Page 4 of The Time Of Kings

I hugged Amelia to me and told her resolutely,“You’re definitely not alone.”

“Woohoo, and the time travelling boobateers are back in business!” Pip shouted, making me groan.

“Yeah, I'm so not going if she's going to do that the whole time,” Sophia added, even as Amelia looked confused enough to ask,

“Are they like, a band or something?”

I shook my head behind said crazy friend, telling her silently that she really didn’t want to know. After this, the conversation quickly turned back to our husbands.

“Oh shit, they're gonna be so mad when we get back,” Pip said, making us all give her a knowing look, considering she was grinning about it.

“Pip, that shouldn't make you look happy,” Sophia was the first to comment.

“Hey, I don't know about your husbands, but my husband, when I'm naughty, well, let's just say stuff can get pretty interesting, and when I say interesting, I mean kinky shit… like a whole sex shop of kinky, like suspended ropes and tools, and not even the type that you'd think would work but they totally do…like a whisk, you would be surprised at what else you can do with a whisk.”

I think we all rolled our eyes at this and wisely put the kinky talk brakes on the steam puffing express. Because when Pip got going, it was like the sex freight train about to barrel out of control, saying to hell with the tracks.

Something Sophia was pretty good at doing, now making a point of getting her to stop. After which, she turned her attention to her niece and asked,

“So just to be clear, and getting back to this poem, we need to go back before the Rosetta stone was even moved, before it got broken… right?”

Amelia nodded at Sophia, making me ask,

“Yeah, and when was that exactly?”

Pip piped up and added,

“And if you could say it like Doc Brown does in the movie, that would be great.”

Amelia naturally obliged her when telling us…

“Back to the year, 1202.”

2

HERE WE GO AGAIN

Thankfully, by the time our significant others came to find us in the library, we had made our plans. Which meant came the hardest part of this mission…

Lying to those we loved.

In all honesty, this had always been the part I struggled with the most and despite always being forgiven, I always feared the question…

When would enough be enough?

Which lie told, despite doing so for the greater good, would be the last one to break him? But that's what happened when you were so in love. And despite being together for so long, it was near crazy to think that such love simply continued to grow. To believe that you could still feel butterflies in your stomach whenever you saw them, despite seeing them every day. That you would miss them so much when you were apart. To feel as though a piece of you had disappeared and you only became whole again when they came back to you.

In our time together, decades spent as man and wife, Draven had sometimes needed to travel and, unfortunately, that travel didn't always include me. But no matter how many times thishad happened, I had still not become used to it. It didn't make it easier. But like a plant was nurtured by water and grew tall under the sunlight, with time, the stronger the roots became. And as for Draven and I, well…

He was my sun, and I was his water.

So, as I watched Lucius carry his new wife from the room, I knew that the same love would only grow stronger over time for them both. The type of love I had only ever wished for them to find together. Especially after having discovered if for myself so long ago with Draven. And well, it warmed my heart to see how much they loved and adored each other. It was all a mother could ever wish for… well, maybe minus the ‘going back in time and risking it all’.ThatI could have definitely done without. But like I said, there was no way I was letting my daughter do this alone.

Speaking of which, I was faced with my own husband who could read me like no other. The moment we were alone, I felt the back of his fingers caress a soft journey down my cheek before he used them to raise my face up to his.

“That looks like a heavy mind, wife of mine,” he said. calling me this as if having me as his wife for three decades wasn’t yet enough to stop reminding himself of this fact as often as possible. And just like all the times before, it warmed my heart to hear it, despite how heavy it felt in this moment. Because all the problems we had faced in our time together usually started with the lies we felt we needed to tell.

But it had been so long in my need to tell them, it felt like acid on my tongue to have to tell him what I now knew would no doubt be the first lie of many,

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