The muscles in his jaw tightened, but as he opened his mouth to speak, he let the control slip for a second and I saw his chin quiver, saw the coating of tears in his eyes, so thick they hadn’t spilled.

“Aw, David.” I reached up and swiped under his lashes, releasing them. “It’s okay.”

He tucked me into his chest, his tears falling against my hair. But I didn’t mind. “My love. I—” His body shook for a second. “I don’t want to leave you. I love you more than I thought it was possible to love a person. And I know the pain you suffer right now. I know you’ve kept that pain from me to save my heart from aching, but I—” He swallowed hard, sniffing back the liquid. “How am I gonna leave you? I . . . If it would take surgery to cut you out of my heart, what must that mean for the way you love me?”

“David, I—”

“I hurt you. I . . . All I’ve done is yell at you, undermine you, overrule you and dominate you. I’ve no right to treat you that way, and I’m,” he paused and kissed my head, “I’m sorry.”

I snuggled into his chest again, wrapping both arms all the way around his slightly bony ribs. “I forgive you, David. Like I said, I understand why you’ve been that way. I mean, you haven’t really been my David, which means you’re clearly under a lot of stress. It would be unnatural not to be.”

He laughed a little, cupping the back of my head again. “And this is why I snuck away for a bit. I can free the prisoners in a few days. But, right now, I just want more time with you.”

I hugged him tighter. “Me too, David. I . . . we only have a month until you go to kill Drake, and—”

“I’m rethinking that timeframe, Ara,” he cut in.

“What?” I sat back to look up at him.

“We need more time.” He touched my face. “We haven’t even conceived yet, and that aside . . . I’ve avoided being around you,” he said. “To be honest, my love, I’ve tried my hardest not to even look at you, touch you—anything that would make it hurt more the day I have to leave you.”

“David, that—”

“I know. It’s mean and stupid. I . . .” He wiped a hand down his face, drying the tears away. “I wasn't aware I was doing it. It wasn't until I got on the road, played a few CDs—” He looked down at me then, his eyes changing. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve listened to music?”

“No.”

“I’m not sure I have since before our wedding.”

I pouted kind of mockingly.

“And as soon as I let my mind go for a second and just hear the notes, the music, my heart broke. I went back through all the horrible things I’ve done or said these last few weeks, and I told myself to shut up, that you understood. Repeated this to myself all the way to Elysium, but it didn’t matter. My heart wasn’t listening to my brain, Ara, and I just had to come back.” He brushed his curled fingers down the side of my face. “I couldn’t leave for a week without making sure you knew exactly how much you mean to me.”

The birds and frogs had started singing again all around us, almost too noisy, like they were happy to see David again, but they were the only sounds. I just didn’t know what to say, and at the same time, his words didn’t surprise me. What surprised me was seeing the boy I fell in love with sitting right here in my garden, when I never thought he’d surface again. “I thought royalty had killed this David, like maybe the coronation had changed you.”

“It did, sweetheart.” He tucked my hair behind my ear. “It changed me in the wrong ways. And I will still be a firm king, but not at the cost of your heart.”

I cupped his hand and held it to my face. “Good. Because you are one of the great kings, David. And I don’t want anything about that to change.”

“Nothing, huh?” His tone rose up a few octaves.

“Nothing. I feel safer with you on the throne. And I know I can rule my people well when you’re gone, but. . .” I smiled up at him. “You’re leaving me with a pretty good example to follow.”

His broken, sad face cracked, and he smiled then. “You don’t know how happy I am to hear you say that.”

“I dunno,” I said, hugging him again. “I think your smile pretty much says it all.”

He laughed into my hair, wrapping his other arm around my ribs and linking them together there, holding me tight in this secret garden where nobody else was permitted to go. Not even the king.

When the sun rose, I opened my eyes and lay dreading the day. That is until I smelled the sweet scent of citrus and cologne beside me. Each spicy breath filled me with renewed hope while every word we spoke in my garden yesterday echoed in my thoughts, elevating that hope to real possibility. David had not only said he was rethinking the time frame for his death, but had also gone and given the dagger back to Arthur for safekeeping. He didn’t tell me this, of course, but my reliable uncle-in-law had. And that made me suddenly eager to begin my day—another day I was blessed to have David beside me.

“What are you doing?” He grabbed my hand as I flopped my legs over the side of the bed.

“It’s breakfast time,” I said simply. “We have to get dressed.”

He tugged my wrist, and I tumbled back down into the spoon. “Forget breakfast. We can be monarchs tomorrow.”

