Page 90 of The Time Of Queens

He groaned down at me, while Pip tossed up two thumbs my way. Well at least someone was proud of me.

“Not when this means there is potentially now two of them in this timeframe,” Draven added, making my mouth drop.

“Oh,” I muttered, making him comment dryly,

“Yes, oh indeed.”

“Well, I don’t know! You shouldn’t have lost the first one and besides, if Fate didn’t want it here, then none of this would have happened,” I pointed out, making him scowl down at me.

“No, little queen of mine, none of this would have happened had you not been so foolish as to step into the fountain to begin with…again!”Draven bellowed, making Sophia mutter,

“Oh, here we go.”

“You stay out of it. I should have known you two would be involved!” he snapped.

“Yes, so you have already said,” Sophia muttered in a bored tone, as she was right, he had already verbally lashed out at them just as Ella had arrived with Jared.

“Hey, are you hearing this, Pookey?!” Pip exclaimed, but then when turning around, she found Adam with his arms folded, looking down at her disapprovingly. Oh, and with the same hard frown that Draven was currently directing my way. Something that shut her up, real quick.

“And what was I to do? Just let our daughter face this alone?!” I snapped back once more, as I too had already pointed this out, making him sigh angrily, before replying harshly,

“No, as her mother, you should have done the right thing and stopped her from wanting to use it in the first place!”

I gritted my teeth at that.

“In Kazzy’s defence, that’s exactly what she did do,” Sophia argued, making Pip shout,

“Yeah, what she said!”

I put my hands on my hips as I looked up at my angry husband. Part of me was elated to witness the proof I was really back, as now I was fully at ease in telling him what for. I had never shied away from sparring with my husband this way.

“Then you should have told me, and I would have…”

“What? Locked her in a tower?!” I bit back, quick to interrupt him.

“That isn’t fair, Keira, and you know it,” he replied as if wounded, but I was too far gone to let the guilt take hold.

“No, what isn’t fair is interfering with her Fate and letting her live everyday with the nightmares of being terrorised by a mad King and living with the guilt of having an entire army of lost souls relying on her to free them!” I shouted in return, finally making him sigh enough that his shoulders slumped. But I wasn’t done.

“You have no idea what each of us has had to endure and would do again if it meant freeing her from that mental torture! But it was all worth it, the sacrifice, the pain…”

“Alright, Keira…” Draven said, failing to get me to calm.

“I mean, Jesus, Draven, you kidnapped me… twice! Technically. And then some cook tried to beat me up, although I kicked the shit out of her but again, that’s not the point… and then you wanted to throw me out the house because you thought you had found your Chosen One, only it was really me pretending to be Pip’s lady’s maid…” The way his expressions changed as he took in all this information was like flipping a flicker book of Draven emotions.

“Calm down, love,” Draven said, despite his shock and then concern for my explosive rant, one I still wasn’t yet done with.

“…Which I have to say, you got a real hard on for me being a maid, despite thinking your Fated was galivanting off somewhere in the Worcester countryside. But then, you hunted me down and forced me to be your personal maid, your brother hated me but then he liked me and then you made me ride that bloody big horse of yours…”

“Aww, I miss Samson,” Sophia added.

“And then, and then…”

Draven stopped me quickly, tossing the seal to Adam so he could take my face in his palms and kiss me. Something that managed to shut me up quickly. I melted into him, feeling asif I was home all over again as we finally connected. His arms enveloped me as the kiss intensified. Something that ended far too soon, in my opinion, but it was clear he had something to say. So, he pulled back slightly to tell me softly,

“Alright, my love, you have made your point.”

I nodded the once, happy to have won this battle.

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