Even Aurora pulled in an audible breath as Atticus’s eyes grew wide and his face again paled.
“Drakkar –” Atticus started, his tone now downright soothing but Drakkar shook his head.
“I will call the dragon, Atticus, I vow to you, I will call them all. They will sweep this land at my command and I’ll have your throne. You know I do not wish it but I will take it and the fire of my dragons will melt every flake of snow and every sheet of ice across this land and with it everything in their path and they will do this as my vengeance for any harm coming to Finnie. If you do not do all in your power to see that my wife is safe, regardless she is no longer a daughter who has your blood in her veins which means a child without your blood will eventually sit on your throne, I will call the dragon. I will not delay. I vow this to you.”
“You are heard, Drakkar,” Atticus whispered.
“Be certain the right people hear it too,” Drakkar replied.
Atticus nodded.
Drakkar’s eyes moved to Aurora and she was observing him closely but did so giving nothing away.
But he knew she heard him too. Aurora always heard. Aurora made an art of listening.
He straightened and nodded to his sovereigns by name but not by right then turned to go, muttering, “We are done. I’m away to bathe and then get to my bride.”
He’d almost gained the door when Aurora called his name.
He turned and caught her eyes.
“Your…” she too hesitated before she said softly, “Finnie. How did her parents die?”
“I do not know,” Drakkar replied. “The elves did not tell me.”
She nodded and he started to turn again when she again called his name so he stopped and raised impatient brows to her.
“She came to…” another pause then a very soft, “a whole other world just to…” she pulled in a slight breath, “see them?”
“Indeed,” Drakkar answered. “And in doing so, to see you,” he clarified.
Aurora held his eyes.
Then she observed quietly, “She must have loved them very much.”
“No,” Drakkar stated. “In the last days as I told her of you, any mention, even in passing, of your names, her eyes would light, her cheeks would pink with excitement, her attention, always avid, would grow intense. She did not love her parents very much, my queen. They were her world. And she journeyed from that world to have them back. That is something beyond love but I don’t know what it is. What I do know is that they must have been remarkable to deserve that devotion.”
Aurora held his eyes and as she did she gave him something she’d never given him nor had he ever seen her give anyone else, even her husband.
She visibly showed vulnerability.
Drakkar watched Queen Aurora pull her lips between her teeth as her eyes got bright with unshed tears. Then she released her lips and swallowed, blinking and the brightness in her eyes disappeared.
Then she said quietly, “I look forward to knowing your Finnie, Drakkar.”
“I can assure you, you do,” Drakkar replied quietly back, dipped his chin to her and to his king then he walked out of the room.
* * * * *
Bathed and dressed for dinner, Frey moved down the hall to the door of the rooms he would be sharing with his wife in order to have a brief moment with Finnie prior to escorting her to dinner.
He was pleasantly contemplating how he would spend that brief moment as he turned the knob and entered their rooms.
He got two steps in, caught sight of his wife and stopped dead.
Finnie was sitting in an armchair across the great space, her knees tight to her chest, a winter white blanket tucked around her and her cat Penelope was curled in a ball in the seat by her hip. Her head was bowed to a book, her white-blonde hair had been curled in a riot of waves and ringlets that fell down her back but was pulled up at the sides in jeweled clips. Her face was made up in a way that managed to succeed in what, until gazing on her, Frey would have thought was the impossible task of enhancing her already significant beauty and he could see her even more generous than normal display of cleavage coming forth from a gown of shimmering ice blue that was exceedingly becoming to her complexion and coloring. All of this was to such an extreme, he had to stop dead to give himself a chance to take it in.
Her head came up and her eyes slowly turned to him and when the fullness of their beauty hit him, Frey considered skipping dinner altogether. And as he considered this he decided that later, much later, they could have something sent up.
This idea fled his mind when she said softly, yet listlessly, “Hey. You’re back.”
Then she turned back to her book.
These actions made Frey stay frozen for an altogether different reason as he studied his wife and her demeanor and registered a tone she’d never used and one which by no means suited her.