“Alright,” I agreed, running my thumb over her cheek. But she still looked haunted, and I was well aware that she wouldn’t completely heal overnight. It might even take months or years, but I wanted her to know that I was here for her. “We’ll make this right,” I assured her. “We’ll get our kingdom back, our home. We’ll get your mother too.”
Only, though I’d meant to put her at ease, for some reason her eyes filled with tears. She blinked rapidly and sniffled, but despite her efforts, a drop escaped out the side of her eye and slid over the bridge of her nose. I whisked away the moisture, waiting patiently for her to say something because I didn’t want to ask questions and make her talk about it if she didn’t want to. I’d let her cry without explanation, and hold her for no other reason than to give her a shoulder if that’s what she needed.
After a few moments of making sure she could maintain composure, Ava whispered, “Hazlitt killed her.”
My brow furrowed with sympathy, but I asked, “Are you sure?” I wouldn’t put it past Hazlitt simply to taunt her with it, to tell her that her mother was dead even if she truly wasn’t. But, despite Ava’s efforts to keep her emotions under control, her face contorted with a deep pain that I understood immediately. “He made you watch,” I realized.
Ava reached up as droplets spilled from her eyes, wiping them away herself. “He wanted the location of the Vigilant,” she whimpered, “and I wouldn’t give it to him.” She inhaled a quivering breath, briefly squeezing her eyes shut. “I had no way of knowing about Nira or Akamar, and everyone else was dead… I thought you were too, I just…” She couldn’t finish. She still felt too angry with herself for giving up, and I could see in the damaged and devastated tears in her eyes that she harbored more guilt than even I could imagine.
“It’s alright, Ava,” I said, pulling her into a tight hug. She buried her face in my neck, sniffling through her tears. “I understand.” I ran my hand up and down her back soothingly, holding her to offer as much comfort as I possibly could. “It’s not your fault. None of it is your fault.”
She cried against me as I murmured that reassurance over and over again, and took in a deep breath after a long while, letting it out in an emotional sigh as she collected herself and stopped the tears. She leaned back, swallowing down her misery as she set her forehead against mine. “Do you think we’ll ever be as happy as we were?”
“Were we happy?” I teased, because our relationship had always been one primarily of restraint and torment.
“You know what I mean,” she said through a soggy huff of laughter.
I pressed a kiss to her lips and answered seriously, “If we make it through this, we’ll be happier than we were.”
She nodded her agreement while I brought one of her hands to my lips, and for the next few minutes, I planted delicate kisses to her fingers. A kiss for every month we’d spent apart, for every tear, and for every day of pain. I kissed her hand until the affection banished the moisture from her eyes, until it tickled her flesh and her mouth curled with a smile.
“I’m not a princess anymore,” she mused, reaching up to touch my face. “I never had a birth claim to the Valenian throne, and Nira and Akamar have more of a claim to the Ronan throne.” She met my gaze, finally able to move past the desolation and look hopeful. “We can be together, truly together. For real and forever… and officially, if you wanted.”
My eyebrows furrowed with instinctive curiosity as I contemplated what she’d just said, while my mind made the connection between her not being a princess and us being together. “Did you just—” I faltered in shock, pushing myself up onto an elbow to look at her. “Did you just ask me to marry you?” And I couldn’t help it that the mixture of surprise and amusement made my cheeks tint as I chuckled. “Did you just go from not speaking to me to asking my hand in the matter of a day?”
“I suppose I did,” Ava agreed through a laugh. “I’ve been thinking cottage life might suit me better than—” I cut her off with a kiss, which wasn’t more than simply bumping my mouth against hers because I was grinning too much to really kiss her. “Does that mean yes?” she asked when I pulled away.
“Aye,” I said. “I’d marry you this very instant if I could.” At that, Ava’s eyebrows rose, and I could quite clearly read the thoughts behind her expression. “We’re not getting married this very instant,” I said with scolding sarcasm, which made her laugh. “When this is over, we’ll do it proper.”
“You’re no fun,” she grumbled.
I gave her another joyful kiss on the lips. The thought of marrying her was almost enough to make me even more eager to finish this war. All I had to do was defeat Hazlitt, and then we could all be free and Ava and I could be together without a worry. I knew it wouldn’t be that simple, and that’s if I even made it out alive, but I didn’t want to think about that right now.
So I glanced back toward the table. “What have you been drawing?”
She followed my gaze. “Would you like to see?”
When I nodded, she got off the bed to retrieve her leaflet of paper, and I sat up to lean back against the headboard. Ava got the paper and climbed back onto the bed, sitting at my side and placing the leaflet in my lap. I flipped open to the first page while she leaned her head on my shoulder—she’d drawn a landscape of the meadow outside the caves. There was another landscape on the next, and I had to admit that I was surprised she’d actually been drawing. Every time I’d looked at her, she’d appeared distant, and it hadn’t seemed she’d been doing much drawing at all.
The next page was a portrait of Akamar, and when Ava saw it, she said, “He begged me to draw him.” I chuckled. “Your mother’s been caring for him?”
I nodded, turning to the next page. “He and Nilson have grown attached,” I explained, “and he and Nira… they’ve become very much like family.”
Ava didn’t say anything, but I could feel her gratefulness in the kiss she pressed to my shoulder. I moved on to the next sheet, and though it was a portrait of me, I wasn’t entirely surprised—Nilson had said she’d drawn me. However, when I turned the page once more, I froze at an intense mixture of shock and excitement. Ava had sketched me, and though the perspective was hers, I recognized it as our first night together in the Ronan castle. I was on my knees before her in nothing but trousers, and my cheeks flared with such a deep blush when I saw it that I was sure Ava could feel the heat.
She could also sense my bashful tension, because she laughed, “I’ve a perfectly good explanation for that.”
“Have you?” I asked, clearing my throat because I hadn’t been prepared for seeing it, and the fact that she’d drawn something like that had caused a very physical reaction in me.
Ava hummed the affirmative. “I thought remembering good things from before would help me heal faster, and be ready to speak to you sooner.” She shrugged, and then said, “I never felt so good as that night.”
I silently thumbed the bottom corner of the paper. I’d never felt better than that night either, but in my mind, it felt tainted. It was attached to the memory of the next morning, of losing everything, and I wanted nothing more than to make new memories that weren’t darkened by Hazlitt. I wanted to be free of all this. Free of worrying about the safety of everyone I loved.
“Can you defeat him?” Ava asked, intuitively catching the turn of my thoughts.
My shoulders slumped as I let out a soft sigh. “I don’t know,” I answered, only comfortable enough to admit that to Ava. I could kill him, of that I was almost certain, but I didn’t know if I could do it and survive. “It’ll be hard even getting to him.”
Ava mirrored my sigh, and we were both quiet for a somber minute. “If only dragons were still alive,” she mused. “I bet you could use your magic to get one of them to help.”