fate awaited him at the end, never having experienced anything so terrifying in all his life. Things didn't improve much as he arrived at the bedside of an agonizing woman and was asked to perform both a marital ceremony and last rites in between her guttural cries.