No Fury

Then: Epilogue

[Harry POV]

The doors to the Great Hall opened, and bodies poured inside. Tentative, like the ease of water up and over a boulder in a lazy river.

I rose, in a sense of detachment and wonder, because it wasn't customary to rise. It was customary to sit on my throne, to simply receive.

But I rose because she did, my wife, my life, my queen. And I stood watching in amazement as she lowered herself to her knees before the mass of children. Not out of genuflection, but to be nearer to them.

The first inside the door made it into the circle of her embrace, his own tiny arms going around her neck and squeezing. He was perhaps only three; not old enough to understand that he could only hug her like this because she had offered, and because—maybe more importantly—she had been one of them once. He hugged her not out of any of this wisdom but because, I knew, she gave the sense that she was of them, and somehow also of this castle. She had the manner of a Queen and a commoner all at once.

In the end, Cath was the diamond the size of a fist found just beneath the earth.

Tiny hands took their turns winding around her neck or—if too shy —cupped in her gentle palms while she asked them about pets, schooling, whether they liked adventure. She pulled candies from her pocket, tempting the quiet ones.

I barely spoke. They were not here for me, not this time. Instead, I watched the jeweled crown sit atop her head, unmoving. I watched soft curve of her neck, the sweet movements of her lips as she spoke, the fluttering gestures of her hands.

Her hand, wearing my simple band of possession.

Surreal. It was entirely surreal.

What had once been my deepest, most aching questions were now my truths.

How does her skin taste in that perfect place where neck meets shoulder?
How does she sound when she first wakes?
Does she sleep on her side or her front?
How do her eyes look when she loves?

As if she could feel the weight of my adoration, she turned, eyes meeting mine. We had another three hours of this greeting — it was customary after a coronation for the new Queen to meet her subjects — but in that moment, I only wanted to take her upstairs, pull her into my lap in the large chair near the window, and recount every memory we had of each other.

We had done that once before, really; we needn't do it again. On the night before our wedding, with Anne asleep in her new room beside ours, and the warm early-summer breeze drifting inside, we had recounted it all: from the very first time we saw each other — across the courtyard, as children — to the moment Douglas pulled her from her bed and into mine, when I chased away any remnant of her innocence.

But for as much as Cath loved me, I knew I was flawed. I was still greedy, and often wondered what other memories had been shaken loose that night. Perhaps another time she saw and admired me. Or, a time she noticed me gazing at her, and understood through the benefit of hindsight that I had been utterly in love with her since the moment I saw her.

The reception continued. I shook hands, I kissed the heads of children. More than anything, I watched my wife.

We had been married one week before her coronation, not in the chapel, as was custom, but by the priest in the field where we had once secretly lain as lovers. The grass had been cut in a wide circle for the ceremony, but just beyond the aisle and the standing crowd, it had grown nearly knee high.

It was wild, just as it had been back in those early days, mixed with tiny purple flowers and yellow mustard brush. James held Anne to the side, Cath's family stood beside him with Robin sleeping in Liam's arms. I registered all of this later, of course, because when Cath stepped out of the shadows in a gown made of cream silk and covered with pearls, I could hardly breathe, let alone look anywhere but at her.

Without taking her eyes off of me, she stepped onto the path laid down for her, and the vision was majestic against the brilliant blue sky: the aisle was a tapestry of silk, dyed every shade of red known to mankind. Deep red, blood red, crimson cut a brilliant streak across the field. I knew the significance of the red fabric only the night before. This was the silk from the dresses Maria had dressed my daughter in, to torment Cath. These were the dresses Zayn had first made into a noose, and later fashioned into a river of silk to lead Cath down the aisle, to me.

Someday, he told her, he might make kites out of it for Anne and Robin to fly in the field.
And someday, she told me, she might use the fabric to make dresses for Anne's dolls.

Because that was who she had always been: turning ruin into triumph, turning fury into bliss.

I wish I remembered the entire ceremony, every word. And maybe that would be what we would discuss tonight, in the wide chair by the window. Maybe I would ask her to recount every word from the ceremony; her memory was always better than mine, but especially now. Maybe I would ask her to repeat the words again, as if saying them one more time would brand them somewhere on my skin, on the beating organ beneath my breastbone.

Or maybe I would pull her onto my lap and simply tell her how she looked as she received her subjects for the first time as Queen, her smile unwavering, her hands eternally gentle, her patience a wonder as the river of people fed into the Great Hall. I would tell her that I'd never before seen a Queen as admirable as her, in all my travels.

~~

In the end, I can do nothing but take her into my arms, tasting her mouth and laugh and quiet sigh when she gives in and lets me pull her onto the bed. At this rate, we will surely have another child in the winter and the thought makes my body rise, aching for her. 

She stretches beneath me, cheeks still pink with the rose-stain, lips pink from my attentions. I watch her arms rise up, fingers tangling in the carved headboard. It's always a moment that gives me a quiet sense of shame, chased by relief that the position gives her one of power, not fear. She lies beneath me like this to remember where we started, to relish the relief that we are here, not to remind me of the monster I once was.

But I should have expected her to see it in my eyes, anyway.

"Your heart was always tender for me," she whispers.

"Aye."

"What was it like, that first night?"

I swallow back the strangled sound I want to make. "Heaven," I tell her, "and hell."

She gasps when I touch her, first with my fingers, reverently, and then fitting myself inside, lost to the relief of it for a long, shaking exhale.

"And now?" she asks.

I move over her, mouth on her neck, her jaw, over her lips.

" 'Now?' " My question comes out garbled, tight with need.

She laughs, knowing that I cannot speak when her hands slide over my back like this, when her legs wind around my hips like that, and when her teeth scratch into the skin of my neck.

Because now, she knows as well as I do: there is nothing but this life.

My wife, our daughter, our kingdom.

~~

A/N: Thank you for going on this journey with me!! I really had the most fun writing this story. Thank you for your patience these last few months, too, while I worked on other projects. Just three quick specific thanks: one to my bestie, for helping me learn that the 1D guys were not named Doug, Steve, Joe, Bob and the One With The Hair , for being an adorable piglet about this story and reading every word; two, to Anna, for reading, sharing, and flailing in my text box; and three, to Wattpad, for making it so easy to turn a story I wrote on my phone into something I could post online. Thanks, my sweets. xx Spark