Wildfire

Fifty

"Would you object to it? If it were to come to pass as necessary that we wed sooner than our 14th day?" My Sweetheart asks his question as though he can not fathom the thought of me already feeling to completely safe in his arms despite everything that has happened to us thus far that I might have no fear of accepting him that much sooner and more steadily into my life. 

"Emmy... I would marry you right this very moment if you would call for a priest." And I would do so with no qualms what so ever, everyone that we would need for witnesses sleeping in our outer chambers just as they should be so very late at night. 

I had awoken in a fright, but the night terror of the cruelty that had been shown to me had been nowhere near as vivid as the ones I had had the night prior under the effects of the sedative, and my sweet Prince had been right by my side as promised to hold me and hush me until I was able to come back to my senses... And now here we lay tangled in each other's arms, our nakedness now familiar and comforting as I soak in the heat radiating from my fiance's body in our trepidacious sense of temporary calm.

"Every time you talk I fall more in love with you, Moon Beam. How is it you came to be so charming?" After a long kiss that leaves us both feeling breathless and in need of a much closer cuddle, the words being delivered with the adjustment that allows me to hide my face from him so that the flush filling my cheeks does not blind him. 

...

Emrys

...

"Tis thanks to my Papa. Want me to go wake him so that you might say thank you?" My Moon Beam turns cheeky with his whisper, a kiss being pressed to my shoulder when I chuckle into his hair and tighten my arms around his lovely waist... For every question I have asked him while we both wait for sleep to find us once more I have received a steady slew of answers, each one revealing to me just how bonded my sweet Rayne Cloud already feels to me, the final question of possibly moving the date of our wedding closer possibly the one I had feared asking the most. 

"You'll not leave this bed, you Minx. You'll stay right where I can hold you." The sigh my sweet shard of starlight gives me is the closest thing I have heard to the giggles that have come to hold such a special place in my heart, though I know why it is he cannot find it within himself to be cheerful... My sweet Moon Beam needed more time to heal emotionally from his assault and he had been given none. Instead of simply focusing on falling in love with each other and letting himself heal now we have to hunt down one of the men who hurt him to prevent him from being hurt again... And the stress of the situation is enough to rob both of us of the joy that we had only just begun to feel, "Where I can hold you and make sure you know how loved and wanted you are... And make sure that you know nothing will ever change that."

"I know I am loved... That is why I shall be ready whenever you are, Emmy. Whenever you feel the time is most appropriate." Even though our voices are kept low to avoid disturbing the family members sleeping just in the other chamber, I can still hear the longing communicated in my Moon Beam's words, his feelings so clearly mimicking my own feelings of love... Of cherishing... 

...

Rayne

...

"I am not saying we have to do it now... Just... If my Father becomes a problem, us marrying is the only sure way I know how to take the throne peacefully... Any other method would put too many people in danger with his mental instabilities." I never would have imagined that I might hear such sorrow in Emrys's voice when referring to King Xiang... But as he continues on I am able to see the King less as a tyrant run mad by the loss of his wife... And more as a man who has been torn apart by his grief, "I used to imagine he would be happy when I found you... That he would snap out of sourness eventually... But I should have known he would not... He's spent so long in mental agony that he does not know how to recognize love any longer and it pains me to see him so soured."

I keep my opinion on his father to myself, knowing that right now my fiance simply needs me to listen, his heart hurting not just over my assault, but also over his father's lack of enthusiasm over our betrothal... Over Cho's suggestion that is Shen were ever able to sneakily gain access to King Xiang, he might be able to sway the old beast into aiding his mission by allowing him access to the palace... Or worse... Having himself talked in to disposing of me himself in a twisted bid to keep his twisted talons so firmly wrapped around the throne where he can continue to force the kingdom to fester as if it were an old wound not properly drained...

I know that Emrys is not putting his negative thoughts into the air to try and impact me or make me nervous... He is simply stating the added sadness that has been plaguing his heart for longer than any of us can possibly imagine, his own heart having broken when his mother died with no one around but the palace staff to try as much as they could without overreaching their positions to soothe his ache while his father focused his own efforts on making everyone around him just as miserable as his soul had felt in its grief...

Instead of being bothersome by attempting him to refocus on the conversation we had been having previously I allow him to continue releasing his woes into the air, bittersweet memories of the joy his family had contained before his mother's passing joining us in the room as Emrys takes the time to recount to me his childhood, telling it to me as if it were a fairytale that he knows does not have an immediate happy ending... But rather one that stops with the only son of the King and Queen that had had such a prosperous but tragically short marriage laying in bed with his fiance discussing plans of their future, the rest of our story yet to be told as we drift back to sleep in each other's arms, our hearts made lighter for having another midnight conversation.