Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 100363 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 401(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100363 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 401(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
“It’s difficult,” he tells me one night, lazily stroking my hair as I snuggle at his side. “Faeries are never children. I wouldn’t even know how to begin to let go of all my knowledge and simply experience wonder.”
And so, it becomes my mission, in the days before our official coronation, to teach him wonder.
“Look closer,” I urge him when he picks a flower from the grass and I part its petals to reveal the daisywing asleep inside. “Listen,” I tell him on one of our walks through the forest, silencing him so he can hear the songbirds calling out to each other. And Cassan marvels at every small, inconsequential thing I show him, for he has never been taught to appreciate them.
But at night, when he’s well-fucked and happily asleep, I often can’t make my mind rest. I can be happy with Cassan, but I will never love him.
For I love Luthian.
And I love Kathras.
I don’t understand how it is that I can love them both, but the mere thought of either of them brings tears to my eyes and raises a gnawing disappointment that threatens to consume me. I hold all of this inside, though I do consider the possibility of a diary, until I remember Parphia’s journal sitting in my trunk. I am not immortal, destined to live out my days until some misfortune befalls me from which I cannot recover. I am mortal, and no matter how safe I am kept, I die more every day. When that time comes, will I want the next queen to read my innermost thoughts? Will I want her to read about my great, unrequited loves when they might be perfectly happy with my king?
There is no point in dwelling over Kathras or Luthian in a journal. It won’t bring them back. It might prolong my sadness. If I simply stop thinking about them, eventually, I will not remember how it felt to have their hands on me, their bodies joined to mine.
But Kathras had warned me. “I’m going to fuck you, Cenere. So deep and so hard that whenever you’re with anyone else, all you can think of is me. All you can feel is me.” I simply had no idea that such a thing was possible.
When I am beneath Cassan, I feel Kathras pounding into me, hear his heavy breaths beside my ear. I feel Luthian’s arms around me, his cock stretching me. Cassan is a skilled lover, but what is all the skill in the world when I long for two others?
It’s not fair to him, I know. It would be easier if he were vapid and vain. But he is kind and sensitive and sweet, and with every day that passes, I feel more like a betrayer. It is already too late for me to change my mind; after all, where am I to go now that my life’s purpose has been fulfilled? But coronation day will make things even more final, and it’s fast approaching.
We take a walk in the garden the night before the ceremony, arm in arm.
“You seem sad, Cenere,” Cassan says, breaking me from a long, thoughtful silence I didn’t realize I fell into.
I put my other hand on his arm and give a brief squeeze. “Not sad. Anxious.”
“There’s nothing to worry about,” he assures me, then pauses. “Well, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. There hasn’t been a coronation in five thousand years, and I didn’t attend the last one because I hadn’t been born yet.”
“But you’re not nervous?” We’ve practiced the entire ceremony, from our entrance in the throne room and the initial crowning, to the procession to the sacred circle and the sharing of enchanted wine, the ritual mating. The courtiers who’ve meticulously arranged the event are as anxious and serious as the dread inquisitors, and they did not appreciate the merriment with which Cassan and I approached our rehearsals.
He shrugs and sighs. “What will happen if I don’t get the words just right? Will they behead me? No. I will still be their king. If I can’t pour my seed onto the sacred stone, will the crops wither and die? What crops? We conjure all the subsistence we need.”
I feign umbrage. “What do you mean if you can’t spill your seed? Has that been a problem any of the times we’ve practiced?”
He laughs. “I have no doubt you could make me come even if I were half dead.”
A memory of Arcus’s face as he died unsatisfied flits through my memory, and I snort. Cassan interprets it as a laugh over his remark.
“You have nothing to worry about, Cenere. I want you to be my queen, so my queen you shall be. And if anyone takes issue with anything you might do tomorrow... well, fuck them.” He frowns. “Well, don’t actually fuck them. They don’t deserve you.”