“You cannot make me do anything, knight,” I reminded him, loftily. “I am your queen.”
“Not until tomorrow, you aren’t,” Lorcan teased.
“Keeping me humble.”
“Someone has to.” Unlocking our apartment, he dumped the things he was carrying onto the unused guard’s bed in the alcove. “I’ll make it worth your while, Zosia.”
“Fine,” I sighed, genuinely frustrated. “One last try.” I took my notes and computer out onto the balcony, wrapped in a loose sweater against the evening chill. My fingers were cold by the time I finished and submitted my responses, but it’s done, for what it’s worth. Assuming I pass, I will have earned my degree, though there’s no way for Royals University to mail it to me here in Auralia, and no real reason to want it anymore. I slammed the laptop closed.
Honestly, this is a reminder of everything I once wanted from life and how impossible it has been to attain it. Why did I let Lorcan cajole me into doing this?
I’ll never have the time to focus on researching Auralia’s unique flora and fauna. Never get to work on isolating the chemical compounds in our medicinal plants. I might have cured cancer. Instead, I’m saddled with the Sisyphean task of keeping this island solvent and independent.
It’s easier when I don’t focus on what I can’t have. Finishing my coursework has been the equivalent of picking a scab off a wound that hasn’t healed, and never will. Like so much else in my life.
Lorcan picked up on my mood and took my computer away, again. This time, he put it away and sent me to wash up.
I was still out of sorts when I came to bed a few minutes later to find him sitting against the headboard, with his notebook open on his lap. His hair was damp from the shower he took while I was finishing my test, and he wore a loose, thin shirt. Devastatingly handsome.
“What’s this?” I asked, climbing in beside him. I’m in my usual nightshirt, one I stole from him a few weeks ago, and nothing else.
“Something I’ve been working on.” Lorcan flips open the notebook to an image several pages in.
It’s me, in formal regalia, sitting in the box section at the Colosseum that day when I was just seventeen. Five years ago. The first time we ever met, unless you count that moment in my mother’s carriage. I stared at his drawing for a long moment. I look like a child, though technically I was of age.
“I’ve been trying harder to remember,” he said, softly. “All of it. Not just the good and bad parts. Everything that’s brought us here.”
My heart skipped a beat. I edged closer to him, leaning my head on his shoulder. Lorcan turned the page. I gasped, then burst out laughing.
“I got that shirt from Raina, I’ll have you know.” It’s a sketch of me the night we sneaked out in Beijing. My entire back is bare from shoulder to waist except for a long fall of hair, and I’m sliding through a crowd of dancers while half-turning back to him with a come-hither expression. I know full well it was more of a furious glare. “You didn’t get my face right, though.”
Lorcan chuckled. “I think this version is closer to the truth.” He passes me what was apparently an earlier draft. Indeed, I am glaring properly. “But I like this one better.”
He tucks it away.
“You must have hated me that evening.” I sighed.
“Not at all. The opposite.”
“That makes no sense, Lorcan.”
He reached over to stroke my cheek. “That was the night I fell head over heels in love with you, Zosia. You were so much more than the stoic princess I thought you were. Ambitious, brave and unconventional. I hoped that meant, eventually, you might want me. An unconventional choice for a knight protector, much less a king.”
“Flatterer.” I leaned into his touch, despite my self-consciousness.
“It’s been an honor to be your knight, Zosh.”
Our lips met softly, sweetly, but far from chastely. There was a hunger to our kiss, barely reined impatience, knowing what tomorrow will bring.
“Show me the rest?” I asked when we parted for breath.
He did. There’s me sitting on my balcony in a nightshirt, feet on the railing, bare legs crossed at the ankle. Me on the airplane, gazing idly out the window. Pictures of my back, sitting attentively as I took notes in class. He always sat behind me.
There are sketches of me in Cata’s kitchen, and in his kitchen in Tenáho. One of me in the green dress I wore in France, which Lorcan clearly spent some time on. There’s me in Ansi clothes with a dragon on my shoulder, her tail looped around my neck for balance, looking properly furious this time. We both laughed. Me on horseback the day I came looking for him.
“They get a lot more explicit after this one,” he said. A faint pink tinge creeps over his cheeks.
“Now you have to show me,” I curled closer to his side. Lorcan looped one arm around me. My cheeks went from heated to steaming as he showed me the rest of his sketches. They start with us kissing, clothed, and quickly escalated to me, naked, beneath him, on top of him, my breasts exposed.
