Page 135 of The Mirror in the Mountain

He sat me on the bathroom counter, carefully cleaning me. “Throne next, or should we leave something to look forward to?”

My heart felt like it might burst as I added yet another addition to my list of things I wanted to experience with him now that I was assured of the time to do so. Its growing length was a far cry from the empty dreams I had stopped letting myself hope for not so long ago. “I want everything with you, but I suppose I can wait one more day for this particular adventure.”

Bash smirked at me. “Who says we’re only doing it once?”

He carried me back to the bed, holding me tight against him as his shadows tucked the sheets in around us. I relaxed into him, feeling the rise and fall of his chest as we breathed together. Savoring the happiness I could feel across our bond, multiplying endlessly from both of us.

And I realized that I had found everything I hadn’t let myself want, for fear of it being taken away from me again—that home, that safety, the love I had never let myself dream of. That I finally believed in forever.

Chapter 57

Eva

The days felt long, but the weeks felt short as we spent our time steadying the realm after so long in chaos. Overseeing plans to rebuild what had been broken in the war, finding homes for those displaced, leaving no ask for help unanswered.

Some days, I would marvel at how long it had been since I had heard my father’s voice in my head commanding me to breathe in order to hold myself together. As unconscious as the reflex was, the fact that I hadn’t needed it was a sure sign of how safe I finally felt. Other nights, I would wake up from a nightmare with Bash whispering those words over and over as his arms tightened around me, my father’s voice blending in with his.

Breathe, Eva. Count each second.

But while the memories I relived in my dreams left me cold and shuddering, they were never the ones where I had to fight my way out. Never the kind that left marks. And Bash’s fingers circling steadily on my back as he held me close soon chased their chill away.

It finally felt like I could exhale. Like I could allow myself to revel in the relatively strange sensation of being…happy. At thesense of peace in knowing I was where I was supposed to be, with the people I loved there beside me.

Well, almost.

As the room darkened in the shadows of twilight, I stared up at the portrait of my parents. My eyes zeroed in on my mother’s matching pair looking down at me. And for the first time in a long time, I couldn’t think of the last time I had been forced to hear the reverberations of her screams.

Instead, a fleeting memory of her infectious laugh seemed to echo in the room, my father’s deep one matching it. I wished they could be here with me, like defeating Aviel should have brought them back. But something told me they knew how this all had turned out, even if they weren’t here to see it.

Some things couldn’t be fixed, but I would spend the rest of my days changing the things I could for the better.

My onyx gown had begun to blend into the gathering shadows when I heard a noise from behind me. Bash leaned a broad shoulder against the doorway, his arms crossed in front of him. I couldn’t help but smile at the sight of him with a crown on his head, the deep gold that matched my own somehow not clashing horribly with the auburn of his hair.

“You look exhausted,” Bash said, coming up behind me. His arms wound around my waist, tugging me against his chest before moving to massage my shoulders. I let out a small groan. He peppered little kisses along the long line of my neck as his thumbs dug into my muscles below, and I tilted my head to the side to give him better access.

“Gee, thanks,” I mumbled. “If I have to review one more plan, I think I might go cross-eyed.”

“Is that so?” Bash spun me around, holding me at arm’s length as he gave me a wicked grin. “So you don’t want to hearmyplans?”

I blinked stupidly. “Yourplans?”

“For us.”

“Us?”

He shook his head, one side of his lips curving up in that devastating half-smile. Watching me with that same soft wonder as he often did when he thought I wasn’t looking. Like he couldn’t believe that not only did he find me, but he also got to keep me forever.

I tilted my head at him, waiting. Then let out a surprised squeak as he sat on the bed, pulling me onto his lap.

“Of course I have plans for us,” Bash said, somewhat exasperatedly even as a wave of warmth flooded down our bond. “I have nothingbutplans. I plan to make this kingdom everything it should have been, everything it could be with you leading it. I have plans to build the family you’ve always wanted—when you’re ready, that is—and make sure our children are raised in a realm that only ever knows peace. I have plans to worship you, as my High Queen, as myanima, as my lover, as my friend…They start with teasing that little moan I can’t get out of my head from those perfect lips of yours and end with us sated and wrapped in each other until we fall asleep and find each other in our dreams.”

Bash leaned forward, lifting my hands behind his neck, his light caress down my arms making me shiver. “And I have plans to…what did you say we couldn’t have? That night when you didn’t see any other alternative?”

He pulled out a small box from his jacket pocket and opened it. Inside there was a ring.

It was familiar, if not almost exactly the same as the boon I had received after learning of what I thought meant my doom. My mother’s ring that had saved me. Bash had replaced the ruined stone—the large, oval diamond now an oddly iridescent black, the exact shade of the shattered diamond from my dagger. Like my darkness solidified, as clear as the night we had firstmet, and radiant with the promise of tomorrow. As though the two stones from my mother that had been destroyed had been melded into one.

My throat was too choked up to respond, Bash’s thumb catching the happy tears that rolled down my cheeks before they could fall.

His answering smile was blinding. “Oh, right. My planis to live happily ever after.”

---