“I thought we had to appear at all social gatherings, that our presence was a show of strength and governance?”

He snuggled his nose into the curve of my neck, wrapping both arms all the way around my waist. “You’re absolutely right. And you’ll have centuries to prove that after I’m gone.”

I relaxed a little, stopped trying to get up, and just lay there all snug and cosy in his arms. “I like this version of you much better.”

“Good. Enjoy it now then, because this me has to go back to his kingly duties this afternoon.”

“Why?” I rolled over so I faced him.

“There’s a new case coming in to Court today.”

“And you don’t think I can handle it?”

He ran the tip of his nose down mine. “It’s not that, sweetheart. It’s that I don’t want you to handle it.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s a member from Eric’s band.”

“What?” I sat up.

“Hey.” David looked at the empty hollow of his arms, then at my face, then at his arms again.

I lay back down, and the hold he had before tightened. “What did he do?”

“He revealed his vampirism to a human girl, and Eric was forced to kill her.”

I bit my lip. “Is Eric in trouble for that? Will he be brought before us t—”

“No.”

“Then why can’t I sentence his friend? I would’ve been the one to do it if you weren't here.”

“I—” The cool breath he huffed moved my hair. “Okay.”

“Okay, what?”

“Okay. You’re right. I can’t rush in and play daddy all the time,” he reasoned, more with himself than me. “You’re a big girl. If you want to handle this on your own, that’s fine with me.”

I leaned back a little to see if he was being sarcastic, but the corner of his lip angled up on one side with a sweet smile, and he closed his eyes again, taking a deeper breath of my scent. “You’re not kidding, are you?” I asked, just to confirm.

“About what?”

“About letting me handle it.”

“Did you think I was?”

“Uh, yeah.” I laughed.

He slid both hands along the sides of my face and planted a very soft, very sweetly-David kiss to my lips. “It’s not easy for me to sit back and watch you be independent.”

“What? I’ve always been independent.”

“Not really, sweetheart. I mean, when we met, you needed me. You . . . you needed me to care for you, guide you. Love you. And I guess I got used to that. It became a habit to baby you—”

“Like Mike did.” I smiled.

“Yeah. I can see how that relationship evolved that way.”

“How so?”

“It’s because you back down. If I put my foot down about something, you very rarely challenge me anymore. You never even question me, and sometimes I just don’t realise I’m being a. . .”

“Moron?”

“No. A controlling asshole.”

I sucked back the burst of laughter, accidentally spitting it out in David’s face.

He wiped away the dots of my hilarity and skidded closer, wrapping his ankle around mine, our bare skin touching in every way possible. “I don’t want to be that guy with you, Ara. I don’t want to hurt you like that, and I do, you know I do, want you to be this wonderful, independent, smart, switched-on girl you are. I think I just suck at being a husband.”

“You don’t suck, David.” I touched his face softly. “I love you, okay. And the fact that you’re willing to acknowledge your own bad behaviour shows me that you’re a better husband than I could have hoped for.”

He kissed my lips again. “That means a lot to me.”

I cuddled in to him again. “Let’s just start fresh, okay. I mean, neither of us has had a chance to be the other’s spouse because this is the first time we’ve really been together since we were married. Think about it,” I reasoned, “we had torture, possible eternal separation, followed by months apart, learning to rule a monarchy and, now, we have your imminent death on the horizon, and all of this is before we’ve even had our first anniversary.”

He laughed once, completely wrapped up in what I was saying.

“I’d say,” I continued, “the fact that we still love each other, that we can forgive each other’s downfalls and mistakes, means that we’re doing pretty well as a first-year married couple.”

The bend of his arm wrapped the back of my head, and he pulled me in under his jaw, holding me so tight I held my breath. “There’s that wisdom I saw in you all those years ago.”

“All those years ago, huh?” I raised a brow, even though he couldn't see it. “How old have we become in the last two years?”

“Speaking for myself,” he said with a chuckle. “I’ve aged rather rapidly since I met you.”

“Hmpf.”

He laughed. “But what I meant was that you’ve always been very wise, that I knew it from the first moment I heard your thoughts.”

“Except the deeper wisdom never surfaced, is that what you’re saying?”

“No. I just think sometimes you see the answer as being too simple, and you ignore your mind’s first response to things and bypass it, getting completely muddled up in the process of it all. But as you’re getting older, I’m seeing you use that wisdom more and more, and it makes me worry a little less about leaving you.”