“Yes, you’re standing right here,” he mocked.
“I mean—you know what I mean! And when we’re together, you… I feel safe with you—”
“So I’m just another safety precaution for you?”
“What—no—Draven!” she practically stamped her foot in frustration at the questions he was drilling her with. She did a circle, staring at the moons with words stuck in her throat. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I love you. You… you challenge me, you trust me, you don’t try and change me, you know when I need time to get myself together, you… you make me laugh, which is actually quite a feet if I am honest, I—” she did a double-take at him standing there with his hand clapped over his mouth “—is this funny to you?!”
The amused glint in his eyes make her fume. She smacked his arm hard, causing his hand to fall from his mouth, revealing the broad smile on his face. Laughter spewed from his lips, and she hated him for it.
“I hate you,” she muttered as he cackled in front of her.
“Oh—Oh, I’m sorry, Aydra,” he said through his laughter. “I’m sorry, it was too good of an opportunity to pass up—”
She hit his shoulder again, nearly pushing him backwards this time.
“You are such an ass, Draven Greenwood,” she mutter as she pushed him back again.
He caught her hands in his and pulled her flush against him, his laughter still radiating through his core as he wrapped his arms around her. Her frustrations waned with the press of his lips to hers, and when he pulled back, she avoided his eyes and bit back the smile threatening her lips. He pushed her hair back, tilting her chin up to meet his eyes. The smile in his gaze made her stomach flutter.
“You’ll be the death of me,” she muttered.
“We’ve been planning how to kill each other since we were eight. Of course I’ll be the death of you,” he grinned.
She laughed under her breath and then sighed into his embrace. For a few moments, she simply hugged him into her, closing her eyes and relishing the feeling of his body against hers, the lift of the weight on her shoulders now gone.
“What do you say we go back? The boys were working on a feast when I left,” he whispered in her hair.
She pulled back and looked up at him. The noise of the phoenix sounded in her ears. It sent a shiver down her spine. “Anywhere with you.”
Dinner was potatoes with rosemary and freshly caught rabbit. Aydra wasn’t keen on the rabbit. She quite enjoyed the potatoes, but mostly… it was the laughter and stories filling the table that she craved.
Draven pulled her a chair up beside him at the table. But by the end of the meal, her head was lying in his shoulder, and he had an arm pushed around her. The smell of black herb filled the air as they passed pipes between them. They all relaxed as Draven did at banquets: legs thrown over the sides of the armchairs, relaxing with their hair down, slumped into the backs of the seats.
Aydra inhaled the herb from Draven’s pipe and let her eyes close at the swim of it. His hair fell over her face each time he would look down at her, nudging her cheek with his nose when he would laugh, entwining their hands together as their eyes dazed and the voices around them became distant echoes. It was some time later that she found herself lying beneath the stars on his chest, the warmth of the fire at their feet, cool of the dirt on their backs.
“They dance,” she whispered as the herb went to her head.
He chuckled under his breath, his fingers delicately drawing circles on her hip. “Occasionally,” he replied.
“How do you think the Architects choose who to place in the stars?” she asked him.
Draven sighed, silence encompassing the moment as he contemplated his answer. “Perhaps Haerland presents them with those she chooses to be worthy.”
“No Lesser being has ever been chosen,” she noted.
“Name one that’s ever earned such,” he bantered.
She smiled despite herself and shook her head. Draven brought her hand up on his chest, and she felt him looking down at her.
“You will be,” he told her.
Aydra frowned and sat up slightly on her elbow. “Me? The runaway Queen? Traitor to her people, lover of her enemy?”
“The first true Queen of Haerland,” he corrected.
Her hand softened against his, and his fingers squeezed her hip just so. “Then you’ll be beside me,” she whispered. “The true King.”
A deep exhale left him, and his eyes darted over her face. “Burning traitorous kingdoms, breaking curses, crushing the Chronicles, and shifting the cosmos… what else can we do together?”
The smile slipped full on her face, and her heart swelled with him in her arms. “Everything.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
A FULL MOON and a crescent met Aydra’s eyes as she allowed herself the silence of the balcony. She’d been in the forest two weeks, and it was the most freeing two weeks she’d ever felt.
Not only because she could be with Draven, but because she felt… free. Welcome. Wanted. The Venari people didn’t treat her as though she were fragile, as though she would break or snap at them if they said something out of turn. She appreciated the equal respect they treated her with, that they would poke fun at her expense once in a while.
She’d filled some of her time reading some of the stories from the Honest Scrolls books and drawings Draven had piled into crooked shelves behind his desk, other times walking the forest or chatting with Balandria and the rest of Draven’s people. She felt more at home within their darkened kingdom than she’d ever felt in her own.
There had been word of more ships on the horizon, and so Draven would pour himself to look at the maps
